Yesterday, ACARA’s draft curriculum was approved by the Ministers, as it was always going to be. The draft is, of course, still secret, since when did ACARA ever give a stuff about what anybody thinks? The draft is due to appear in a couple weeks. We shall be ready. Until the draft is released, there […]
Happy April Fools’ Day everyone. Guess which gang of fools is gonna get fooled, and guess which gang of fools is gonna do the fooling. There’s not a whole lot of point to this any more, but it’s niggling. So we’ll post again on ACARA‘s thoughtful and classy CEO, David de Carvalho.
Yesterday, The Age held their annual Schools Summit. Of course we wouldn’t shell out a shekel to attend, presuming that not a lot could be learned, but reports on the Summit are here, here, here and here. And, what was learned? Clearly, not a lot. Our main interest was in the idiotic Maths Wars discussion […]
Yeah, it’s Godzilla versus Mothra. Either is sufficiently destructive to lay waste to a city. But, at the moment, Jo Mind-Set-In-Stone Boaler is less likely than ACARA to cause lasting damage. Really. About a year ago, the California Department of Education (CDE) came out with its draft mathematics curriculum. The work of the inevitable maths […]
Recently, we decided to look a little at the writings of ACARA’s CEO, David de Carvalho. There’s not a lot to see. De Carvalho’s writings exhibit the calm smugness typical of a Catholic intellectual lightweight, and without any proper consideration of how the ideas expounded might play out in practice. There is some discussion of […]
One of the notable aspects of the Curriculum farce has been ACARA’s silence in the face of contempt. There has been no serious attempt, by ACARA or anyone, to publicly rebut the many pointed and strong criticisms of their draft curriculum. Evidently, ACARA has seen no need to pretend that “public consultation” has any meaningful […]
(With apologies to Stephen Sondheim and Zero Mostel. Wise readers will skip to the content.) Nothing familiar, Something peculiar, Nothing for anyone: A curriculum tonight! Something that’s galling, Something appalling, Nothing for anyone: A curriculum tonight!
And the Australian Mathematical Society did not. That’s where we. At some point we hope to write in detail about Maths Pathway and why we loathe it. Briefly, in the very early days of MP we were contacted by one of MP’s founders and, because he came with a trusted recommendation, we gave MP a […]
Well, at least he didn’t use the expression “maths experts“, but there’s not much else to recommend Adam Carey’s piece in today’s Age. Carey is The Age‘s Education Editor, and his report is titled, Maths Curriculum’s most pressing conundrum: “inquiry-based learning” Yep, it’s a conundrum. Like whether or not to stick your hand in a […]
A month or so ago we gave Ontario a whack, for deciding that testing whether their teachers could do arithmetic was racist. That was not the first time we had run into Canadian nitwittery. Last year, Greg Ashman went to battle with some pretty obtuse Canadians, over Alberta’s new mathematics curriculum. And, ACARA somehow landed […]