Submitted by Nancy Joyce Jancourtz, Dec 22, 2006 13:19

Andrew Wolf is New York City's golden needle in a haystack (perhaps for the rest of the nation, as well).

When I attempt to tutor elementary school children, I use books By Dr. Jack Cassidy, fomerly published by Scribner Reading Series, and the "Felix" series, originally published in Germany, and translated into English through Parklane Publishing, Hauppauge, New York. With such intelligent material, a child gains a variety of knowledge--thus expanding his world beyond himself...

As to "arithmetic" [an ancient term from this writer's day, now referred to as "mathematics"]; the New York City Public elementary schools seem to use workbooks [necessarily renewed for each new group], published by Houghton Mifflin, referred to as "Math Steps". This writer has found most of the material within to be atrocious...Rather than teaching the children directly, the material is so convoluted, as to render it incomprehensible to most adults...THROUGHOUT, THE TERM 'RING' IS USED TO REFER TO 'CIRCLE' OR 'OUTLINE'. Because the course is "mathematics", the authors are not (apparently) required to engage the English language properly...

We do now, as we did in my day, have the best and the brightest children in our New York City spectrum...Indeed, our population continues to evolve with families stemming from world-wide cultures--and subsequent intermarriage gives us even greater advantage to excellence...THEY DESERVE THE BEST POSSIBLE EDUCATION. Vouchers, and tax incentives can each help, as can other innovative hypotheses, to be explored.

Nancy Joyce Jancourtz.

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