LETTER FROM A PARENT THANKING ME FOR EXPOSING THE MPJH MATH PROGRAM FOR WHAT IT IS:

XXX XXXXXXXXX XX

Katy, TX 77450

September 20, 1993

Administration Bldg.

6301 South Stadium Lane

P. O. Box 159

Katy, TX 77492-0159

Dear Mary McGarr:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for exposing the M.P.J.H. math program for what it is.  Our children are being deprived of their education.  Calculators and projects are taking the place of mental exercise and proper procedures.  When gifted and talented students and honors students must be tutored daily, there is something wrong with the program.  In this case, our children have been coerced into skipping one or two years of their most important formative education [years] --as I understand it -- so that they can take History of Mathematics in the high school!  Is this a logical goal?

As a former engineer and a former mathematics teacher, I am continually appalled by the lack of basic knowledge of my two accelerated students.  I am forced to review, drill, and tutor my children daily.  As my children are "A" students, I can only imagine the problems other students are having with the curriculum.  Others call me telling of tears and temper tantrums.  Parents were not told that this was an experimental program.  Their children were simply enrolled in the course as though it were the proper course sequence.

Mathematics teachers have had this program forced on them.  They were not consulted nor did they agree with the wisdom of this program.  (As a part-time mathematics teacher last school year, I was present when the program was being implemented--not discussed.) I sincerely believe that non-scientific people are making these decisions.

Sincerely,

Elaine C. Harris

[This letter came to me while I was a school board member.  As such it is a public record.  I deleted the address of the author. I did not utilize the information at the time because I did not want to affect the child of this parent. MM]

Of note to me is the fact that these comments could have been written when MY son was at MPJH in 1983--ten years prior!  Same stupid math, same stupid planning, same lack of academic knowledge by those who were implementing this program--which came straight from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics organization. MM]

Of interest to me at the time was that the Katy ISD school board, which at the time was charged with implementing and approving the curriculum, had been given ZERO information about this math program.  We also had no knowledge of a proposal at the high school level of a "History of Mathematics" course!  What a joke!!!