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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.

In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!

NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious.
Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
LegalLord
Profile Blog Joined April 2013
United States13779 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-12-01 04:54:26
December 01 2016 04:53 GMT
#126941
On December 01 2016 13:41 IgnE wrote:
how many teachers was that? what does "implementation" mean? are you talking about standardized testing or minor quibbles with the curriculum or are you talking about the general standards chosen? that is, are you saying that people are fine with standardization but they think common core in particular sucks?

all the teachers that i talk to either really like common core or think its fine. i honestly think that people who don't like common core because they think the methods are silly or ridiculous or not-like-they-used-to-do it are just not very smart and don't like feeling stumped by grade school math. you don't really see much talk about the non-math aspects of common core, do you? this might be surprising to the people who visit this forum but most adults have abysmal math sense.

that is not to say that there aren't more legitimate issues you could raise against common core. or that there aren't bad teachers. but there have always been and always will be bad teachers. some story about how a teacher made your kid try to solve a basic math problem in a cockamamie way is mostly irrelevant.

Like maybe ten? Just ones I know, split over different periods of time.

Most are fine with the idea of standardization or were able to accept it. The fact that constant new programs (software, books, curricula, etc) were being pushed, then retracted, then pushed again, and retracted again, and so on, based on budget/curriculum/etc issues have been troublesome. Incidentally most of them are from the language/history side and not math, which I've heard more about on the internets.

I personally do have my own personal issues with the math stuff though. I have enough math education to see where they're coming from with a lot of the curriculum design, but I see a lot of poorly conceived aspects there as well.
History will sooner or later sweep the European Union away without mercy.
Nevuk
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States16280 Posts
December 01 2016 05:00 GMT
#126942
On December 01 2016 13:41 IgnE wrote:
how many teachers was that? what does "implementation" mean? are you talking about standardized testing or minor quibbles with the curriculum or are you talking about the general standards chosen? that is, are you saying that people are fine with standardization but they think common core in particular sucks?

all the teachers that i talk to either really like common core or think its fine. i honestly think that people who don't like common core because they think the methods are silly or ridiculous or not-like-they-used-to-do it are just not very smart and don't like feeling stumped by grade school math. you don't really see much talk about the non-math aspects of common core, do you? this might be surprising to the people who visit this forum but most adults have abysmal math sense.

that is not to say that there aren't more legitimate issues you could raise against common core. or that there aren't bad teachers. but there have always been and always will be bad teachers. some story about how a teacher made your kid try to solve a basic math problem in a cockamamie way is mostly irrelevant.

Eh, I know a LOT of teachers (My mother, stepfather, and ex were all teachers). None of them particularly hate it in principle, but all of them pretty much agree that the implementation of it was very poor. I recall reading somewhere that even the most ardent supporters of it think that the implementation was rather poor, actually. Part of that is because each state is in charge of their own implementation. I will say that they were even more negative about NCLB and the standardized testing that came with it than they are about CC. Maybe teachers just don't like change? It's a little hard to sort out the noise there.

Anyways, in 2014 the NY teachers union went so far as to vote no confidence on its implementation.
http://www.nysut.org/news/2014/january/nysut-board-approves-no-confidence-resolution

It's really not a conservative/liberal divide, people on both sides see serious issues with it. A cursory google brings up critical articles from the national review, wapo, and the nytimes.
GreenHorizons
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States23643 Posts
December 01 2016 05:04 GMT
#126943
On December 01 2016 13:53 LegalLord wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 01 2016 13:41 IgnE wrote:
how many teachers was that? what does "implementation" mean? are you talking about standardized testing or minor quibbles with the curriculum or are you talking about the general standards chosen? that is, are you saying that people are fine with standardization but they think common core in particular sucks?

all the teachers that i talk to either really like common core or think its fine. i honestly think that people who don't like common core because they think the methods are silly or ridiculous or not-like-they-used-to-do it are just not very smart and don't like feeling stumped by grade school math. you don't really see much talk about the non-math aspects of common core, do you? this might be surprising to the people who visit this forum but most adults have abysmal math sense.

that is not to say that there aren't more legitimate issues you could raise against common core. or that there aren't bad teachers. but there have always been and always will be bad teachers. some story about how a teacher made your kid try to solve a basic math problem in a cockamamie way is mostly irrelevant.

Like maybe ten? Just ones I know, split over different periods of time.

Most are fine with the idea of standardization or were able to accept it. The fact that constant new programs (software, books, curricula, etc) were being pushed, then retracted, then pushed again, and retracted again, and so on, based on budget/curriculum/etc issues have been troublesome. Incidentally most of them are from the language/history side and not math, which I've heard more about on the internets.

