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Frank Koerner

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Grecian Earn
by Frank Koerner → (All Poetry by Frank Koerner)
   Rated "G" by the Author.
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Recently, American teen-agers scored dead last in math and well below the mean in science in an international survey whose results pose a serious challenge to our position in the world community.

The U.S. youngsters were outperformed in math by their counterparts in four other countries and four Canadian provinces and were among the worst science achievers in the assessment of 24,000 13-year-olds.

The obvious conclusion is that unless we’re careful, the Buck Rogers of the 21st Century is going to be living in Korea or China, instead of Chattanooga or Chicago, said a test spokesman.


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Orientals tend to excel in math on most classroom occasions,
They're very smart; that is why, we refer to them as "A"-sians.
But our kids also need the tools to make their futures fly,
The mastery of math is required to obtain their share of pi.

Math's a tricky thing to teach. For instance, take the circle.
What goes around comes around, but one can't say that work'll
Be easier if you know that fact. You can't just let kids dangle,
Euclid's dad stuggled years ago helping his kid find an angle!

He daily exhorted his boy towards a future not so checkered,
To coax him into study, away from goals to make a record,
"The future's building temples for the Moslems down in Mecca,"
"But, Dad, I won't need those skills, if I have a hit on Decca."

So Euclid's father's dilemma forced a call on Socrates,
Who found a step-by-step solution. “Let's solve this by degrees.
Adopt the language of your son, show him that math is a gas,
That will give him just the right angle, as it did Pythagoras."

They worked together; Son made records, father cleared 'em,
And reworked that pile of discs. Each one produced a Theorem.
Each Theorem with a bullet; Euclid found that new direction,
And ever after geometry took on a different complexion.

So the angle Euclid found, the one among the many, was
To turn the math to money (and his Theorems brought in plenty).
If somehow we convince our kids that there are bucks in math
Their excellence throughout the field will cut its own wide swath.

Copyright © 2012 by Frank Koerner  
 


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 Reviews of "Grecian Earn"
Reviewed by John Flanagan
Reviewed on July 6, 2012
Ronald was the only one brave enough to write
a review here; what you say is so true; here
in Asia kids are well into Algebra and Geometry by the
time they're 9 or 10..no one else is going to catch up
ever again

john

Reviewed by Ronald Hull
Reviewed on June 22, 2012
A very wise and creative observation. I was having trouble teaching business statistics to a bunch of money grubbing accountant wannabes who didn't like math. Finally, I made transparencies of my notes, copy them and gave them to the class. I told them not to write notes from my presentation, but to write notes on my presentation (their copy of mine). Suddenly they all seemed to get it, not trying to keep up with the stupid professor showing off on the chalkboard and leaving the students behind.

Ron


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