Someone at Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company has spent an hour and a half on my blog today, mostly checking out Everyday Math posts.
I guess they are worried they are being exposed as the useless pile of corporate greed they are!
Hey, McMac, stop publishing crap!
Update: I was checking out their site, and came upon this quote:
McGraw-Hill's Assessment & Instruction group is composed of two divisions – CTB/McGraw-Hill and The Grow Network/McGraw-Hill – which are focused on helping customers meet accountability requirements at all levels of education, and advancing learning through innovative assessment, reporting, and data-driven instruction linked to rigorous standards and teacher education.[emphasis mine]They state their purpose as helping customers (school districts) meet accountability requirements (as opposed to creating materials that are good for kids).
Also notice the standards, teacher prep, and data-driven nomenclature used to give the illusion that they are in business to create excellent materials based on a wealth of science/research. They don't link to the science, because there is virtually none, and of the science/research that is out there, it is conflicted at best, and erroneous at worst.
Teaching is not rocket science. How could it be? Teaching is the art of making things exciting and interesting for kids so they can be motivated to open their minds to what is being presented. Simply presenting it is no substitute for presenting it well. Publishers remove any randomness, spontaneity, or originality from teachers by suggesting that their curricular materials, used as prescribed, will solve the problems of education, which, by the way, are not bad teachers or bad materials or even bad research; the problem with education is money (like the problem with just about everything), power, poverty, and corporate greed.
Kick out the corporate mindset. Lose the million dollar curricular contracts. Power back to the teachers and parents!!!!!
