Do you have trouble understanding the strange math assignments in your child’s elementary and middle school materials and don’t know how to help with those lessons? That isolates you from your child’s “training” by the school system. This should not be allowed by any parent, no matter how much smarter the educators think they are than you.
Do you wonder about sales clerks and employees who can’t do basic mathematics skills without a calculator? Parents and high school and college teachers have openly admitted that this destructive situation has existed for individual students and even for the nation for at least 15 years.
Do you know, for sure, if your child is receiving an elementary mathematics education that will prepare him or her for on-level high school coursework and even for college? Do you know the expectations in high school and college mathematics? Do you fully understand that students and parents are counting on teachers as their first line of defense to tell the truth and do the right thing for them today?
Do you know that ours is the only country in the world whose people think it’s acceptable to “not be good” in math? Have you seen persons from all walks of life openly make this statement in private conversations, public speeches, and on television shows as though there’s an automatic empathy (which there is) with their real or perceived deficiency? Have you considered that people in third world countries know that genuine mathematics is the language of science, logic and critical reasoning? Do you know that mathematics comes from historical and internationally-based algorithms, along with proven concepts and principles, and these all form a common language for productivity within and among countries?
Do you understand fully that if a society or country wants to progress, it has to be able to speak that common, international language of mathematics rather than “inventive” methods encouraged in America’s classrooms?
Do you see this uniquely American cultural phenomenon that was begun in the 1960’s, and which has created the awful cycle of students who think they can’t learn mathematics, must be broken?
Do you understand that after reading this little almanac about John Saxon’s mathematics program, you must make a move for common sense judgments—as opposed to ideological programs—in your local school or district or state? As John once declared, “It starts right here, right now!”