"In the video below, Dr. Stan Harltzer is interviewed by Peggy Venable. Dr. Hartlzer received his Doctorate in Mathematics from The University of Texas and taught algebra in the Luling public school system among many others for over forty years. I have personally spoken with Dr. Hartlzer and he relayed to me his frustration with the CSCOPE method and lessons. He explained that the CSCOPE curriculum as it pertains to algebra, is like building a skyscraper but the first two floors are missing. The fundamental building blocks necessary to understand and then move on to higher algebraic equations are just not there. He lamented that his students, while perfectly capable of learning and excelling at algebra, were losing confidence in themselves and thought that they were incapable of learning the material. Dr. Hartlzer started tutoring the students with material not found in CSCOPE that included this crucial information and he said that the students were actually excited to learn that they weren’t incapable at all. He also said that their confidence level in themselves could be seen right away. One would think that Dr. Hartlzer would be rewarded and used as an example in the district for this major change that he was able to effect in his students. Instead he was written up for not staying on the CSCOPE timetable and staying in lock step with the regimented program. Multiple episodes of this lead Dr. Hartlzer’s to resign his position at the Luling ISD which also lead to his running for and winning a position on the school board. Please listen closely in the video below at 3:45 to 5:09 where Dr. Hartzler says the following. “I was taught in graduate school at The University of Texas in Austin that as a professional mathematics education person, I should leave the disadvantaged students to their disadvantages. That there are a certain number of jobs in our society that no one really wants to do and it will help us to find good people to do those unpleasant jobs if we can persuade them that they are incapable of doing anything else.” You might want to read and listen to that part more than once and let that settle in for a moment. Could CSCOPE, Project Based Learning, Tranformational Education, Common Core, etc. really be that evil? Would this system of “education” really want to take us back to the day when we hid education from certain genders or races of people to keep them in their place? I’ll let you be the judge but there is no escaping the fact that these changes in our educational methods and instructional materials are in fact dumbing down our students day after day. Examples are no spelling programs, no handwriting drills and on and on and on. This criticism of CSCOPE, cannot be easily ignored by claiming a bias held by us as has been attempted by various CSCOPE supporters in the past. Mathematics has no bias or political agenda and as such leaves little room for such claims."
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 22:07:05 +0000
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