Saxonisms
*Results, not methodology, should be the basis of curriculum decisions.
*Creativity springs unsolicited from a well prepared mind.
*Mathematics is an individual sport and is not a team sport.
*Students do not detest work; they detest effort without purpose.
*Beautiful explanations do not lead to understanding.
*Saxon books will win every contest by an order of magnitude.
*Teachers are not paid to teach. Teachers are paid to find a way for students to learn. You do not teach mathematics with your head, but with your heart.
*Making eyes sparkle does not come from erudite mathematics.
*Teachers say they are going to teach the children to think. The children can think already. What they need to know is the math to use in their thinking.
*Dr. Benjamin Bloom says you must overlearn beyond mastery until you can do it like Fred Astaire said: “Do the dance while reading Shakespeare.”
*I contend that our job is to teach rewarding responses to mathematical stimuli, to teach thought patterns that have been found to lead to the solutions, to allow the students to practice reacting to the stimuli with these thought patterns and to be rewarded with the warm feeling of pride that accompanies the correct answer.
*I believe that students should be gently led and constantly applauded for their efforts.
*I oppose intimidation in any form. Mathematics classes can become warm sanctuaries towards which students gravitate because there they are asked to solve puzzles by using familiar thought patterns.
*Most math books are like the Book of Revelation—horror stories and surprises from beginning to end. Students see my book as the 23rd Psalm. It’s a nice safe place to go.
*You grasp an abstraction almost by osmosis through long-term exposure.
*You can’t put your hand on it. That’s the reason we call it an abstraction.
*We’ve never had research that shows how long it takes for students to absorb abstractions in mathematics. It takes a long time. Then the summer lets them forget it.
*Meaningful education research is an oxymoron. We have more education research in America than all the other countries and kids are at the bottom.
*The math educators spend time at the universities playing like their scientists and they publish their papers.
*If it were possible to teach people to think, it would be possible to teach professors of mathematics education to be mathematicians. The only difference between a mathematician and a professor of mathematics education is the creative spark.
*We have allowed this fraud, this pasquinade, on education by these people who are literal and total gross incompetents, and they have destroyed mathematics education in America to the point that I, a retired Air Force test pilot who has flown two combat tours, and whose profession was killing, know more about teaching than they do.
*It has to stop right here, right now.
*The time for inactive skepticism is past.
*I’m going to bypass the math establishment because a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion. I will run over these people with a bulldozer.
*Either I am the most brilliant thing to come down the pike, having doubled some students’ test scores, or the people in charge of math texts are totally incompetent.
*This is more than one man lighting a candle. When they see the brilliance of this candle, they’re going to have to light their own or be overpowered.
*I know I don’t make headway by speaking out this way, but I am determined to change this system of math education.
*Our math experts aren’t really experts; they have abdicated all claim to control by their behavior of the last 20 years.
I’m mad, and I’m doing something about it!
John Saxon, a REAL Superman who REFUSED to wait! #JohnSaxonsStory