A Voting Story

Being a new American citizen, this is my first election to vote in. What an election to choose (well it wasn't that much of a choice for me as becoming a citizen is a lengthy process)! Nonetheless I did have the choice to apply for citizenship and I am excited that I am now part of the American political process, for better or worse. As far as I remember the last time I voted in something equivalent was when Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party won the UK general elections and Margaret became Prime Minister. That was more than a few years ago! I have been impatient for this whole election to be over and so I voted last Friday at an advance voting location. I have to say that despite the one hour wait it turned out to be a very pleasant experience.

When I arrived at the advance voting location and joined the line I had no clue what the wait time would be. However, the couple who stepped up to join the line after me, and others in front, who all joined in the conversation, soon let me know that the wait would be about an hour. OK, that was a little longer than I'd expected - I'd been thinking more about 30 minutes would be a reasonable wait. Since I was already there and had no clue what the lines would be like today, on election day, it seemed easier to wait it out. I'm glad I did because I was able to take part in my good deed for the day.

Soon after I began waiting I noticed an elderly couple - the lady was in a wheelchair and the gentleman who was pushing her wheelchair was looking at the line with a perplexed expression on his face. Their voting cards were sticking out of the gentleman's front shirt pocket. They looked at the line for a few minutes then moved off to stop at some benches for a rest. The lady behind me, who was obviously a very friendly kind of person, and I began to talk about this couple. "Surely someone nearer the front would let them into the line!", I exclaimed. My line neighbor said she'd go off and talk with them. She relayed to them that they were welcome to go in front of us and to just sit on the benches until we were close to the front. Thus began a very pleasant chance to converse with some American neighbors.

At this point I'd be hard-pushed to say exactly what we talked of, but for that 40 or so minutes, while we waited to cast our votes and exercise what is arguably our most important right as citizens, it didn't matter who the candidates were, or how we were going to vote, we simply enjoyed the camaraderie of some fellow human beings.

As the results come in tonight I hope that each of us will be able to think of the fact that we are all imperfect human beings on a quest to do our best for ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors, and our country. May all of the next President's mistakes be small ones!

Start Here Obama - Abominable Math Textbook!

If the book I'm referring to has anything to do with it, no wonder America is far behind in producing engineers!

A couple of years back Handyman Hubby asked me to find a math textbook to provide an outline of what he should cover when tutoring one of our kids on math. He kinda needed the scope and sequence. One of my friends very kindly supplied a 5th grade math textbook she'd picked up at our local free textbook store. Now, don't get me wrong, a free textbook store is a wonderful idea. They probably even had a ton of math books to choose from - I don't know because I saved gas and didn't make the trip there.

Anyway, with said textbook in hand I began to read how to teach math to a 5th grader. Half a page into reading I had to stop and think. Here was a book that was teaching math using English. Something didn't seem quite right. Here's an extract from the first lesson: "There are billions and billions of stars in our galaxy. How big is one billion? Work with your partner to find out how many sheets of grid paper it would take to draw one billion stars." On that two page spread there are more words than there are numbers. Maybe it's not clear yet what I'm talking about.

Let's take a look at the inside of some math textbooks. Boy, are these hard to track down. I just spent over 30 minutes trying to find inside views of math textbooks from major American textbook publishers. McDougal Littell are kind enough to show some inside pages for the middle school math textbook. For comparison, you can take a look at some sample pages from from a UK math textbook publisher. Scroll down until you see Year 6 pages 49-53 or Year 6 page 21 and page 128. Personally I think the non-color approach is least distracting. However, maybe you'll get an idea what I'm talking about.

I don't know, maybe I lost you somewhere. It seems to me there is something fundamentally different between math teaching in America and what I experienced in Scotland. Is it any accident that Scotland has a tradition of producing good engineers while America is importing engineers from around the world? Maybe someone who actually knows about math can explain this for me!

BTW I'm proud to report that yesterday both my kids told me that they are enjoying math this year. I don't know if either will be an engineer, but at least they are using decent textbooks.