MIDTOWN — Wall Street greed and financial inequality aren't the only issues driving people to protest. The use of calculators in schools has one man so angry he's taken his fury to the streets.
Retired math teacher, Martin Silver, 65, who spent 37 years in the classroom, spent Tuesday pushing his message outside News Corporation’s headquarters on Sixth Avenue at West 47th Street.
“It is my last hurrah in terms of trying to accomplish something,” said Silver, a resident of Bayside, Queens. “I am closer to dying than I am to being born.”
Ever since calculators were mandated in classrooms in New York state in 1990, Silver has lobbied politicians — calling and sending letters — to have the offending machines removed. His main concern is that young people have lost the basic knowledge of how to solve math problems in their heads.
After retiring from East Meadow Union Free Public School District in Long Island, Silver decided time was running out for his campaign to stop reliance on the calculators.
“My whole theme has been the dumbing down of America,” he said of his mission.
On a three-paneled poster, Silver warns Midtown’s lunchtime crowd that “America is striving for stupid... You Can Stop it!”
He also exhorts passersby to call Education officials to voice their displeasure at calculator use in classrooms. But Silver will concede that human error is to blame in mathematical mess-ups, as well as calculator-dependence.
Since his friend made the sign a few weeks back, Silver has made the journey from Bayside, Queens, to Midtown most weekdays. His one-man-shift runs from 10:40 a.m. to 1:10 p.m.
“I have had many people take my picture and give me the thumbs up,” said Silver, “Everything has been positive. No one has stopped and said 'I don't believe you are right'.”