I personally do have my own personal issues with the math stuff though. I have enough math education to see where they're coming from with a lot of the curriculum design, but I see a lot of poorly conceived aspects there as well.


Let's not forget there was plenty wrong with curriculum and education before common core (NCLB for example).

One reason a lot of people can't do the math stuff is because they never learned what exactly it was they were doing, they just imitated the pattern demonstrated for them until it became rote.

The problems around textbooks and budgets doesn't sound especially related to common core, those seem more like problems with a bureaucracy adopting new methodologies (which were desperately needed, though probably not all of them).

The most frequent complaint I've heard from teachers are around standardized testing, not altogether, but tying pay/budgets to them and having them take up too much time of the school year. Most can see the value of having them implemented in one way or another.
"People like to look at history and think 'If that was me back then, I would have...' We're living through history, and the truth is, whatever you are doing now is probably what you would have done then" "Scratch a Liberal..."
IgnE
Profile Joined November 2010
United States7681 Posts
December 01 2016 05:09 GMT
#126944
Like I said, there are legitimate complaints about constantly shifting policies, "best practices", and teaching gimmicks. The bureaucracy in public schooling is no joke. I just don't think that has a lot to do with the content of common core curricula, which is what most attacks focus on: "LOOK AT THIS 3RD GRADE MATH PROBLEM. IT'S SO CRAZY."
The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their realization.
IgnE
Profile Joined November 2010
United States7681 Posts
December 01 2016 05:11 GMT
#126945
That's probably a product of the fact that people feel compelled to attack the content whenever they are upset with the implementation. It's hard for a teacher to say, "hey this curriculum might be better, but it's not worth the transactional costs of implementing it at this time." That's a much harder sell.
The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their realization.
Danglars
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States12133 Posts
December 01 2016 05:18 GMT
#126946
On December 01 2016 13:53 LegalLord wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 01 2016 13:41 IgnE wrote:
how many teachers was that? what does "implementation" mean? are you talking about standardized testing or minor quibbles with the curriculum or are you talking about the general standards chosen? that is, are you saying that people are fine with standardization but they think common core in particular sucks?

all the teachers that i talk to either really like common core or think its fine. i honestly think that people who don't like common core because they think the methods are silly or ridiculous or not-like-they-used-to-do it are just not very smart and don't like feeling stumped by grade school math. you don't really see much talk about the non-math aspects of common core, do you? this might be surprising to the people who visit this forum but most adults have abysmal math sense.

that is not to say that there aren't more legitimate issues you could raise against common core. or that there aren't bad teachers. but there have always been and always will be bad teachers. some story about how a teacher made your kid try to solve a basic math problem in a cockamamie way is mostly irrelevant.

Like maybe ten? Just ones I know, split over different periods of time.

Most are fine with the idea of standardization or were able to accept it. The fact that constant new programs (software, books, curricula, etc) were being pushed, then retracted, then pushed again, and retracted again, and so on, based on budget/curriculum/etc issues have been troublesome. Incidentally most of them are from the language/history side and not math, which I've heard more about on the internets.

I personally do have my own personal issues with the math stuff though. I have enough math education to see where they're coming from with a lot of the curriculum design, but I see a lot of poorly conceived aspects there as well.

I see only the frustration of parents no longer able to teach their elementary school children multiplication and division and percents. Talking about ten-sticks and breaking every 3-digit addition problem into 3 separate processes just confuses them. Language arts was more hearing from the teachers complaining about implementing a strict approach to what is taught when -- to comply with district implementation of the English program. I do some volunteer tutoring for elementary and high school students, and I see teachers that explicitly grade down the "old way" of math (stack & add carrying ones, stack and multiply with zeros/offsets, skip coloring 2x as two green blocks (-1) as a yellow block and (+3) as a red block ((in this nerd dominated forum, just imagine yourself being forced to get out the colored pencils for every prealgebra problem. It's killer)). Context is California's SoCal elementary and high schools.

