Semi-Daily Journal

> I would behave like a Bush! I would do
> stupid things and threaten my long-run
> future!

Where would we be today if George W. had been in advanced math?

Hmm. I had no idea that President Bush had to do fifty math problems a night.

When my daughter was in the 8th grade, parents at her school requested a parent/teacher/administrator meeting about the overwhelming amount of homework assigned. One father complained that his daughter, Sadie, stayed up 'til 4 AM writing a paper. When I returned from the meeting, I said to my daughter, "Sadie stayed up 'til 4 AM working on her paper and you went to bed at 11 PM. What's the story?" My daughter said, "Sadie thinks you have to write a 25-page paper to get an 'A.' I wrote a four-page paper and got an 'A.' Having 'too much' homework forces you to prioritize, to decide what you have to do and what you can choose not to do."

Of course, my comment may not be on-point for a large quantity of assigned math problems.

My daughter is a junior in an International Baccalaureate program in a Denver public high school. Classroom instruction has been pretty high quality, as we hoped, but the quantity of homework she must perform to keep up is fairly ridiculous.

I wish she had more time to wander off with friends and have a good time.

The Thirteen Year Old has a suspiciously good grasp of English. Anyway - being young enough to remember the days of having to do maths homework at school, I can assure you that beyond a certain point, the volume of problems really doesn't matter. I remember that we were often assigned dozens of questions, all of which had the same theme (e.g. simultaneous equations). Seemed a bit of a waste of time once you've mastered the rule.

Teaching to the lowest common denominator -- some kids need that kind of repitition, and will not learn unless it's assigned (after all, what 9 year old would choose to do extra math problems?). Others try it a couple of times and are satisfied. I banged my head against the wall many a time, because I felt I had better things to do than to do repititious problem sets. My teachers disagreed.

It sounds to me like her future as a lawyer is assured - but maybe not a tax lawyer....

Law or journalism.

P.S. Decades ago Gregory Bateson wrote some fascinating dialogues with his young daughter Mary Catherine (now an author herself). He never gave Mary Catherine the last word, though.

The IB program at GW in Denver is famous for assigning silly amounts of homework. It used to be that most of the students dropped out as a result. And I have yet to see any documented positive results from large volumes of homework.

Once a student is beyond arithmetic, more than nine problems in a set on a single theme is probably excessive. What could it be accomplishing?

But I simply never finished my math homework when I was in school. It was pretty redundant after the first two problems. In fact, I prefered to get only one or two problems and hoped they would be hard ones that required some thinking and creativity.

The only homework that repaid long repetitive investment was memorization (in biochemistry and foreign languages). And it's awfully hard to prove all that time you spent with flash cards on paper. Better to check with a pop quiz.

>I would run wild and free! I would behave like a Bush...

You'd rather she behaved like a Clinton, perhaps?

I would rather have a daughter at Oxford doing something positive like Chelsea Clinton than having Larry Flynt trying to run down a video of a daughter at a naked party.

Since we're now busy comparing Chelsea to the Bushes as role models for our daughters:

http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2002/3/13/102802

Wednesday, March 13, 2002 11:26 a.m. EST

Oxford Weighs Expelling Chelsea for 'Partying'

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton could soon be expelled from prestigious Oxford University if she doesn't mend her hard-partying ways.

MSNBC.com quotes an Oxford University source saying that school officials "are less than thrilled" about all the press that Chelsea's off-campus partying has received.

Photographs of young Clinton staggering bleary-eyed into London bars have appeared in European newspapers and American supermarket tabloids, while the mainstream press has hushed-up reports of the 21-year-old's drinking sprees.

By one account last year, Secret Service agents guarding Miss Clinton told an Aspen, Colo., bartender to cut her off because she had become "sloppy drunk." They feared the former first daughter was about heed requests from male patrons that she perform a table dance, according to Globe magazine.

Oxford is reportedly considering invoking a rule against Clinton requiring students to spend a certain amount of time on campus.

"Students at Oxford are given a great deal of freedom in regard to attending classes, and consequently there are very strict requirements about how much time they have to spend on campus," MSNBC's source said.

"Administrators are looking into whether she's violated those requirements. If she hasn't, she's come close and she will be warned," the source added.

Chelsea's father, ex-President Clinton, attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in the late 1960s but dropped out without earning a degree.

What's wrong with kids partying? Let's stick to bashing their parents and leave the kids alone. And Larry Flynt must not get laid anymore because it sounds like he really needs to get a life.

Have you considered home-schooling your children? I fear that they're in danger of being ruined by the educational system.

I certainly can't imagine that they'll learn much from the rest of their schooling except that life is misery and suffering and pointless travail.

"All these stupid assignments! It's dumb. The whole point is to follow directions and jump through hoops. And if we don't jump through the hoops, we don't pass. Life has got to get better than this!"

"No, it's just like that once you get out of school. Only if you don't obey, you don't eat."

I'm really interested in the reference to Sadie, the young woman staying up until 4AM writing the 25-page paper to get an "A" when a four-page paper would have done just as well. That really describes my problem--I've always gone whole hog on tasks like that, and a decade in school behaving just like Sadie really had zero effect. I would really love to know if Sadie ever learns efficient time management skills; I really didn't.

(Please, no one mention Darwin Awards; all the potential jokes are obvious--and tautological.)

Bucky wrote:

Newsmax...mmm...objective that source, not is.

e.g.
"Chelsea's father, ex-President Clinton, attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in the late 1960s but dropped out without earning a degree."

