Why are 2/3rds of US children ‘not proficient’ in math? Texts LIE about ‘real-world math problems’, stupefy children to tune-out from counting what’s most important (like US .01% admitting they ‘lost’ $21 TRILLION of OUR taxes), produce uninspired work animals to serve the most dangerous rogue state empire in history
hat tip: David Icke
The US Department of Education reports that two-thirds of American school children are not proficient in mathematics (here, here).
In 2016 I wrote an article series about public education that includes a section on math that documents:
- Math texts lie about “real world math problems” with ridiculous and contrived word problems.
- Math texts don’t even care to define mathematics or algebra.
- Algebra 1 fail rates are up to 50% of students, and is connected to the above two points along with less than 1% of adults using algebraic formulas in work.
The outcomes of such “education” include:
- Americans concluding “math” is difficult and something to tune-out from; stupefying us from counting what’s most important in Life like US .01% “leaders” admitting they “lost” $21 trillion of our taxes (~$200,000 per average US household). Please pause to let that fact penetrate.
- Training Americans as work animals to blindly obey a rogue state empire.
- Americans blaming themselves as being “bad” at math, and too stupid to seriously engage in the numbers associated with competent citizenship.
Math-hole Ph.D text author LIARS
Those of us who apply mathematics to quantify reality, understand as comprehensively as possible what exists, and use math as a scorecard to upgrade real-world conditions abhor liars.
Fraudulent data makes it impossible to understand the real world, misdirects our attention and work, and wastes valuable time. As you know, professionals quickly dismiss proven liars, and remove them from serious work.
Again, look here for three examples of typical lying math word problems, that cannot be excused as anything but intentional lying with rejection to consult with anyone doing real-world work.
Here are three more from the 1,200 page Algebra 1 text provided to my students. These are typical:
From Module 14 Rational exponents and radicals, consider this claimed “real-world problem” on page 660:
“The balls used in soccer, baseball, basketball, and golf are spheres. How much material is needed to make each of the balls in the table? The formula for the surface area of a sphere is 4𝜋r2 and the formula for the volume of a sphere is V = 4/3𝜋r3 . Use algebra to find the formula for the surface area of a sphere given its volume.” (table provided for the four balls’ volumes)
Paraphrasing usual student observations:
- Oh my balls! Are these things empty of “material” and only have surface area?! This says the balls have nothing inside. Maybe the Ph.D authors have the same problem of nothing inside their heads. Maybe so because they didn’t ask anyone who actually makes those balls.
- Golf balls are not spheres. It’s some other shape with all those dimples. Not that this matters because the stuff inside the ball is just as important as the outside cover for the ball to be any good for that sport. Yeah, we should just judge those balls by the cover and not look inside, just like we should ignore what’s inside our math book.
- People who use balls want to be good in those sports. Nobody good at those sports ever ever ever ever ever even thought of such a "real-world" problem to waste their time.
From Module 22 Using square roots to solve quadratic equations, consider this claimed “real-world problem” on page 894:
“A contractor is building a fenced-in playground at a daycare. The playground will be rectangular with its width equal to half its length. The total area will be 5000 square feet. Determine how many feet of fencing the contractor will use.”
Paraphrasing usual student observations:
- WTF (what the fence)? Just fence and no gates? Real contractors charge extra for gates ‘cuz they take more time. Are they going to throw the kids over the fence, dig a tunnel, or put slides over it for kids to get in and out?
- Where is the building where kids are inside??? The daycare isn’t connecting the fence to the building?! Nobody would do that.
- The kiddie cage the math-hole authors say is real isn’t at an existing daycare ‘cuz they’d already have a fence to keep the kids safe. Maybe a replacement fence would be real, but not this 5,000 exact square feet that just happens to be a number that works evenly for a word problem about square roots. And anyway, if they know the area is 5,000, then they already know the width and length and don’t need to ask anyone.
From Module 19 Graphing quadratic functions, consider this claimed “real-world problem” on page 1037 (with picture of a parabola):
“Describe what the vertex, y-intercept, and endpoint(s) represent in the situation, and then determine the equation of the function. This graph models the depth in yards below the water’s surface (y-axis) of a dolphin before and after it rises to take a breath and descends again. The depth (d) is relative to time (t, in seconds as the x-axis), and t=0 when the dolphin reaches a depth of 0 yards at the surface.”
Paraphrasing usual student observations:
- Wait. The math-holes say a dolphin swims up to zero to “take a breath.” The graph shows air as the positive numbers, and water in negative numbers. This means these dumb-x authors violate the definition of zero and don’t even notice :)
- No animal moves at perfectly constant speed in a perfect parabola. So these authors find nothing in reality to show us other than these fake puzzles. Nice.
- The graph the math-holes give us show a speed of about 50 mph at 4 seconds before and after the fake “breath” where there’s no air. Is this a magic rainbow dolphin that’s the fastest in the universe? Will the magic dolphin be going 5,000 mph or so 10 seconds from the fake air?
What’s an educated person to do?
Call bullshit for what it is to expose liars, remove the liars, and rebuild with truth. Again, I wrote a series on the problem of bullshit public education.
Next: see the bigger pattern of lies and empire, and remove those liars through lawful arrests:
- When Americans are told an election is defined by touching a computer screen without a countable receipt that can be verified, they are being told a criminal lie to allow election fraud. This is self-evident, but Princeton, Stanford, and the President of the American Statistical Association are among the leaders pointing to the obvious (and here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Again, no professional would/can argue an election is legitimate when there is nothing for anyone to count. The facts show Bernie Sanders won the Democratic Primary election, and claims by Democratic “leadership” of Russian election “meddling” are without factual documentation.