At the federal level, it's more indicative of an official's willingness to enforce top-down education programs than actual federal involvement in common core. I favor state independence and local school district independence to accept or reject new regimes in teaching. If the teachers hate it or the students hate it and your educational outcomes are unfavorable (research is showing an increased achievement gap for common core), then they should have the ability to nix the program. I understand some of the pro-standardization arguments, but still can't accept the dogma for a one-size-fits-all state programs tuned down to even minutiae (and if California's implementation is the exception, then forgive me).
Great armies come from happy zealots, and happy zealots come from California!
TL+ Member
Nyxisto
Profile Joined August 2010
Germany6287 Posts
December 01 2016 05:19 GMT
#126947
Also not everything in education policy is just intuitive, some teaching methods may seem weird at first but are actually backed up by testing. Making classrooms smaller is one such thing. It's a hugely popular policy in many countries but most studies show that it's actually not that helpful and resources are often better spend elsewhere.
ChristianS
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States3295 Posts
December 01 2016 05:56 GMT
#126948
On December 01 2016 13:05 Monochromatic wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 01 2016 12:49 Nyxisto wrote:
I have never really followed the common core debate closely, it's essentially about creating national education standards in secondary education right? Why is this bad?

[image loading]
[image loading]

User was warned for this post

Is this what Common Core is about? I have a buddy who just started as a teacher and he told me this is what they were all about in his education classes. The new teaching philosophy is to focus more on students understanding the underlying reasons for what they're doing instead of just rote memorization of how a particular problem is solved. Otherwise you get phenomena where, for instance, your kids can add 7+2=9 and 3+4=7 but they can't add 73+24=97 because they view 2-digit addition as a completely different thing.

Why would that be anything but good? Certainly in my own anecdotal experience, that rote memorization thing was one of the biggest problems with math education. I knew plenty of people who could do the ritual but didn't know what any of this stuff actually meant, and 5 years later could recite the quadratic formula but couldn't tell you when or why you would want to solve a quadratic equation, or even really what it means to "solve" an equation. It's like we're just teaching kids a weird puzzle game with numbers, and not doing a great job of teaching them when and how this puzzle game actually relates to real life.

I don't know much about Common Core, but is that really what people are objecting to?
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -Robert J. Hanlon
OuchyDathurts
Profile Joined September 2010
United States4588 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-12-01 06:25:15
December 01 2016 06:20 GMT
#126949
Most of the hubhub over common core is people going "well this isn't how I leaned to do this!" and freaking out. The old way for learning math was god awful. Teaching kids that there's more than 1 way to skin a cat and there are actually ways that are super intuitive and likely click way better for them is a good thing.

I've got problems with memorization, bad problems so I always sucked ass at things like memorizing multiplication tables. But this was the ONLY way to do shit, memorize it or gtfo. Well that's legitimately impossible for me so I always felt like a retard growing up. I can't do it the way all the other kids do it, and its the only way to do it, so I guess I'm just dumb. Certainly not setting a child up for success or confidence. It wasn't till much later in life I started doing math my own way in my head. A way that doesn't make sense to other people but it makes perfect sense to me. It's faster, easier and requires minimal memorization. I had to wait for years thinking I was a moron and math just was something I could never do until I came up with a system that works for me on my own. Something like common core would have legit changed my life when I was a kid.

Turns out 25+ years later I've got severe ADHD which I'd lived my whole life with but never got treatment till well after the fact. Not that it would have mattered since I grew up dirt poor anyway so treatment at the time wouldn't be financially possible anyway. Hopefully kids now days don't need to grow up in the reality I did. Where you can't go to a doctor because you have no money and you feel like you can't learn because the teaching model doesn't work for you at all. 2 things we had tried to solve in recent years.
LiquidDota Staff
IgnE
Profile Joined November 2010
United States7681 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-12-01 06:40:57
December 01 2016 06:39 GMT
#126950
I mean you know multiplication tables are just facts, right? They still have kids memorize them because you have to memorize facts to make use of them. If you are constantly reconstructing basic facts then even simple problems are going to take forever and be error prone. But I take your point. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

@ Danglars


I see only the frustration of parents no longer able to teach their elementary school children multiplication and division and percents. Talking about ten-sticks and breaking every 3-digit addition problem into 3 separate processes just confuses them. Language arts was more hearing from the teachers complaining about implementing a strict approach to what is taught when -- to comply with district implementation of the English program. I do some volunteer tutoring for elementary and high school students, and I see teachers that explicitly grade down the "old way" of math (stack & add carrying ones, stack and multiply with zeros/offsets, skip coloring 2x as two green blocks (-1) as a yellow block and (+3) as a red block ((in this nerd dominated forum, just imagine yourself being forced to get out the colored pencils for every prealgebra problem. It's killer)). Context is California's SoCal elementary and high schools.


Yeah I have imagined being asked to do the stupid coloring for every problem. It is a waste of time, you are right. But you are framing the problem improperly.

