What I Truly Object To

is the increasingly more difficult mathematics concepts being taught to elementary and middle school students, which are totally inappropriate because most students are not able to process abstract ideas. I am referring to the push for algebraic concepts in the early grades, a recipe for academic failure.

Not only are most elementary school teachers not versed in algebra and therefore can't teach it and shouldn't, but the idea of shoving high school and college level mathematics ideas will almost certainly result in an increase in special education students. Special education students, in turn, are more likely to drop out of school and end up in low-level jobs, assuming they can get them. Besides, algebra is basically a useless concept for job and career preparation; the only purpose it serves is to teach abstract thinking.

But perhaps that's the point: create a two-tiered education system with the "dregs" being shoved into special education, while the "smart" kids are pushed into college.

Here is an opinion piece that sticks in my craw.

The same garbage has been done in language arts with the whole language bullshit, which is nothing more than shoving high school-level concepts onto little kids, when in fact they should be learning phonics, grammar, spelling, the whole building blocks of reading and writing, and then gradually move into "real" books. Now we have millions upon millions of students who are way below grade level because of crappy curriculum.

I am going to go out on a limb and say 90 percent of students in special education should not even be there in the first place. They have no behavioral or real cognitive problems such as mental retardation to actually qualify. But because they are taught absolutely inappropriate curriculum and more often than not by inexperienced teachers who themselves were trained in college with nutty concepts such as whole language, reading recovery, reading workshops, and "new math" ideas, these students end up further and further behind. A generation ago, this would never have happened. The second-language excuse doesn't fly, either; after all, this country was made up of second-language learners and almost all of them made it through the traditional curriculum just fine.

It's the curriculum and teacher training, stupid.