- US military now illegally occupy eight bases in Syria (and here), with escalating bombing of Syria and Iraq of over 4,000 bombs/month and over 84,000 since 2014. The US acknowledges ~500 civilian deaths from these bombs, with independent count of ~750 in just in June 2017.
- Among dozens of independent writers, I’ve documented that all “reasons” for wars on Iran, Syria, and Russia are easily proved lies (recently, here, here, here, and going back to 2005), with US Department of illegal Wars of Aggression (so-called “Defense”) claiming to have “lost” $65,000 for every US household.
- The US is a literal rogue state empire led by neocolonial looting liars. The history is uncontested and taught to anyone taking comprehensive courses. If anyone has any refutations of this professional academic factual claim for any of this easy-to-read and documented content, please provide it. Rogue state empire is the most accurate term to describe the US for the following reasons:
- People around the world view the US as the greatest threat to peace; voted three times more dangerous than any other country. The data confirm this conclusion:
- Since WW2, Earth has had 248 armed conflicts. The US started 201 of them.
- These US-started armed attacks have killed ~30 million and counting; 90% of these deaths are innocent children, the elderly and ordinary working civilian women and men. The US has war-murdered more than Hitler’s Nazis.
- The total deaths caused by rogue state empire for resource control (natural and human) in the last 20 years is ~400 million, more than all total wars and violence in all recorded Earth history.
- US ongoing lie-started and Orwellian-illegal Wars of Aggression require all US military and government to refuse all war orders because there are no lawful orders for obviously unlawful wars. Officers are required to arrest those who issue obviously unlawful orders. And again, those of us working for this area of justice are aware of zero attempts to refute this with, “War law states (a, b, c), so the wars are legal because (d, e, f).” All we receive is easy-to-reveal bullshit.
- The destruction of nearly all rights lawfully guaranteed in the US Bill of Rights within the US Constitution, and in Orwellian inversion of limited government.
- Corporate media are criminally complicit through constant lies of omission and commission to “cover” all these crimes. Historic tragic-comic empire is only possible through such straight-face lying, making our Emperor’s New Clothes analogy perfectly chosen.
- The top three benefits each of monetary reform and public banking total ~$1,000,000 for the average American household, and would be received nearly instantly. Please read that twice and imagine the connection between having a rogue state empire to enrich an oligarchy combined with internal financial manipulation to maximize those parasitical riches. Now look to verify for yourself.
- Iran has never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” and only has IAEA-verified legal energy and medicine programs with nuclear materials. Trump and corporate media continues and escalates easily-verified lies to threaten more illegal war on Iran.
- Israel engages in lie-started and illegal War of Aggression on Gaza; ironically the largest concentration camp in world history. This is also easy to verify.
Categories of crime include:
- Wars of Aggression (the worst crime a nation can commit).
- Likely treason for lying to US military, ordering unlawful attack and invasions of foreign lands, and causing thousands of US military deaths.
- Crimes Against Humanity for ongoing intentional policy of poverty that’s killed over 400 million human beings just since 1995 (~75% children; more deaths than from all wars in Earth’s recorded history).
US military, law enforcement, and all with Oaths to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, face an endgame choice:
- Demand arrests, with those with lawful authority to enact it. An arrest is the lawful action to stop apparent crimes, with the most serious crimes documented here meaning the most serious need for arrests.
- Watch the US escalate its rogue state crimes that annually kill millions, harm billions, and loot trillions.
In just 90 seconds, former US Marine Ken O’Keefe powerfully states how you may choose to voice “very obvious solutions”: arrest the criminal leaders (video starts at 20:51, then finishes this episode of Cross Talk):
3-minute video: Police, Military – Was your Oath sincere?
I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History (also credentialed in Mathematics), with all economic factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences (and here). I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
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Carl Herman worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu
Note: My work from 2012 to October, 2017 is on Washington’s Blog. Work back to 2009 is blocked by Examiner.com (and from other whistleblowers), so some links to those essays are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive (blocked author pages: here, here).
The simplest and cheapest way to improve education in the United States is to eliminate the Department of Education and all their "School Administrative Units (SAU's) littered across the country. Much like healthcare, all government meddling has done is to dramatically increase cost while lowering quality. This invariably leads to plaintive demands for even higher costs (taxes) with comically disastrous results. Congress is packed full of pompous idiots who, having breezed through Ivy League schools due to political connections and not merit, now assume they know more about education than our nation's teachers.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that Teachers' Unions will correct the problem?
Delete"...no school reform can accomplish much if it does not focus on the quality of the basic unit of education—that human interaction between an adult and a group of children that we call teaching. The big teachers' unions, through the straitjacket of work rules that their contracts impose, inexorably subvert that fundamental encounter. These contracts structure the individual teacher's job in ways that offer him or her no incentives for excellence in the classroom—indeed, that perversely reward failure."
https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-teachers%E2%80%99-unions-handcuff-schools-12102.html
Unfortunately, this is the way of the World we live in today. With exception to home schooling, the Federal Government will never allow an Independent education system of checks and balances. It is intentional -- not accidental -- that our Public Schools are in the "deplorable" condition they are.
Thank you, h5mind. Congressional "leaders" of both parties are owned by .01% parasitic oligarchs who want people just smart enough to serve as controlled labor for ongoing empire.
DeleteThank you, inretrospect; yes, "leaderships" of unions are captured by the .01% rogue state. One of the contests is between the 95%+ of teachers who work in good-faith care of truth and a brighter future versus the lies thinly masking the illegal rogue state empire. In this area, and many others, it's "game on" between Truth and corporate media/texts "covering" crimes of ongoing empire viewing "We the People" as their work animals.
Delete