American Educator: Fall 2005

  • What I Learned in Elementary School

    Ron Aharoni

    A friend of mine left a high-tech career in mid-life to work in mathematical education. In September 2000, just before the school year began, he called me: There is a project to promote mathematical education in elementary schools; come join. The project was in a development town called Maalot,...

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  • Helping Children Learn Mathematics

    "What caused you to quit school?" That's the main question that researchers from the United Negro College Fund asked of 62 high school dropouts in a West Virginia Job Corp program last year.* Most had the same answer: mathematics.

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  • The Power of Place

    Over 4 million people visited Independence Hall in 2004. Nearly 600,000 visited Martin Luther King Jr.'s childhood home. And about 350,000 visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield. They went not just to learn history, but to feel the power of place and experience the deeper...

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  • Independence Hall

    Gary B. Nash

    "This morning is assigned for the greatest debate of all," noted John Adams, a Massachusetts delegate to the Second Continental Congress, which was meeting in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia on July 1, 1776. At the end of that day, the delegates from nine of the 13 colonies rose...

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  • Notebook

    Harold Stevenson Remembered

    Harold Stevenson, a developmental psychologist and pioneer in cross-national studies of student achievement, passed away in July 2005. A recipient of the AFT QuEST Award in 1995 and author of three articles for American Educator ("The Asian Advantage: The Case of Mathematics" in Summer...

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  • The Role of Curriculum

    In "What I learned in Elementary School," Ron Aharoni describes his discovery of the importance of "layering" in elementary mathematics, with each layer of knowledge built upon the previous one. It is...

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  • Opening the Door to a World of Possibilities

    Tony Stead

    It is 3 p.m. and I am picking up my son, Fraser, from school. This is a rare occurrence for me. Normally I am away; my job as a consultant takes me to schools in parts of the United States I never knew existed. Waiting for Fraser, I am ready to ask him the usual question, "So what did you do at...

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  • Circling "The Scourge"

    The AFT has a long tradition of involvement in international affairs, working with teacher, healthcare, and public sector unions around the world to fight for workplace dignity and human and labor rights for all workers. Recognizing that the AIDS pandemic has decimated teaching forces and...

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  • Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching: A Research Review

    In "Knowing Mathematics for Teaching," Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Heather C. Hill, and Hyman Bass describe a program of research on the link between student achievement and teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. Across all...

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  • The Old Courthouse

    James Oliver Horton

    "The question is simply this: Can a [N]egro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges,...

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  • Knowing Mathematics for Teaching

  • Mathematics for Teaching: Then and Now

  • Mathematics Professor Richard Askey Provides Answers to "Mathematics for Teaching: Then and Now"