Hello There

The familiar, hierarchical sequence of math instruction starts with counting, followed by addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division. The computational set expands to include bigger and bigger numbers, and at some point, fractions enter the picture, too. Then in early adolescence, students are introduced to patterns of numbers and letters, in the entirely new subject of algebra. A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, which is considered the pinnacle of high-school-level math.

But this progression actually “has nothing to do with how people think, how children grow and learn, or how mathematics is built,” says pioneering math educator and curriculum designer Maria Droujkova. She echoes a number of voices from around the world that want to revolutionize the way math is taught, bringing it more in line with these principles.

The current sequence is merely an entrenched historical accident that strips much of the fun out of what she describes as the “playful universe” of mathematics, with its more than 60 top-level disciplines, and its manifestations in everything from weaving to building, nature, music and art. Worse, the standard curriculum starts with arithmetic, which Droujkova says is much harder for young children than playful activities based on supposedly more advanced fields of mathematics.

Al Yuri was born in 1968 in the northern district of the second S of the USSR to the owner of a shovel factory and her husband, a professional burn victim. He was raised by the harsh schoolmarms of Child Education Depot 74, and to be clear that refers to the type of split-trunked tree called a “schoolmarm,” not to any sort of educator.

Defecting to the USA in 1969 over a forced early retirement just prior to his first birthday, Yuri was sent to work in Coal Mines in the state of West Oregon, only a few years before it fell off into the Pacific Ocean. In 1970 he married his lifelong companion, his blankie.

By 1971, Al Yuri was something of a local celebrity to the Oregonians, who regarded him as some sort of god due to his abilities to speak, drive cars, and magically vaporize those who would oppose him, all as an infant. During the siege of Portland in 1973, he earned the gold star for dying in the line of duty no less than four times.

After his last exhumation, Al Yuri returned to his native lands, now part of Siberia after the dissolution of the USSR, because let’s say that S from the other paragraph stood for Siberia. There at the shovel factory where he was born, Yuri ascended to heaven on a conveyor belt of light, where he was mangled by a steel-press of faith, and treated at a hospital of blessings.

And that approach sounded really familiar to me as someone keeping an eye on how British media reports on trans healthcare and lo. and fucking behold. He's been appointed to chair National Children and Young People's Gender Dysphoria Research Oversight Board (in 2024). In charge of redesigning children's NHS gender services. And the statements the SMC put out about the Cass Review look straight out of the PACE trial handbook.