bhixon

I'm running for local office in Virginia and proposing a two-year trade school degree that teaches coding and nothing but. Would appreciate any comments and suggestions for how to improve.

This is like learning art history instead of how to draw. How does the "majestic harmony of Platonic solids" help a middle schooler actually do some math? Why should the average sixth grade class learn about Riemann surfaces when most of them haven't even learned what an exponent is yet?

An occasional lecture on a 'fun' topic (or even better, an assigned reading and short essay -- expository writing should be practiced in every subject starting in middle school or earlier) could be motivational. But the author wants to spend "20% of class time opening students' eyes to the power and exquisite harmony of modern math," which he expects would "feed their natural curiosity, motivate them to study more and inspire them to engage math beyond the basic requirements." That's fantasy land. The author sounds like what he is, a UC Berkeley mathematics professor. If students are going to succeed in his college-level courses then they need the basics down cold, which means memorization, repetition, and application to concrete problems. That is, the "stale and boring" stuff.

Nope, no minimum room size for single-room occupancy. Minimum square footage in NYC for 2 people is around 140 square feet I believe. I lived in a 6'x10' space on east 82nd street for years, and paid a fourth what my neighbors paid in rent. Of course that was still more than I pay now for my 2BR in Seattle...