Author Archives: rmberkman

I don’t blog all that often, and my subjects are usually very specific, so it was oddly coincidental when two of my favorite targets, Scabs for America, er, “Teach for America,” AND a misguided online content provider known as Conceptual … Continue reading →

Education Reform has been around as long as there has been education, but today’s brand of “reformers” are a heck of a lot different than John Dewey, Carolyn Pratt, Maria Montessori or Herbert Kohl. No, today’s “reformer” is a loudmouth, … Continue reading →

Several years ago, I almost got into a fistfight with a friend while attending a speech by Malcolm Gladwell at the NCTM annual conference in Salt Lake City. What began this near melee was Gladwell’s assertion that Pablo Picasso’s innovations … Continue reading →

There seems to be no shortage of “expert” advice when it comes to the “flipped classroom,” (which you can read about here, here and here) and as I read the enduring hoopola about classrooms that are adopting this style of … Continue reading →

Note: I am revisiting this post after viewing this completely sad video of students sitting in front of computers day after day, year after year, at something called the “Cornerstone Charter School” in Detroit. What kind of fond memories of … Continue reading →

As my loyal readers have probably caught on to by now, I am a die-hard skeptic of any curriculum that seeks to make math “fun and easy.” Actually, I have no problem with the fun part (although it is debatable … Continue reading →

As many of you may (or may not) know, I have an exhibit on Governors Island in New York Harbor that will be on view until the end of September. For those of you not familiar with Governors Island, it … Continue reading →

Why does it take a former political science professor to tell us what is patently obvious in the field of mathematics education? Andrew Hacker, a professor emeritus at Queens College and co-author of the “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting … Continue reading →