Using pure math doesn’t give you all the answers, either, just clues.

I don’t think that was the point. The point is that if you don’t have the math basics, you don’t have the wherewithal to resist any BS of any sort.

He is also a liberal and does not begin to grasp what drives a Conservative. He thinks that Bill O’Reilly is a Conservative. Oh well, we shall no longer prosper.

my kid’s school here in Illinois allows students to use calculators as early as the 3rd grade. I told my kids that I will not allow them to use a calculator until they reach high school. I was also stunned to see that the school teaches “estimation” in math instead of calculating for the correct answers. “estimation,” as my kids put it, is simpy guessing, now kids correlate guessing with math – in math, it’s ok to guess instead of working for the correct answer.

when the school districts starts allowing calculators instead of making teachers teach the math tables in their class then it is to be expected that students will not have math skills.

when the schools stop teaching phonics then it is to be expected that children will not have reading skills…and without reading skills, there goes the enthusiasm for reading.

the learning of basic knowledge includes the technical aspects of the subject being learned and in reading the technical system for it is phonics, in math, it’s the arithmetic tables. skip those two and children will never catch up with what they need to learn at every grade level the school bumps them up to.

I and my wife literally FORCED our kids to read by learning phonics. we go to the library every week and have them pick out up to five books that they would like to read. we force them to practice phonics, reading, and math tables during the summer vacation and it works wonders. those who think that memorization shouldn’t be a part of learning are totally mistaken. learning the basics starts with memorization – learning the alphabet is memorization, learning the phonetic sounds of the alphabet is memorization, and it’s the same with numbers and arithmetic. if memorization is taken out, you have kids with slow dull minds as a result.

I grew up in a different country where education (at least during that time) was taken seriously. where calculators are banned in primary education and only allowed in high school, where kids learn phonics (in both english and our native language) as early as kindergarten, and where school hours are much longer than what we have here in the US.

The education system in the US is a failure, sadly though, I doubt that the people as a whole has the will to fix what needs fixing. I often hear parents complain that their children have too many homeworks (my kids’ school only give maybe a half hour’s worth of homework and does not give homework during the weekends, compare that to my old school where we’re given multiple chapters and problems that would take a full day during the weekend to complete) and not enough playtime (good grief). I also hear parents complain that the school (my kids’ school) is mean since they make the children line up in front of the school doors so they can come into school in an orderly way (imagine that).

Parents and their complaints factor into the failure of the school system as well as the teachers’ union and the lack of government resolve to fix school funding, may it be lack of money or simply lack of insight on how to use funds properly – frankly, I don’t believe that all schools are underfunded, I believe that schools are inefficient.

Car dealerships are open every day, so the number of cars sold per dealership per day is .796. Wiping out 1/4 of the dealerships will not increase the sales per dealership, because the cars simply will not receive the same market penetration. Not only will the closed dealerships not be selling in their markets, but the lack of available dealerships makes the cars less valuable, as it becomes harder to have a warranty honored across the country.

If somehow, magically, they maintained the same amount of sales, then it would be a big whoop. With 1/4 of the dealerships eliminated, the car sales would go to the other three, resulting in a 1/3 increase in sales. 79,000/3200=24.679 cars/mo/dealership. 79,000/2400= 32.92 cars/mo/dealership. 32-24=8 8/24=1/3 At an average of, say, 2k/car (old data, may be more now), that’s an increase of $16k/mo. That is a very big whoop!

Never gonna happen, of course. Sales of Chryslers will only go down as the decrease in market penetration occurs. Further, the devaluation of the cars will decrease sales more. The idea of buying from a company flirting with bankruptcy makes the sales projections yet more problematic. In the car industry, much of the profit is actually made in service and warranties. Not gonna happen, now.

The correct answer, of course, was to declare bankruptcy in 2008, with a commitment to their dealerships and to servicing their warranties. This was the only way to ensure long-term profitability (read: survivability) The UAW would have been thrown under the bus by the bankruptcy judge. The wheels on the bus go bump-bump-bump!

With the UAW legacy costs reduced via abrogation by bankruptcy, as well as the cost reduction of the no-work jobs and the inflated pay structure, Chrysler would have become immediately profitable again. Everyone would have been better off, including the workers, excluding the UAW itself. With the current deal, everyone eventually loses.

Not exactly.

Hughes never graduated from college and dropped out of Rice when his dad died. His dad (a lawyer) founded Hughes Tool Co and patented the Hughes drilling bit that made Hughes a fortune when he was young. Hughes liked engineering and was a tinkerer in the best Henry Ford tradition.

Getty’s father, another lawyer, founded the Getty Oil Company: John Paul Getty studies government at Oxford, never got a degree and was going to enter government service when his dad induced him to become an oilman. He was another lifetime tinkerer, even devising granite shafts to clear drillig bits stuck in a shaft.

Neither were college grads. And while both were competent at basic math, neiher were math nerds; neither ever referred to calculus etc in their writings. Both were inspired inventors and dreamers, not students flogged with endless math courses.

My point is not to denigrate math for those that want it: it’s to lambaste the horrific way its taught and now forced on people with no aptitude for it or interest in it. In school today, Hughes or Getty might easily flunk calculus and be dropouts.

Part of the problem (and I base this as a former teacher) is that most teachers lack the experience to relate math to the real world. They were students in school, then they were students in college, and now they’re teachers. My math teachers couldn’t explain how the concepts were used. It wasn’t until I studied to become an electronics technician that I learned to really apply math in a meaningful way.

Absolutely true. What we have is akin to drivers ed instructors who have never been behind the wheel of a car, but can tell you all about every little detail about every court decision regarding traffic law.

A related problem is the well established fact that teachers’ colleges are, as a group, not the hardest institutions around to get in to.