Item North Carolina Elementary Teachers Struggle To Pass Math Portion Of Licensing Exam
The Charlotte Observer reports that nearly half of newly hired teachers in North Carolina failed to pass the math portion of a licensing exam which is required for them to keep their jobs. Some teachers claim the problem isn’t with them but with the test itself which includes middle school and high school math problems. Last month the Board of Education granted new teachers on an additional year to pass the test…
A 19% pass rate is pretty awful for college educated people.
This, it is thought, is a sample test (pdf). Readers here could pass even without lead in their Dr Grip pencils. We haven’t heard yet (and I haven’t looked) to see criticisms about racism, etc.
Item Adult Swim’s ‘Rick and Morty’ Co-Creator Depicts Children Being Raped, Tortured, and Killed
Nope, not Dan Harman, the co-creator of “Rick and Morty,” who filmed himself raping a babydoll. The other co-creator, Justin Roiland, is now embroiled in his own child rape scandal. Roiland made a cartoon, posted on his website, about raping, torturing, and killing children. It’s so graphic we can’t show it here. If you want to watch it (which I don’t recommend), it’s at this link. The cartoon begins with two young boys who decide to go for a swim in the ocean naked.
It starts in the pits and only goes downhill from there. Which you wouldn’t think possible—since it started in the pits. But it did. Don’t click on the link. I can’t think of anybody who would be saddened to learn Hollywood fell into the sea with a milestone around its neck.
Item I feel pretty — and confident. A straight man’s adventure with makeup.
I wonder if everyone at this bar thinks I look like a geisha — a dude geisha. Are the other patrons sneaking glances at me, judging the guy alone in a booth? I’ve come prepared for a date, dressed in the standard-issue San Francisco uniform: dark jeans, desert boots, crisp button-down. I’ve also added the sheen of makeup on my face.
The girl I’m meeting is late…Is there now going to be a line on the side of my face? Also how does this foundation look in this dim lighting? To my date, will I resemble a 9-year-old girl who got a hold of her mother’s makeup kit, or a responsible 29-year-old man who pays rent and appreciates rye whiskey? I weigh the benefits of verifying that I look fabulous by whipping out my cellphone camera, but what if my date walks in and sees me doing so?
Washington Post, friends. The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. Unless it’s to feel pretty.
Item The Rise And Rise Of The UK’s Student Sugar Babies
A growing number of students are turning to sex work to fund their studies as they struggle to cope with increasing debt and living costs, a new student finance survey has revealed.
BuzzFeed News spoke to student sex workers who said that they had developed sugar daddy relationships or taken to selling intimate pictures and videos online because their maintenance loans fail to cover their day-to-day expenses.
Save the Student’s national student money survey, released last week, has found that 3% of UK students are financing their studies with adult work, rising to 4% when faced with a cash crisis….
For some students, sugar daddies are less of a necessity and more a means to enjoying a better lifestyle at university, allowing them to travel, go out partying more often, and live in better accommodation than many of their peers. However, others sell sex as a way to survive.
There was an older word used for women who sold themselves for cash to spend on frivolities. Can’t recall it now. Nobody can, evidently.
One woman, who would have in olden days been called this now-forgotten name, for it would have been accurate, as it still is, if we could only remember it
With help from a ‘sugar daddy’, I could go partying every weekend, travel to different states, shop regularly, and eat out in the city three to four times a week if I wanted. I sort of became accustomed to that standard of living and it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to afford the same thing in London without some ‘aid’.
That darn word. What was it?
Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, form unions.
The Left’s push for gay ‘rights’ has always had, as their end goal, the permissivity of pedophilia, torture, rape and murder.
Girly men are, by definition, lacking in masculinity. This is still part of the Left’s push to define women as the only real humans, and men as defective models. They fully intend to create entire generations of “men without chests.”
Those college students do seem to like to get out and walk the streets.
“with the test itself which includes middle school and high school math problems.” So none of them graduated Jr. High or High school????
To be fair, when I was in college in 1974-78, one of my best friends majored in elementary ed and graduated with a degree. We lost touch when I moved away because she could not write a letter. Her English was so broken and spelling so atrocious she was embarrassed to write. Sad. (She was a wonderful person, but I never would have hired her to teach. Her calling was obviously elsewhere.)
We really should revive that “old word not used anymore”. I use it frequently in political season to describe people who cry on camera about how helpless they were without their sugar daddy, rich as all getout, congress critter to save them. I would never prostitute myself like that. It’s disgusting. (My congress critter is 146h wealthiest in the Senate in less than 2 terms……). It’s all about Santa Claus and kissing a certain part of another’s anatomy. Disgusting human beings all.
“with a milestone around its neck”
Those of us who have undertaken research supported by a government grant know what that’s like. For throwing Hollywood types in the ocean, though, I recommend a millstone.
“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man [etc.]”
But which sex wears makeup and in what manner is a matter of fashion that, as fashion does, is constantly changing. In the middle ages men commonly wore makeup, as you know if you’ve read, for example, Chaucer. And I thought this author was a fan of those dark ages.
When I was growing up, having lead in one’s pencil was a euphemism for something. It had nothing to do with math IIRC though it may have had something to do with multiplying.
And in Chaucer a man carrying a “rusty sword” was a euphemism for the opposite.
The math test example isn’t exactly a pushover. The questions involve a fair amount of math jargon. I’ve never heard of the “lattice multiplication algorithm” nor seen the accompanying diagram for figuring out the answer.
There are two types of people in the world: the math-intuitive and the non-inituitive. And each has a hard time understanding why the other can’t comprehend the problems with learning math. Intuitives just can’t fathom why something so obviously logical can’t be learned. Non-intuitives are baffled by the inability of intuitives to see their struggles as an onerous wrestling with nebulous concepts. The use of symbolic shorthand complicates the matter by putting it in a foreign language (sort of like education in Haiti where students speak Creole, but school is in French).
A 19% pass rate is bad and something (NOT including dumbing down the test) should be done about it. But I’m concerned for the math non-intuitive kids who will be taught by math teachers who aced the test. They will be doomed by the continuing blindness of teachers who can’t see their shackles.
“lattice multiplication algorithm” ???
Why don’t they just memorize the multiplication table? That’s what I did in grade school. Arithmetic barely qualifies as math. It’s one step above counting on your fingers. I’m not surprised teachers can’t do arithmetic. When I was an undergraduate the education majors were famous infamous?) for being the dumbest kids on campus. We made jokes about them because we thought it was funny that people with such limited intelligence wanted to teach others. We were certain that wouldn’t work very well, and it hasn’t.
The lattice multiplication algorithm is just a more explicit form of long multiplication. It shows the carried digits explicitly. Potentially clearer than the long multiplication method. Nowadays though, with calculators as ubiquitous as clocks, I tend to use a calculator.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LatticeMethod.html
Dr Grip helped got me through grad school. I had forgotten the brand name and wanted to get a couple for my kids. Thanks WmB!
The lattice method is cute and easy to understand. It’s the basis for Napier’s Bones.
https://youtu.be/GXkQWZ77b_4
Dr Grip helped got me through grad school. I had forgotten the brand name and wanted to get a couple for my kids. Thanks WmB!
The lattice method is cute and easy to understand. It’s the basis for Napier’s Bones.
The lattice method is cute and easy to understand.
Not so for the math non-intuitive. It’s way too complicated and requires so much drafting of lines and diagonals. Don’t be misled by the architecture. It no more clarifies the meaning of digit position than does long division to one who doesn’t understand the basic concept. This issue isn’t method of computation; it’s how to make abstract ideas concrete for those who just don’t get it.