When I want to feel discouraged about how well the world is doing, I read my local newspaper. While it contains some bright spots and a comics section, it contains lots of “doom and gloom” stories. Articles about our growing energy problems, global warming, our educational system, governmental budgets, and wars tend to fall into the doom and gloom category.

To counterbalance the doom and gloom, I use the Web to learn about research progress in medicine, energy, food production, and other areas where progress is occurring in addressing some of the major problems we face.

I was inspired by the following TED Talk:

We all accept the importance of children learning to read. By the end of the third grade we expect children to read well enough that reading can be an important aid to learning new content from the curriculum. By about the seventh grade we expect children to read well enough that reading can be a major aid to learning across the curriculum. By that grade level a history teacher might expect students to read and learn from their history textbook while a science teacher might expect students to read and learn from their science textbook.

I was somewhat surprised to encounter the following two articles about math as an important component of early childhood education. The articles indicate that a preschool student’s understanding of math is a very good predictor of success in school—possibly even better than early reading skills.

Stipek, D., Schoenfeld, A., & Gomby, D. (3/28/2012). Math matters, even for little kids. Education Week. Retrieved 4/15/2012 from http://www.schoolleadership20.com/profiles/blogs/math-matters-even-for-little-kids.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed childhood behavioral disorder (Reuters, 10/14/2012).

Re-read the previous sentence and think carefully about what it says. ADHD is considered to be a behavioral disorder. Right now the level of diagnosed ADHD in the United States is about 9% of students ages five to 17.

Now, stretch your imagination a bit. Suppose that more than half of all children received this diagnosis? Would we then decide that ADHD is the expected type of behavior and that students who do not behave in this manner have a behavioral disorder? Has it ever occurred to you that the ADHD behaviors might have contributed substantially to the human race surviving during the many tens of thousands of years before formal schooling was developed?

I am always delighted to read about the progress girls and women are making in our academic system. I recently read:

Irving, M. (10/24/2011). Women making slow, sure strides in science, math. Seattle pi. Retrieved 10/30/2011 from http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Women-making-slow-sure-strides-in-science-math-2231189.php .

As I was growing up, my mathematician father informally taught me that men were better than women in math, while my mother demonstrated that (all things considered) she was smarter than he. In both my first and second marriages, my spouses pointed out many ways in which women are smarter and more capable than men.

Bob Albrecht and I have just finished writing the book listed below. It is available as a free PDF download from the Web.

Moursund, D., & Albrecht, R. (9/2/2011). Becoming a better math tutor. Eugene. OR: Information Age Education. A PDF file can be downloaded from http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/208-becoming-a-better-math-tutor.html. A Microsoft Word file can be downloaded from http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/209-becoming-a-better-math-tutor.html.   

I have long been impressed by free materials available from the National Academies. They make their materials available free for online reading. Now they are providing free downloads of their materials in PDF format.

My interest in math education led me to the following free book:

Alfie Kohn is one of my favorite writers. He is a leading, insightful, and sometimes controversial force in working to improve our educational system. He has written and spoken extensively about his insights into many of the very challenging problems in education. Today I read his article:

Kohn, A. (2/16/2011). STEM Sell: Are Math and Science Really More Important than Other Subjects? The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2/19/2011 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/the-stem-sell-are-math-an_b_823589.html.78

Notice the first two words of the title. Catchy, right? STEM refers to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. STEM is currently a hot topic in education. However, STEM is only one part of education, and there are other parts that to many people are much more important.