Perry de Havilland says that old fashioned good grammar just might be making a comeback on the Internet- January 20, 2005 Earlier this evening I was socialising at Perry de Havilland's. It was essentially a meeting between these people and some of the starrier of these people, among them the people who actually first wrote the software that this blog uses to run itself. Had I truly understood who they all were exactly (one of them was definitely this lady and I sat next to this gentleman), I would probably have felt even more insignificant than I did.I was only there at all in order to return a copy of a magazine..http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/education/archives/2005/01/perry_de_havill.html Alice does maths- January 19, 2005 I am very busy today, but Alice has a post up about arithmetic, and about maths, one of the points being that the teaching of the forner can often screw up the teaching of the latter. For her, the big breakthrough in her teaching came when she made an abacus with paper clips, thereby answering the question: whyProper abacus picture, here, and this:The abacus was the first known machine developed to help perform mathematical computations. It is thought to have originated between 600 and 500 BC,..http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/education/archives/2005/01/alice_does_math.html Spanish Americans should not be deprived of English- January 18, 2005 Incoming email from Mark Alexander:Thought you might be interested in this brief essay pointing out that withholding English from immigrants is racist.I am. It's a good piece, too. The gist of it is that if English is not your first language, it is still your ticket to full and free membership of the big wide world out there, and that ethnic leaders, in this case Hispanic leaders in the USA, don't want their flock to learn English, because that way they would cease to be their flock.I love the..http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/education/archives/2005/01/spanish_america.html A Muslim response to Mr Bell's speech- January 18, 2005 A predictable response to Mr Bell's speech yesterday (see immediately below):THE HEAD of a Huddersfield Islamic school has called on England's chief education watchdog to resign after 'ignorant' comments about Muslim schools. Samira Elturabi, head of Islamia Girls' High School on Thornton Lodge Road, said the comments of David Bell, the chief inspector of schools for Ofsted, were ignorant about the facts of Islam.I don't think this is very clever. Indeed, I think that it illustrates some of the.http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/education/archives/2005/01/a_muslim_respon.html |