WYDave - 9/29/2020 22:26

Folks, you need to understand something:

Teachers in K-12 schools aren't from the best and brightest we have. They're just not.

Years ago, I was at a cattle risk management class and a ranching couple from here in Wyoming was complaining about a teacher who brought out a high school class to their ranch, and she (the teacher) told the class "Every cow you see here is worth about a Cadillac..."

The ranch wife hit the roof. To counter this nonsense, she came up with the "cow bucks" idea of teaching students about how to run a cow-calf business in the classroom, starting from the point in the fall where the calves go to market and you receive a whole lot of money. Then she started playing their accounts payable back, month by money, taking away "cow bucks" to heat the house, then vet bills, then fuel bills, then baling twine for the hay season, then seed, fuel, parts for the machines, then parts for the irrigation machines, then breakdowns, real estate taxes, then personal property taxes, insurance, etc, etc. The kids started to complain that they didn't have much in the way of 'cow bucks' left by about the time they got to June.

The wife reminded them that their next paycheck was all the way out in November/December... the kids started to see a whole lot fewer Cadillacs on the ranch.

As to why teachers are so dim about math: My wife went to teaching college in Elko. Her teacher (who is teaching a classroom full of people who already have Bachelor's degrees and who are getting teaching credentials) asked the class "How many here are scared of math?" and every hand in the room but my wife's went up - including the teacher's hand.

That weekend, my wife ranted almost non-stop about how dim-witted the teaching students were - ie, the people who went on to get jobs in schools teaching your kids. "Scared" of math - as if some numbers on a sheet of paper could leap off the page and bite someone in the face.