Plus Two... Hundred.
Science!
So today on the current, as I was driving in to work, Anna Maria was interviewing a math teacher who claims that there is a math plague circulating in the schools, and students just aren't learning math. I'm not surprised. On Sunday, while out at Lucy's (go there for sum-sum this Sunday. Do it) with a friend who is going through teachers college to be an elementary teacher, she told us about her 'math journal'. They are to write personal reflections on their math lessons. This is how they plan to teach math? By asking how they feel about it? That is crazy. You cant teach a skill by asking how you feel about it. Math is a skill, just like swimming or throwing a curve ball. It is learned through drills and repetition. If students don't like doing drills then we might want to change them, but the student still needs to repeat the skill. When we try to teach something really important, like artificial respiration, we use repetition and memorization because it works.
Boycott Everyone
I had to post about
this article in the Globe and Mail. To sum up, Mahmoud Zahar is reacting to Peter McKay not meeting with Hamas while he was in the area. Zahar called the current Canadian government extremist, possibly in retaliation for our cessation of aid to the Palestinian state once Hamas was elected. Then Zahar says:
What is Israel providing you? Nothing. What are you achieving from such policies? What have you gained? Nothing, except the hatred of innocent people. If you would like to be the tail of the American dog, it's up to you.
I'd like to respond to this with a few points. First, Zahar claims that we are achieving the hatred of innocents. That is quite a statement, flawed in so many ways. On the surface, that innocent people are still innocent while hating, or in its implication that the Palestinians can somehow claim to be innocent. No party in this conflict can claim that.
Next, it isn't about what Israel is doing for us. We ought to be boycotting both sides. That is what neutrality is all about Charlie Brown. Most importantly if you want people to stop fighting, you need to stop giving them weapons. We also need to get both sides to work for peace, not victory.
Lastly, by calling us the tail of the American dog, he is not helping himself. Insulting a nation does little to entice foreign aid. We do not owe any nation or any government any sort of aid. We owe it to the starving and oppressed. We owe it to those who are being persecuted and attacked. Until this conflict settles down, it seems improper to give aid to those who would cause the suffering that we would try to relieve. That money ought to be going to the red cross and NGOs that have no political agenda.
