"Cowardly"? I'm happy to discuss conflicting points of view at any time, as I have been previously, but I'm sorry to see the level of discourse drop like that. Not a cool way to address a fellow FReeper. Let's keep it on a friendly level.
"It is clear that you have decided that your capabilities should constitute the metric by which an education should be judged (a subjective standard if there ever was one)."
No, to the contrary, I spoke with admiration of what you are accomplishing with your children and spoke positively of the merits of advanced education in all areas. I mentioned my daughter's own math education.
However, I have also said that it is possible for well-educated people to specialize in different areas, using a doctor as an example. Do I wish I'd been taught calculus in grade school? Sure. Does the fact that I received a significant education in several areas which did not include "higher" math mean I'm poorly educated or incapable of evaluating the issue of global warming? No.
I think you can explain a lot of the varience by looking at the MOE. All his results have fallen within the MOE. Thus, being up by 2% and down by 2% are essentially the same and expected.
How should such a statement be evaluated by one of the candidates? Why? Is being within the MOE really a dead heat? Do you think the person making the statement has any feel for statistics?
It wasn't "friendly" of you to respond to steve-b and fail to address it to me when it was obvious that you were reacting to my reply. What you did was akin to turning your back to me and speaking loudly enough for me to hear it. It was rude.
However, I have also said that it is possible for well-educated people to specialize in different areas, using a doctor as an example.
So, do you think children don't need arithmetic? Of course you do.
Algebra? Ditto.
Geometry? Probably.
Statistics? I doubt it, but you'd be dead wrong.
Calculus? Obviously you don't think so.
Differential equations?
No biology?
etc.
You see, it's a matter of where YOU draw the line for what YOU consider "adequate." That's what I meant by your standards being subjective. The problem is that you have failed to supply a rationale and criteria for that choice. From what I can tell, you draw the line for an adequate college education in mathematics at exactly the level you attained on the assumption that the same curriculum you attended that taught algebra and geometry in high school must be OK for the coming decades.
It's not.
By any objective global metric, the academic performance of American college students is awful, last I saw it was twelfth out of fourteen industrialized countries. The conclusion must be that this society has miserably failed to draw the line in the right place for what constitutes a minimally adequate college education in the twenty-first century. My evidence is that kids in many other countries take calculus IN GRADE SCHOOL. My rationale is the curriculum I designed for my kids. My proof is that they are accomplishing what I set out for them (I was using them as an example because, frankly, I don't know of any others who are front-loading an integrated program the way we are).
So, I am NOT talking about specialization, which as far as I am concerned shouldn't even start until the second year of college. I am talking about a core k-14 curriculum that includes calculus before high school so that a kid at that age can study biology, chemistry and physics at what is now the college level. I am talking about a standard curriculum that includes computational methods in college applied to those disciplines and more. They are that important.
Your education may have been fine for what you do, but a standard for college graduates in a technical world, even managers, lawyers, and politicians aspiring to leadership in the coming competitive networked global marketplace must be set higher, as it is in nearly any other industrialized country than this one.