Internet Regurgitation, the AM Edition

This sort of thing interests me. I grew up math phobic, if by phobic you mean not so much scared so much as consumed by incandescent hatred.

Now, I'm happy to say that I find it really interesting. I also find it really difficult because I simply couldn't learn a lot of the basics when I was younger. I wonder if perhaps the problem was that in the end, math is sooooo predictable. 5+5 = 10. It will always equal 10. The excitement and adventure of discovering this fades quickly.

So I don't know if this Singapore Method is a good teaching method or not. I know that as a child, I would have resisted anything that didn't lean towards more creative methods.

I first saw an article about for profit universities in the New York Times. Didn't know if I felt like writing about it or not but now it pops up in another news source so....Why not. Education is today's super-mini theme.

Mixed thoughts about this. First of all, if for-profit colleges are in fact making a habit of misrepresenting the careers that their students have in order to lure in prospects, than clearly, that's fraudulent. However, this stands out for me:

The industry has vociferously opposed a pending "gainful employment" regulation by the Education Department that would block federal funds for for-profit schools whose graduates face high proportions of debt relative to their salaries.

I don't like that. Provided nobody is lying about what graduates are doing, what graduates are doing really is out of the hands of the schools. It seems as though schools will be required to call graduates on the phone to find out what they're doing with their lives....

Would state schools be held to the same requirements? If not, why not?

By the way, I'm still working through my first few cups of coffee so pardon any incoherency. Maybe a banana....

I try to avoid linking to blogs for the most part because they're not primary sources. But hmm. Interesting. A tax payers receipt. If you could shuffle the order, how would you do it? I'm thinking foreign aid oughtta be just a wee bit lower on the list....