Cliff Mass has been active educating the public about the science of weather. But one major local audience will now be denied his enhanced weather reports. KUOW radio canceled him effective today.
Mass has been on KUOW on Fridays for 15 years. But they canceled him this week. He is an excellent fit because his "enhanced" weather reports include science.
Why fired? Mathematics. Ohhh, caught off topic talking about education on a university radio station!!
Mathematics: Mass has been concerned about the inability of many University of Washington freshmen to survive in college-level mathematics; he is a US professor. He has been active in getting the K-12 schools to better prepare their graduates. And he has made references to his concerns about math on his weather segment.
He tells at his blog about warnings and discussions with Weekday producer Katy Sewall and host Steve Sher about his spending time on mathematics education. And their concerns included not presenting the other side - the case for unprepared university freshmen?
But then... The Seattle Times ran a story about near-straight-A students not being accepted by the UW. Indeed, accepting out of state students while rejecting one of Sealth High's valedictorians. (There used to be just one valedictorian, but now there can be dozens.) And Cliff Mass knew something about the Washington students with high grades who were less ready for college than out of state students. And he talked about this on his segment and presented Joni Balter of the Times for another viewpoint. That was the final straw. Talking about excellence in mathematics education.
Off topic: Rick Steves, the Europe travel guy, plugs his favorite topic constantly: legalizing marijuana. Off topic, of course. As a responsible member of the KUOW team does he present the other side? No. When was he fired? You don't understand: what Steves is doing is OK for tax-supported KUOW.
Read more about it at Cliff's blog. Cliff Mass Weather Blog
I admit interest. I bought Cliff Mass's book The Weather of the Pacific Northwest to read during a surgery recovery and learned so much that I started reading it again!
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