Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Dumbing Down Disease

Plano ISD is infected with the Dumbing Down Disease. Is this a problem? Go to Amazon.com and search for "dumbing down" and you will see many books on the topic. Even Wikipedia has an article about dumbing down.

Connected Math is part of the Dumbing Down Disease. The elementary school math curriculum in PISD has been in trouble for years, but the middle school curriculum used to be okay. The kids received real math instruction in middle school and moved on to a good education in high school and senior high.

Connected Math will make the kids unprepared for high school. Connected Math means instead of providing private tutoring for elementary school, now private tutoring will be necessary all the way throught 8th grade. For those children who have not had private tutoring (which can be done by parents or tutors), PISD will eventually want to dumb down high school math. Then they will dumb down senior high math.

Once the PISD has dumbed down the math curriculum all the way through 12th grade, our private tutoring system will be overwhelmed and the PISD will crumble and fall: Plano will be a little Dallas in the middle of better managed suburban ISDs.

The high school math curriculum is a treasure. We must protect our high school math curriculum. We must get rid of Connected Math from the middle schools before it is too late. If we fix the problems we have had for so many years in the elementary schools, then our administrators will not need to dumb down the middle school curriculum.

SOS: Save our schools! Vote for Robert Canright for Place 7.

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