Your Daily Dose of "Rationality"
Virtually any time INVESTIGATIONS is mentioned by a vehement anti-reformer, "TERC" is substituted for the actual name of the program, as if somehow the authors and publishers hadn't given it an actual name. Of course, there are at least two factors at work here, on my view. The more obvious one is sheer laziness. It's so much faster and easier to type "TERC," after all. And maybe some of these critics aren't able to spell "Investigations." But the more subtle effect, one that may be unconscious but which is consistent with people who call any reform math program, method, text, author, or advocate "fuzzy," and a host of similarly prejudicial epithets (and yes, I'm well aware that I return their fire in kind. However, I didn't start the mud-slinging, cheap name-calling, etc. The Mathematically Correct page that lists a host of such names was up before I'd ever heard of them. You can't make this stuff up), is that in the ear of the average parent, this math program sounds like "Turk Math." Not that any political conservative would want to trade on American fear and suspicion of Muslims, of course.
I will give him this, though. His writing does indeed balance out the get-off-my-lawn crazy from the fictitious "other side" of the debate, as represented by the cult crazy-heads at KTM and elsewhere.
All very entertaining at least. Not getting us anywhere, but entertaining.
Labels: general