Bush: "Creative Arithmetic" should be taught

[jmowreader]

The Pig Farm (Spurious News Service) - President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "creative arithmetic" alongside conventional mathematics when teaching students about numbers.

In contrast to his views on the origins of life, Bush was effusive when talking about his plans to mandate the teaching of Creative Arithmetic in all American public schools starting in the upcoming school year.

"Creative Arithmetic has always worked well for me. When I was getting ready to learn to protect Texas from being invaded by the Viet Cong, there was a question on the pilot test 'If your airframe weighs 20,000 pounds with fuel and crew and your bomb load weighs 8000 pounds, what is the total weight of your aircraft?' I put down "a kajillion pounds" and they let me fly airplanes anyway. And I tell you what, right up until the day I deserted, the Viet Cong were so scared of me and my fighter jet, they never invaded Texas!

"And later, when I was a Texas oil millionaire, someone called me up to ask how much oil we were pumping. We had thirty wells running at the time and each of them were only putting out a few gallons a day. Now remember, I'm a Bush and us Bushes know our oil. I knew that the more oil I could sell, the more Jack Daniels and hookers I could buy, and I knew that a couple hundred gallons of oil a day wouldn't let me buy any Jack Daniels or hookers at all. So I relied on Creative Arithmetic. Next thing you know a bigger oil company bought my oil company, and I used Creative Arithmetic there too. And the more I used Creative Arithmetic, the more my oil companies sold for.

"Later on, when I was a baseball team owner, I used Creative Arithmetic to help me decide to trade some ballplayer named Sammy Sosa to a team I never heard of in that shithole called Chicago. How in hell could I have known he was gonna become the home run king? They all look alike, don't they?

"After someone bought my baseball team, I was governor of this great state. And Creative Arithmetic helped me there too. Using Creative Arithmetic, I figured out that if I spent more than fifteen minutes reviewing death penalty cases, I'd execute fewer people. And executing more people is good. The only regret I have from those days is that our courts didn't send me more death penalty cases to review. I could have executed three or four times the number of people I did!

"I use Creative Arithmetic all the time as president. Let's look at the global struggle against extremism, which this one little pessimistic un-American homo Democrat traitor in North Carolina calls 'Bush's Guernica.' Now if he'd only quit pissing on the troops and burning flags long enough to look at my great Creative Arithmetic, he'd be putting a Bush sticker on his car today. I said you could fight the struggle with less than 100,000 troops. Right now, the raghead terrorists who are losing the struggle because I said they are have wounded 48,000 and killed 2000 of them. I mean, that's half, right? Which means we have at least half of our troops left and we're winning! And we'll keep on winning for the next two years.

"My base is demanding Creative Arithmetic. They all went to school, they all turned in math papers that said two plus two is twenty-two, they all got it wrong, they all felt bad and they all want their kids to feel good about saying two plus two is twenty-two. And we have a precedent here--Intelligent Design. Anyone with two brain cells--and yes, I think I have at least two left--knows that Intelligent Design is just a schooly-sounding way to teach the Book of Genesis to Godless heathens in violation of about a million church-state separation lawsuits. If we can teach the Bible in school and get away with it, why not teach kids that it's okay to just throw any number on the paper as the answer to any math question and be told it's right?

"I've always used Creative Arithmetic and my daddy's always bailed me out. I think every American child should have the same opportunities I had, so all of them will learn Creative Arithmetic starting this school year."

[sniffa]

1. this your work?

:rofl:

and nominated.

[jmowreader]

5. Yes, I just made it up right off the top of my head

Intelligent Design, my ass!

[shadowknows69]

22. OMG my ribs hurt

:rofl:

[unblock]

2. thanks, i needed that!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Redstone]

3. That's very funny. Good work.

Redstone

[Fly by night]

4. "And look how helpful creative math was in counting Ohio/Florida votes."

[ClayZ]

6. And Creation Geography

Bomb the hell out of what ever you want with chapter written by the author of "MY PET GOAT".

I foresee a whole new curriculum.

Hahahah THANKS FOR THE LAUGH!



:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[China_cat]

7. Your creative arithmetic

would go well with the creative spelling that they actually DO teach in the schools. (As long as you can figure out what its supposed to be, its right...kids will eventually learn to correct it on their own. Which is why we have so many people who can't tell the difference between loose and lose.)

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. That's not fair

Kids don't learn to write when we nitpick their spelling. There is tons of educational research supporting this. So we now teach them to put their thoughts down first and then to use dictionaries and spell checkers. The result is we have much better writers than we did even 10 years ago. The evidence is right here on DU, in the posts of the numerous teens who are regulars here.