"Dropped out" here being: "switched to Yale Law School instead"

Bucky wrote:

Newsmax...mmm...objective that source, not is.

e.g.
"Chelsea's father, ex-President Clinton, attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in the late 1960s but dropped out without earning a degree."

"Dropped out" here being: "switched to Yale Law School instead"

Bucky wrote:

Newsmax...mmm...objective that source, not is.

e.g.
"Chelsea's father, ex-President Clinton, attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in the late 1960s but dropped out without earning a degree."

"Dropped out" here being: "switched to Yale Law School instead"

The idea that a 21-year-old could be kicked out of Oxford for partying too much, in itself, boggles me. Historically, Oxonians do not have a squeaky-clean reputation. (It's not Southern Methodist, where one suspects the concocter of the article attended school).

It makes you suspect that the entire article, from beginning to end, is a hoax.

Chelsea's party history has been amply covered in the press on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is as relevant as the gratuitious Bush reference in the original post.

I've actually seen plenty of pictures of Chelsea Clinton out on the town in London, drunk out of her mind, looking much the worse for wear. How is she different from the Bush twins in that regard? Frankly, it seems to be hitting below the belt to use Bush or Clinton's children to carry out partisan attacks on either of them. Let's not go there.

As far as math problems are concerned, I'd say that the quality of question matters as much as the quantity. The William Lowell Putnam exam (held annually) only has 12 questions, yet as far as I'm aware, answering all 12 correctly has never been achieved - just answering 2 correctly is usually enough to put you in the top 200 competitors in North America (Bill Gates couldn't, while Steve Ballmer finished in the top 100).

And then there are top-drawer problems like the Goldbach conjecture, or the holy of holies, the Riemann Hypothesis. Single problems, but tough enough to secure immortality for those who solve them. Any student able to prove the R.H. would probably be handed over a faculty chair just like that, no BA or PhD required.

Having only 9 problems assigned is an indicator of one of two possibilities, a lazy teacher, or tough problems being given to quality students. If the latter, as seems likely in this case, why worry?

"I've actually seen plenty of pictures of Chelsea Clinton out on the town in London, drunk out of her mind, looking much the worse for wear. How is she different from the Bush twins in that regard?"

I don't recall Chelsea getting caught drinking underage.

Adrian says:

>>The Thirteen Year Old has a suspiciously good grasp of English.<<

And when you were thirteen your grasp of English was simplistic and deficient, I suppose?

:-)

Brad

The Thirteen Year Old has a point. The "gifted" programmes in my middle school didn't amount to much except extra homework. I always thought of it as a kind of intelligence test in itself: any kid who couldn't figure out that they were just punishing him by calling him gifted deserved what he got.

"I don't recall Chelsea getting caught drinking underage."

Public disorderliness is against the law in the UK though; besides, how many people can claim never to have transgressed drinking laws, especially the ridiculous American ones? Why should one be old enough to marry and fight but not drink? Or is the "crime" here getting caught?

I still think such attacks should be considered infra dignitatem by decent individuals.

13? Springtime? Quadratic equations maybe? There are only so many equations with small integer roots (for factoring by inspection) and if she learns the quadratic formula she can do any of them in her head. Story problems are another ... story. But my impression is they've all but been eliminated.

Can you please post the problems here. It would be great to remind ourselves what problem sets were like then. The Thirteen Year Old should hijack Old Man's website and post all of his psets on site ;)

Leaving the daughters out of it, since they, after all, have done nothing to solicit the limelight, yes, I would much prefer that my 13-year-old grow up to behave like a Clinton rather than behave like a Bush. I regard Bush's sins as far more harmful and worrisome than Clinton's.

Of course, I would much more prefer that my 13-year-old grow up to behave like neither one, but that was not the choice that Bucky presented.

Actually, I did see a picture of Chelsea in the Globe. Or was it the Weekly World News? Perilously close to the space alien.

P.S. There are LOTS of Bushes who are fuckup party animals. Adult Bushes. Not just the Bush twins. But thanks for getting us all down in the mud, you self-righteous knee-jerk twit.

>I would much prefer that my 13-year-old grow up to behave like a Clinton...

Juanita Broderick and Kathleen Willey no doubt wish for a different destiny for their kids.

YMMV

> thanks for getting us all down in the mud...

I share your view that politicizing K-12 math is silly, but Brad should be free to insert anti-Bush memes where he sees fit.

Considering that neither of those two women has any credibility at all, that their stories changed and that there was evidence that contradicted their stories, you'll forgive me if I take neither of them seriously.

Man, you really *are* reaching, aren't you? Is that really the best you can do?

Oh, and Bucky, Clinton hasn't been president for a couple of years now. Might I suggest you seriously look into acquiring a life?

>look into acquiring a life?

You are, of course, correct.

But the utter absurdity of a former Clinton official needlessly smearing someone over **personal** peccadillos was more than my irony filter could control.

Forgive me.

Man, between this blog entry and the small mammal one, I vote for a BdL blog spin-off, or at the very least, a section dedicated to the insights of his spawn. How hilarious! I thank both you and your kids, Brad ;-)

Frighteningly precocious.

Isn't nine how far we are into the "Hundred Best Math Problems" series?

To move it forward a bit, maybe to nine-and-a-half:

Kitty is mugged in the street next to an apartment block with sixty windows in it. Everybody in the building, that is one person in each apartment, looks out the window for one minute every hour. What are the chances that somebody will be looking out the window when she's mugged?

OK, the answer is 63.2120559%. Why?

You'll gather that I'm really fed up with people who say "Even if the chances are only one in a million, if it happens a million times it's sure to..."