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weebecka:

Now DM, I know I'm losing because it's blindingly obvious that Karvol (and many others) either can't or won't have any insight into this.

There is no win or loss on this. The only winners and losers in this are the students who end up in the right or wrong schools through the vagaries of the educational system.

Quite enjoying the discussion. Math is certainly not my area of expertise so I am always interested in discussions that delve into theory and best practices. At risk of being called a traitor by one of my countrymen (looks around nervously), I am always astounded by the high level of technical discussion that goes on here between primary and secondary school teachers. I was just perusing the comparable US version of TES and was very much left cold by threads like Making Fractions Fun, Looking for Christmans Math Worksheets and Ipad Math Apps??? To be fair, there was an interesting post about  a lesson involving slope and handicap ramps.

In any case, I certainly admire Weebecka's perseverance around here. I did take a peek at one of her discussions on ATM and the facilitation seemed to go much smoother with those posters. I think you lot just don't have the knack for it.

I don't have much to offer the discussion. The closest I have come to teaching full math classes was my last US position. I had 9 fairly challenging SPED students at 4 different grade levels and 9 different ability levels (from a little behind grade level to woefully behind grade level). I did face the dilemma of trying to expose them to grade level concepts while also attempting to help them improve their deficits in computation and basic math facts. Some of them did show interest and a fair amount of aptitude in certain areas of the math curriculum such as geometry, but even there the gaps in their basic math skills made it difficult for them to be able to truly engage with the higher level skills/concepts. I would end up providing them with multiplication charts and even number lines just so we could work through material on area, order of operations and angles.

I did have some success in engaging the students, getting them accustomed to working on computation, utilizing activities to reinforce concepts we had learned (e.g. Ordered Pairs Battleship) and most made modest gains on mastering math facts, etc., but on the whole I felt I didn't exactly  cover myself with glory in achieving a healthy balance of attaining grade level content standards and reducing basic skills deficits.

scentless_apprentice:

Hang on a sec. For a good chunk of this thread I think I've offered a fair amount of insight.

Sam Veda (sadly not an employee of the O.U.) says "Peace of mind happens to a man only after he has developed deep insight, only after he starts seeing things in the right perspective".

weebee's perspective differs from yours and that makes her insight as deep as an oceanic trench and yours as shallow as a paddling pool.

Karvol:

As for personal attacks and ad hominem arguments, they are valid if they call into question the veracity of your statements. And, unfortunately, the veractity of your statements have been called into question.

A personal attack is a very different kettle of fish to an ad hominem. A lot of people who don't really know what an ad hominem is use it as what they imagine is a sophisticated synonym for "personal attack".

A personal attack is anything designed to offend or detract the object. An ad hominem is the position that an argument is wrong or invalid because of the person who is making it. It's the reverse of the argument from authority - the position that an argument is correct because of the person who is making it.

 A lot of elementary introductions to logic use poor examples for this - eg "Bumblebees are too heavy to physically fly, I know because I read it in Titbits". No-one with any sense would think Titbits much of an authority. The real problem is much more subtle - "can you give me a peer-reviewed scientific publication as a source for your claim that fluoride causes cancer?" is a case of a demand for an argument from authority, and is also an ad hominem - the complaint is that speaker isn't a writer in a peer-reviewed publication. However, as a rule of thumb, pseudoscience and nonsense is kept out of the peer-reviewed literature. So the fallacy has its intended effect, usually, however not always, and not in logic.

Karvol:

 I studied propositional logic in my third year at university and also for my masters. Do you, as an English language graduate, really want to argue points of logic with me?

It's necessary to attack the argument, not discuss the qualifications or lack of them of the persons making it.