  • the old pedagogy works for some and leaves many behind (just look at adult math literacy in this country)
  • the new pedagogy in common core teaches a bunch of different ways to build math intuition
  • smarter kids are going to be bored and frustrated when asked to use colors to do problems they can do in their head
  • but the new method might be more effective for the vast majority of kids who are not above average


You have to ask what the point of compulsory schooling is and implement policies that meet the end. In this country school is not about identifying the smartest kids so that they can be set on a separate track to maximize their talents. It is about bringing up as many people as possible to a common denominator so that America has a functioning citizenry that can perform the basic mental tasks required of service sector employees and consumers.

I could, for example, argue that the smart kids who are frustrated should just learn to play the game because that is what school is. If your choice is an ineffective pedagogy that is fine for only the best students, and a pedagogy that can be tedious for those who simply do, but helps a lot more average and below average students understand basic mathematical concepts what is your choice going to be? These are basic policy questions. You are totally able to voice criticism of the system for not identifying talented students, or even criticism of that individual teacher. Knowing multiple ways to do a math problem is not an end in itself, as you are well aware, so teachers that "grade down" for using the "wrong" method are working against themselves. When I spoke to a teacher who specialized in teaching other teachers how to teach common core math, she specifically said, when asked, that teachers are not supposed to do that. The whole point is that the kids are taught a variety of methods of solving problems and can use whatever makes the most sense to them. Obviously this idea can be complicated, especially when basic math concepts are rephrased under a new discourse and parents don't understand why teachers are talking about how "tens" are different than "ones". But that's a parent issue.

The point is that your criticism about teachers requiring bright students to color for every prealgebra problem might feel right to you, but it's really divorced from the goals of the public school system itself. It's not as if the old system didn't bore smart kids too. That's not the point.
The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their realization.
Slaughter
Profile Blog Joined November 2003
United States20254 Posts
December 01 2016 06:40 GMT
#126951
I had that problem with math going through the education system as well. The memorization and how to do it teaches you nothing about when best to use said methodologies or how to adapt them to different things so I struggled at times when they gave questions on a test with questions that were different sorts of problems then the ones we learned in lecture and in homework. Today my math skills suck but you get bailed out by software lol. I noticed this weakness in teaching math in upper level statistics classes for graduate students as well, perhaps that is why there are a lot of fuck ups when scientists do stats in their studies because they don't understand the fundamentals to apply them properly. I know one or two who literally just outsource all the number crunching and stats to experts to avoid those missteps.
Never Knows Best.
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain18216 Posts
December 01 2016 09:16 GMT
#126952
Reading the last few posts makes me very very happy I went to school in the Netherlands. Now I happened to have a pretty easy time with math. And all throughout both primary and secondary school, my teachers gave me (and others who were ahead of the curve) extra stuff: harder problems, alternative content, etc.

The normal curriculum was never about teaching the brightest: it's about teaching as many people as possible. And if that happens to be by making kids color their tens on yellow and their hundreds in blue, then that sounds good. Kids good at math will be just as bored as they are now, unless their teachers are like mine and give them extra content to work through.

Also, looking at that sheet of problems, it shouldn't take a parent more than 5 seconds to figure out what's going on and be able to help his/her children with their homework again. Of course, if the parents only know the rules and not why they work, it might be harder, but that's not a problem with today's education, it's a problem with the parents' education.
Laurens
Profile Joined September 2010
Belgium4554 Posts
December 01 2016 09:23 GMT
#126953
On December 01 2016 18:16 Acrofales wrote:
Reading the last few posts makes me very very happy I went to school in the Netherlands. Now I happened to have a pretty easy time with math. And all throughout both primary and secondary school, my teachers gave me (and others who were ahead of the curve) extra stuff: harder problems, alternative content, etc.

The normal curriculum was never about teaching the brightest: it's about teaching as many people as possible. And if that happens to be by making kids color their tens on yellow and their hundreds in blue, then that sounds good. Kids good at math will be just as bored as they are now, unless their teachers are like mine and give them extra content to work through.

Also, looking at that sheet of problems, it shouldn't take a parent more than 5 seconds to figure out what's going on and be able to help his/her children with their homework again. Of course, if the parents only know the rules and not why they work, it might be harder, but that's not a problem with today's education, it's a problem with the parents' education.


Yeah same, I'm in denial that there are parents who can't help their children with basic maths homework tbh.

Otherwise you get phenomena where, for instance, your kids can add 7+2=9 and 3+4=7 but they can't add 73+24=97 because they view 2-digit addition as a completely different thing.


Does this actually happen or was that just a made-up example?

Some of the stuff on that common sheet seems like it would make children worse at math instead of better.

