[This is part 2 of a two part series, parts 1 and 1a may also be of interest.]
So, one thing that kind of cooled off the passion about the Math Wars (see part 1 for an introduction the Math Wars and my brief participation therein) for me was the fact that I planned on home schooling. I thought, "Well, I know how I am going to present math to my kids, and that's the most important issue for me right now, anyway." And so I went to teacher supply stores and bought fun counter things and pattern blocks and base 10 fries and all sorts of stuff. I was giddy. What fun these things will be to use! And my kids will totally "get it"--no half-formed ideas or things they don't really understand because they just learned by rote, etc, etc, etc.
Guess how that turned out?
Well, some of it was not too bad. There were some things we did that the kids liked and it got some ideas across, etc. However, one thing very quickly became obvious. Things like, for example, understanding base 10 notation for numbers, are not naturally interesting to kids. The base 10 blocks are a great way to get the concept across, and if some external thing is pushing you to learn it, I would even call it an optimal tool for teaching/learning it. The sticking point for me was that part about the "external thing pushing you to learn it". For me and my kids, that external thing was me.
I suppose in retrospect I was naive to think that base 10 blocks would make learning about base 10 notation and operations fun. I can understand why I thought that, though. It is a lot more fun to use manipulatives than to learn by rote. But, like "waist deep", "more fun" is a relative measure. What manipulatives don't (in general) do is impart relevance to a subject which has no intrinsic meaning to a kid. Base 10 notation and operation were not things that my kids wanted to know about. They had not seen them, used them, and wondered how they worked. There were not curious about them. The manipulatives did not stimulate the formation of that curiosity (nor were they designed to--they were designed to help get a concept across, and, as I said, I think they fulfill that role remarkably).
Some time around then I realized that the Math Wars were essentially an argument about how best to teach kids math that kids weren't interested in learning. It was at that point that I "took off my uniform" and started fighting a different war (or perhaps fighting both sides in the current war? All I'm really sure about is that there are very few people on my side, and we're not organized :).
So, shortly after that realization, I left the education foundation I was working for, realizing that I was way, way too radical to have much hope of getting funding, and I've been doing what I can on the side ever since. I wrote a kind of vision statement (still available at http://fulcrum.org/projects/yampod/), and described some projects I thought would be worth doing, and I've pushed them slowly forward in my spare time ever since.
So, that's how I got here. Fulcrum.org was the site I started right when this realization happened. I started leftoverpi on a lark when I realized that the day after pi day could be called "Leftover Pi Day", and back-fit the idea of exposing people to the rest of the "mathematical pie" that they don't see because school focuses on such a narrow slice of it.
As should be clear to you now, I have no idea where I'm going from here :). There are a lot of things I would like to do, but I'm only able to do them where they fit in between supporting a family and being part of that family in a meaningful way. But I like where I am, and I intend to keep moving forward, even if time restrictions mean it's only one post at a time, one software feature or improvement per month, etc.
Because this, in my opinion, is a fight worth fighting.