Friday, August 10, 2012

More New Math……On The Plus Side, This Time!



  • Ebay membership + collectibles = windfall
  • 1 email from state uni + 1 phone call =more paycheck (and it’s in my research field—BONUS!!!)
  • 1 unemployed spouse=grading assistant
  • Living rent free with friends=more savings

I realized my last post must have sounded dire indeed.  And things were bleak.  But things have begun to pick up and the red ink is beginning to slowly turn back into black.  The eBay windfall equals what I make on one class at Craptastic Community College, so that's already given us a leg up, financially speaking.  Thank you all for your supportive comments and advice of the other week. You've given me things to think about.  It might be time to plan my escape from Way Over Pricedville. 

My summer reading list has devolved.  I am reading about downward mobility, frugality and zero cost living.  I have discovered I can buy land for as low as $800 in some places that are far more temperate than where I am now.  Hmm….It may be time to completely move the old homestead after all and give up on applying for a Ph.D.....hmm....I can see it now, more new math:  forgetting about Ph.D., plus fees and books, equals....?

10 comments:

  1. I hate to tell you, but those equals signs you freely use here were few and far between in the New Math. The New Math was a mathematics curriculum for elementary and high schools introduced in the 1960s. It was designed by, God help us, mathematicians. It was essentially the course on logic and set theory that sophomore mathematics majors take as a prerequisite to analysis, with concepts such as sets, the null set, and Venn diagrams introduced as early as first grade.

    A symptom of the New Math was students who could not get any answer, not even a wrong answer. It exemplified an approach that has been bedeviling American education since John Dewey: a new approach is introduced, with breathless enthusiasm; with few or no pilot studies, it is imposed on large numbers of students; and when the students sit down to take a test and not do so well on the test, the immediate response from proponents of the new approach is that there must be something wrong with the test. It's happened over and over again, with New Math, teaching machines, programmed instruction, Whole Language, educational television, self-esteem, process writing, writing about "feelings," peer instruction, discovery learning, active learning, learner-centered teaching, and now, God help us, online education. People just do not want to hear that there is no magic bullet that can increase results dramatically with no effort.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Especially not if you're determined not to pay your teachers a living wage!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The New Math you described scarred me for life...so much so that I became a humanities student! So...I guess this is the New New Math? Or perhaps I should instead call it the New Economics? But I agree there are too many things tossed around as the magic bullet...and what is a living wage? I keep hearing this term, but have no personal experience with it......

    Oh, and a big shout out to our moderator--I love the Craptastic College graphic!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A living wage is something paid to employees, so that they may become members of the middle class, much like Henry Ford did with his workers. I'm sorry if you've never heard the term "middle class," either.

      Delete
  4. Middle class....is that the group who can buy whatever they want at the grocery store, instead of generic brands or whatever is on a really good sale??

    ReplyDelete
  5. They can also buy real estate, send their kids to college, and retire when they get old.

    ReplyDelete
  6. They can also buy real estate, send their kids to college, and retire when they get old.

    ReplyDelete
  7. They can also buy real estate, send their kids to college, and retire when they get old.

    ReplyDelete
  8. They can also buy real estate, send their kids to college, and retire when they get old.

    ReplyDelete
  9. They can also buy real estate, send their kids to college, and retire when they get old.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.