Spontaneous Combustion

Clued in by LT's post, I went looking for a particularly bad Hering editorial. And I found it:

It is a common refrain that Oregon high school students are not good enough in math. But most of us have no idea what we are talking about.

If we did know, we would probably shut up. Because most of us are no good at math either, at least some of the math that high schools try to teach in the junior and senior years.

...

Here’s the problem with math in 2008: Most people can get through life perfectly well after they forget whatever they learned in trigonometry and calculus. They forget it because they don’t need it.

You need no quadratric equations to work in most trades, professions and other service industries. You can be a production supervisor, a health care specialist, a real estate developer or a politician without knowing the first thing about the properties of conic sections or the zeroes of polynomials.

To say he misses the point is to be far more charitable than I feel at the moment.

Hey, Hering? It's the 21st century. Complaining isn't going to change that. Might as well get used to it.

I have never, ever seen someone write so much about themselves and pretend it's even remotely generalizable.

..... I'm going to stop here, because otherwise it's going to degenerate into me calling Hering all sorts of names not fit for a family blog such as this. Let's just say I agree with LT on this one: This is an insulting and idiotic editorial.