I sent this to my AP and here is his reply:
Very funny, but I am not sure it is a compliment. We fail too many students.
I wrote back:
We don't fail the kids. The system fails them by forcing them to take courses that they are not interested in taking and have no desire or ability to learn. The kids fail themselves when they refuse to do any work.
Yes, I enter the failing grade on the report card, but I only enter the grade the student has earned in my class.
5 comments:
Oh, please don't share xkcd with people not clever enought to understand it.
Your (I must say, "not so clever") AP thinks the cartoon is saying math teachers think they are very smart.
It looks like xkcd is commenting on mathematical vs scientific or humanities truth. We teach things in 3rd grade that never need to be retaught or corrected. In chemsitry they teach kids, sequentially, a series of less-wrong models of the atom. Earlier life science classes are brimming with over-simplifications and half-truths that need later adjustment. And let's not start with "themes" in novels, or relative truth in historical analysis... Maybe physics comes forward, but when do math teachers tell their students to ignore friction or air resistance, when they know that ignoring friction or air resistance will lead to a wrong answer? But physics teachers have to do this all the time...
Anyway, this is a feature of teaching math... it makes it neither better nor worse than any other subject, just different. xkcd turns the difference into a joke, a joke far too subtle for at least one supervisor.
Sometimes even administrators don't get this truth: Teachers don't give grades to students--students earn grades.
Actually, I owe my AP an apology. Here is his response to my e-mail:
When I say "we", I mean the whole system. Our system is not set up to help all students. NCLB has made sure all public school are equally bad.
In the rest of the world, they use high standards because they only educate those who are capable. We try to educate everyone with the same standards and we fail almost everyone.
You are right, but no politician wants to hear that.
Much nicer. He still missed the point, but at least he sounds like a human being.
HE IS, SOMETIMES
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