{"id":10349,"date":"2006-11-14T11:04:42","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T16:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/11\/14\/10349.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:55:22","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:55:22","slug":"stifling-a-reporters-creativit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/11\/14\/stifling-a-reporters-creativit\/","title":{"rendered":"Stifling a reporter’s creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this morning’s New York Times, there’s an article called As Math Scores Lag, a New Push for the Basics<\/a> by Tamar Lewin. First of all, Tamar? Who names their daughter Tamar? Did they not read<\/I> the Bible?\n

What I meant to write about, though, is about yet another potential change in the way arithmetic is taught in elementary schools. There’s a lot to be cranky about—Ms. Lewin mentions a report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics but doesn’t seem to have talked to any officials or representatives of that group, much less anybody who writes the textbooks that are being discussed. But what really caught my eye was this:\n

“When my oldest child, an A-plus stellar student, was in sixth grade, I realized he had no idea, no idea at all, how to do long division,” Ms. Backman said, “so I went to school and talked to the teacher, who said, ‘We don’t teach long division; it stifles their creativity.’ ”<\/blockquote>\n

A question for Gentle Readers: Do you believe this conversation happened? Do you believe that the teacher said what Ms. Backman claims was said? Because I, for one, do not. I have some small experience of teachers, and I simply do not believe that any teacher in this nation has used the phrase “stifles their creativity” seriously at any time in the last five years, certainly not in a conversation with an aggrieved parent.\n

Now, I like long division, and I think there are a lot of good reasons for teaching it, but on the other hand there are lots of other things to teach, and I would understand if my Perfect Reader never learns it, because, you know, honestly, there’s not so much long division in the real world. It’s fun and instructive, and gives practice multiplying single-digit numbers and subtracting double-digit numbers, and those things are really quite useful to be able to do in your head, and besides I think it can give a sense of numbers and patterns that might, for some kids, lead them to consider putting some effort into real math. Which would be hijjus for those kids, who might turn into mathematicians, but it would be Good for the Country, which needs mathematicians to, um, you know, all that stuff. The stuff we need mathematicians to do. Make physicists feel good about themselves.\n

But my point (here it comes, wait, no, it was here a minute ago) is not about long division, it’s about journalism. Is there an ethical problem in letting Ms. Backman just make shit up like that? Or is it understood that Ms. Backman is not quoting a teacher, but giving her impression of what the teacher meant? Does Ms. Lewin, as a journalist, have some responsibility to let us know whether the reported conversation actually occurred? Are we, as readers, expected to believe Ms. Backman’s reporting? Or Ms. Lewin’s reporting of Ms. Backman’s reporting? Is there harm done (to the credibility of the paper, to the image in our heads of teacher<\/I>, to our culture) by that paragraph? Or is clearly laying out the issue, by reporting Ms. Backman’s self-description of why she is organizing?\n

It makes me very uncomfortable, in part because I think Ms. Backman is, in some sense, slandering teacher<\/I>hood. As a culture, we build up images or types, and just the way that, f’r’ex, professional baseball players are viewed as lazy, selfish, arrogant and dishonest, teachers are viewed as small-minded, bureaucratic, inflexible and petty. All of the negative aspects of unionism in our culture are put on them, and none of the positive ones (if there are any left). Individually, of course, we love teachers, or hate them, depending on the individuals, but more likely respect and appreciate them. Not all of us, and not all teachers, but in general, if you have an acquaintance from high-school who went into elementary-school teaching, you probably think good for her<\/I>. But the generic teacher<\/I> is not like that. Which is why we can’t possibly raise our taxes to give them significant support.\n

In a world where (as is clearly implied in this article), math teachers can make much more money and enjoy better working conditions by quitting the day job and going into tutoring full-time, it’s a problem if we erroneously think that teachers will not teach long division for fear of stifling the child’s productivity. Naturally, then, we will not feel ashamed when the resources are diverted away from that small-minded, bureaucratic, inflexible and petty teacher, and to the clever, independent entrepreneur at Kumon. It won’t occur to us that it’s the same person, simply following the resources. The fact that there are lots of students who won’t be able to follow the teacher (as she follows the resources) might, but then our solution will be to provide some way for that student to follow that teacher, thus diverting even more resources away from the school.\n

I think it’s fair to blame Ms. Backman for her share in that. I’m not sure if it’s fair to blame Ms. Lewin.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this morning\u2019s New York Times, there\u2019s an article called As Math Scores Lag, a New Push for the Basics by Tamar Lewin. First of all, Tamar? Who names their daughter Tamar? Did they not read the Bible? What I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nytimes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17880,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10349\/revisions\/17880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}