The people who can't spell are just too lazy to proofread and to use a dictionary.

[jmowreader]

9. No, the people who can't spell just can't spell

I use my spelling checker for one thing: scanning very long documents that I typed to remove Fat Finger spelling errors.

The original post in this thread? It wasn't spelling-checked.

You've got to learn your mechanics and not just rely on your spelling checker. Otherwise you wind up hand-writing shopping lists like the one someone gave me yesterday:

Paint roler
Colk
Colk gun
2x4 Bords
Nals

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. They need to learn to use a dictionary

No one is a perfect speller.

[China_cat]

15. From having my grandson here for 4 years

I can tell you that a dictionary (or spell check for that matter) does no good when you don't have a clue as to how to spell something. Like when you're looking in K or S for something spelled with a c. And you can actually GET spelling errors from spell check when it doesn't know your context and suggests that another word might be a better choice. If you don't know, you rely on the program even when it's wrong.

[skids]

13. Shouldn't that be "There ARE tons"?

Sorry, I just could not resist. I tried, really. :evilgrin:

Seriously, even after you learn to spell, it takes life-long reinforcement. So being lazy about spelling is more harmful than most might think -- a reasonable effort at good grammar prevents the language from sliding into slang. As a computer guy, I know that when we get lazy about our communications protocols, bad things happen. In the world of the spoken word, we end up with such horrible things as offshoot dialects and dubyaspeak. (In the world of computers, we end up with horrible things like NetBEUI.)

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. No because the word 'research' is singular

There is research. There is tons of research.

[skids]

17. Umm, no.

By putting research in a phrase, modifying tons, tons becomes the subject referred to by "is."

The contrapositive is, of course:

Students are responsible for doing work in the library.
Each of the students is responsible for doing work in the library.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. I should have said

There is a lot of research.

[LWolf]

11. Having taught actual spelling for many years

to elementary students, I deeply resent this inaccurate, uninformed, misleading statement. It's true that I see "loose" when it should be "lose" way too often on the internet, including here at DU. It embarrasses me. I don't, however, know a single teacher who excuses that sort of sloppiness, laziness, or low level of literacy from their students in the classroom, and I never have in 22 years spent in public education.

[China_cat]

12. Come try teaching in SC

I got a nastygram from every teacher my youngest ever had for correcting his spelling. My sister tells me she's had the same thing with her 2 in PA...the youngest of who will be a senior when school starts again.

And I'm hearing it from my oldest son, who just retired from the Air Force and whose kids have gone to school in many states.

[LWolf]

21. That's ok, I'm happy here on the left coast.

Many times in education (and other areas!) a method is not clearly understood, so it is misused. Education tends to swing on research and trends; the latest method may be great if you understand it, why it works, and get some background and training, but can be a problem when implemented without that training. And most districts don't pay to fully train all their teachers in new "methods." They send a few teachers who are supposed to come back, with no experience under their belts, and teach everyone else how to use a new program, etc.

It sounds like you've run into a misinterpretation/application of whole language, to me.

[tomg]

23. Thanks for saying that.

I have taught college writing for over thirty years (starting as a t.a.), and, generally speaking, from my experience students now have better technical skills than they did thirty years ago. My wife teaches 7th grade English, and she and her colleagues continually emphasize spelling, grammar, organizational skills, and critical thinking skills all over the place. As you are well aware, this is a very complex issue, and, for my money, while many students' technical skills are better, either their critical thinking skills seem ( again anecdotal evidence) less sophisticated or many are processing information in radically different ways than earlier generations did. Sorry to digress.

Back to thread, great op. Had I had Creative Math, I would not have spent time in summer school in 1964.

[David Zephyr]

14. Loverly.

Nominating.

[Buns_of_Fire]

18. A new chain of faith-based schools and teaching aids

Headed up by whatever boosh it is that's milking the concept. "Hi, you don't know me but I once played president." Creative (tm) Arithmetic. Creative (tm) Accounting. Creative (tm) Geography. Creative (tm) Philosophy. Creative (tm) Reading. Creative (tm) Shrub-Clearing. The list goes on and on.

And after gradumacation, they will guarantee that your children will know just enough to pull the lever for a boosh every election. Well, maybe they won't know that much (readin' them big words on the ballot is hard werk!), but we have Diebold to take care of that part.

Operators are standing by.

[samsingh]

20. fits in well with his creative accounting and creative reasons

for starting wars.