Many Americans have no friends of another race(1)

About 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The figures highlight how segregated the United States remains in the wake of a debate on race sparked by last month's acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of unarmed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. President Barack Obama weighed in after the verdict, calling for Americans to do some "soul searching" on whether they harbor racial prejudice.

There are regions and groups where mixing with people of other races is more common, especially in the Hispanic community where only a tenth do not have friends of a different race. About half of Hispanics who have a spouse or partner are in a relationship with non-Hispanics, compared to one tenth of whites and blacks in relationships.

Looking at a broader circle of acquaintances to include coworkers as well as friends and relatives, 30 percent of Americans are not mixing with others of a different race, the poll showed.

Respondent Kevin Shaw, 49, has experienced both integration and racial homogeny. He grew up in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and attended a mixed high school where he was one of only two white teenagers on the mostly black football team. His wife, Bobbi, is Hispanic. They met in high school and have been married for 27 years.

Eleven years ago, they moved to a predominantly white neighborhood in the suburb of Liberty. "Soon after we moved in, my mother-in-law came to visit and a neighbor asked if she was my maid. It was just a matter of ignorance," he said.

In the time he has lived there the neighborhood has become less blinkered, helped by the arrival of younger families.

He also puts prevailing attitudes down to environment. "A lot of it comes down to where you grow up," he said.

Obama On Jay Leno: President Discusses Embassy Closures, NSA Surveillance On Tonight Show

President Barack Obama says the threat of an imminent terrorist attack against Americans is, in his words, "significant enough that we're taking every precaution."

 

In his first comments on the latest security threat from al-Qaida, Obama said Tuesday that Americans should go ahead with summer travel plans abroad despite global travel warnings. But he said they should "show some common sense" and recognize that some countries are more dangerous than others.

He didn't specify which countries posed the greatest threat. He also wouldn't say whether the U.S. learned of the threat through National Security Agency Surveillance programs.

Nineteen U.S. embassies and consulates in 16 countries have been ordered closed to the public until Saturday.

Obama spoke during an interview scheduled for broadcast Tuesday on NBC's "The Tonight Show."

Kremlin doctor signals Putin is in good health

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in good health and a back injury that was reported last year is not a cause for concern, according to the Kremlin's top doctor.

In an interview which appeared intended to bolster Putin's image as his 61st birthday approaches in October, Sergei Mironov told Itogi magazine that the president stayed fit by playing sport and preferred using folk remedies to taking pills.

 

Putin, who plays ice hockey, swims, still enjoys judo and likes to portray himself to voters as energetic and macho, missed several foreign trips last year after what the Kremlin said was a sports injury.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said Putin had hurt his spine during a judo bout and government sources said at the time that Putin may have to undergo surgery. But Mironov said this was not the case.

"From the medical point of view, Putin seems significantly younger than his age," Mironov, the head of the presidential administration's Chief Medical Directorate, told Itogi in the interview published on Monday.

"Swimming, in my view, is his preferred way to recover and adapt to stressful situations," he added.

Russia has not dropped the Soviet tradition of treating the health of its leaders as little less than a state secret but Mironov said this was for medical reasons.

"I see no reason to keep the leader's health a secret but there's medical ethics," he said.

The health of the president is a sensitive matter because the head of state is also commander in chief of the armed forces and in charge of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

Putin has, however, also been trying to reassert his authority following protests last year against his long rule that have been led by a younger generation of opposition leaders.

He has carved out a political system where power is concentrated in the hands of the president, and the poor health of President Boris Yeltsin, a drinker who had heart surgery while in power in the 1990s, alarmed foreign investors.

Before that, the Soviet Union carefully managed news about the health of its ageing leaders. Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, like Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin before them, all died while in power.

Mironov was also the Kremlin physician when Yeltsin was president but said he had a "totally different relationship" with Putin because he was healthier.

Putin has not said whether he will seek another six years as president when his current term ends in 2018.

But asked whether now was the age for political leaders who could live a long time, Mironov said: "With sport and the achievements of modern medicine, there's no doubt about it."

The Real Reason Kids Need to Master Their Math Skills(2)

Developing within students a mastery of adaptive reasoning traditionally and typically has always been easier to accomplish in affluent communities. Math teachers in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods educate their students in “Tyranny of the Moment” math learning environments.

Instruction is delivered within a classroom that is in perpetual academic crisis because of the remediation needs of students.

Teachers, in providing a disproportionate amount of time for remediation to their students, can never focus them on the real purpose of modern math: the cultivating and strengthening of adaptive reasoning.

The underemphasizing of adaptive reasoning skills for students in economically disadvantaged communities has effectively prevented large numbers of kids born into poverty from mastering skills that will help them break the cycle.

I teach in the community where I live and I have witnessed what this cycle looks like. I have observed over the years, via my former students, what happens when a young man or woman’s dreams of higher education and securing a better-paying job does not come to fruition because they never developed their adaptive reasoning skills. The majority of these students end up employed at poverty wage jobs.

This is why, as an educator, mathematical activist, and teacher who has implemented Common Core Math in my classroom, I am excited about the upcoming transition to Common Core Math.

Common Core Math embeds within its benchmarks the development of adaptive reasoning by incorporating the Standards for Mathematical Practice.  

These standards were intentionally designed to address the achievement gap by cultivating within ALL students the mathematical habits of mind, which lead to the development of adaptive reasoning. Properly implemented, Common Core Math will increase the probability that our students do not fall behind.

The Real Reason Kids Need to Master Their Math Skills(1)

In Teaching Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit writes: “Skills are a necessary but insufficient aspect of black and minority students’ education. Students need technical skills to open doors, but they need to be able to think critically and creatively to participate in meaningful and potentially liberating work inside those doors.”

Answering a math problem these days, no matter how accurate or fast, does not provide anyone with a particular advantage in life. The reality is that calculators and computers can out-compute a human being when it comes to finding an answer.

The advantage is created when a person develops, intuitively or through training, the ability to apply the thinking, patterns, and ideas behind the math to help them or others make better sense of our world.

Mathematical thinking places a premium on the most prized of human reasoning: adaptive reasoning. This is why kids can’t fall behind.

A person who develops adaptive reasoning thinks logically about relationships among concepts and situations, considers alternatives, reasons correctly, and justifies their conclusions. These are not just math skills—they are life skills, which may be used in any job or situation.

In a society and global economy where goods, services, and information are commodities, it is no longer an option for just “smart” students to learn adaptive reasoning skills.

This is because the students who have these skills ingrained into their consciousness will become the workers and entrepreneurs who will keep America relevant and competitive for decades to come.

These students will have the greatest ability to successfully confront complex problems which do not exist now, incorporate and apply tools which have yet to be created, and come up with workable solutions.