Right on the Left Coast: Views From a Conservative Teacher

I love the following quote from one of my regular blogreads. For years, those of us who were in agreement with this thinking were viewed by the "progressive" new teachers as "old fogies." I always thought that the purpose of education was to give students a basis upon which to build additional knowlege and understanding. Why pretend to let students "discover" what is already known?

Right on the Left Coast: Views From a Conservative Teacher: "I always tell my students (and their parents) that it's taken the best minds our human race has to offer a couple thousand years to develop the math we have today. It would be ridiculous, wasteful, and futile to expect a bunch of 14-year-olds (or however old) to invent this math on their own over the course of 9 school months. Instead, the school district pays me a moderate amount of money on the assumption that I know more math than anyone else in the room, and I'm expected to transfer that knowledge to the students. My primary method of pedagogy will not be putting kids in groups of 4 and having them invent the math that was invented centuries ago. I will teach the students. Parents love hearing this at Back To School Night."