Subject: correction! Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 21:40:10 -0500 (EST) From: "W. Stephen Wilson" Dear Colleagues, Thank you very much for the quick response on my mini survey about knowing arithmetic before you go to college. I got 84 positive responses and no negative responses. Although I didn't ask for comments, a number of people made powerful compelling statements which I used. For background for those curious, I live in the city of Baltimore and so send my kid to a pretty nice private school (4th grade). I knew they didn't teach math in the lower school but I considered that just a bad joke and did it at home. Last week I found out that they don't teach math in the middle school either. I figure they can't teach much in high school if they don't know anything coming in. So, I saw all of my vacations for the next 8 years go up in teaching Saul math. At this point a bunch of parents contacted me and we started to get organized. Noting that although there is a big debate about how much arithmetic kids need to know going on among K-12 math educators, we weren't invited to participate in the debate. The parents all thought it would be a good idea to see what we mathematicians who teach in college thought. Well, it is pretty unambiguous. We are hoping that this information will help attract parental support for change and also help sway the school. Your help is most appreciated. A number of you asked to have access to the results for your own purposes, presumably similar to mine. I have put this on my web site at: http://www.math.jhu.edu/~wsw/list Thanks again, Steve W. Stephen Wilson (410) 516-7413 Department of Mathematics FAX (410) 516-5549 Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218 wsw@math.jhu.edu http://www.math.jhu.edu/~wsw/