Why read, write or do arithmetic?

"There is no reason, in and of itself, to "read." We read to access the information in written form. There is no reason, in and of itself, to "write." We write to distribute information to others. There is no reason, in and of itself, to do "arithmetic." We manipulate numbers to help us understand and share a series of concepts we call mathematics."

My friend Rachael sent a link to me that included these comments.
Click to read the rest of the post by Ira Socol on
SpeEdChange: The future of education for all the different students in democratic societies.

For some kids alphabetic decoding will be a quick and efficient method of grabbing that information. For some kids, writing with a pen will be a great, fast way to get ideas down into recorded form. For some kids, writing numbers and/or remembering "the times table" will be a short route to manipulating numbers.

And for others, those routes will not work, or they will not work well enough to really give them access.

For all those kids, we need to find other routes to get them content, to get them involved, to get them excited, to get them communicating.

You can also listen to
SpeEdChange: The future of education for all the different students in democratic societies
directly from within blogger.