RvB
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Netherlands6263 Posts
December 01 2016 09:28 GMT
#126954
On December 01 2016 18:16 Acrofales wrote:
Reading the last few posts makes me very very happy I went to school in the Netherlands. Now I happened to have a pretty easy time with math. And all throughout both primary and secondary school, my teachers gave me (and others who were ahead of the curve) extra stuff: harder problems, alternative content, etc.

The normal curriculum was never about teaching the brightest: it's about teaching as many people as possible. And if that happens to be by making kids color their tens on yellow and their hundreds in blue, then that sounds good. Kids good at math will be just as bored as they are now, unless their teachers are like mine and give them extra content to work through.

Also, looking at that sheet of problems, it shouldn't take a parent more than 5 seconds to figure out what's going on and be able to help his/her children with their homework again. Of course, if the parents only know the rules and not why they work, it might be harder, but that's not a problem with today's education, it's a problem with the parents' education.

Really? My experience is that the brightest kids never really got any extra stuff. When I look around me I know a lot of people who were really intelligent, never got challenged at school and didn't do half as good as they could have. Especially at high school at the level were I was at (HAVO) it was full of lazy students although that might have more to do with being a teenager.
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11749 Posts
December 01 2016 10:11 GMT
#126955
On December 01 2016 18:28 RvB wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 01 2016 18:16 Acrofales wrote:
Reading the last few posts makes me very very happy I went to school in the Netherlands. Now I happened to have a pretty easy time with math. And all throughout both primary and secondary school, my teachers gave me (and others who were ahead of the curve) extra stuff: harder problems, alternative content, etc.

The normal curriculum was never about teaching the brightest: it's about teaching as many people as possible. And if that happens to be by making kids color their tens on yellow and their hundreds in blue, then that sounds good. Kids good at math will be just as bored as they are now, unless their teachers are like mine and give them extra content to work through.

Also, looking at that sheet of problems, it shouldn't take a parent more than 5 seconds to figure out what's going on and be able to help his/her children with their homework again. Of course, if the parents only know the rules and not why they work, it might be harder, but that's not a problem with today's education, it's a problem with the parents' education.

Really? My experience is that the brightest kids never really got any extra stuff. When I look around me I know a lot of people who were really intelligent, never got challenged at school and didn't do half as good as they could have. Especially at high school at the level were I was at (HAVO) it was full of lazy students although that might have more to do with being a teenager.


That stuff is entirely down to the quality of the specific teacher. Giving extra attention to smarter children sounds like a great idea, and it is, but you have to put in extra effort as a teacher to make that happen. You especially need to be careful not to only work with the smarter children in class, so you need to prepare the extra stuff beforehand, else it costs too much time during the class. That is time in class you really don't have if you have 30 pupils, and you risk neglecting the weaker students.

Thus, it is tempting to work with the middle of the class and downwards, because the upper half won't get any problems just because you don't work with them a lot. But an enthusiastic teacher can do a lot to also challenge the top of the class. It is just more work for him, thus some teachers choose not to put in that extra effort. You can put practically infinite effort into being a teacher, and every additional effort and time you put in improves your classes. Or you can put in absolutely no effort beforehand, turn up to class, stand at the front and teach a bit, and then say "now do problem 8, 9, 10, 11, 12", and drink a coffee. Teaching is a profession where you have to actively balance the amount of effort you put in against burning out on the one hand, and just coursing by on the other hand.
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain18216 Posts
December 01 2016 10:18 GMT
#126956
On December 01 2016 18:28 RvB wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 01 2016 18:16 Acrofales wrote:
Reading the last few posts makes me very very happy I went to school in the Netherlands. Now I happened to have a pretty easy time with math. And all throughout both primary and secondary school, my teachers gave me (and others who were ahead of the curve) extra stuff: harder problems, alternative content, etc.

The normal curriculum was never about teaching the brightest: it's about teaching as many people as possible. And if that happens to be by making kids color their tens on yellow and their hundreds in blue, then that sounds good. Kids good at math will be just as bored as they are now, unless their teachers are like mine and give them extra content to work through.

Also, looking at that sheet of problems, it shouldn't take a parent more than 5 seconds to figure out what's going on and be able to help his/her children with their homework again. Of course, if the parents only know the rules and not why they work, it might be harder, but that's not a problem with today's education, it's a problem with the parents' education.

Really? My experience is that the brightest kids never really got any extra stuff. When I look around me I know a lot of people who were really intelligent, never got challenged at school and didn't do half as good as they could have. Especially at high school at the level were I was at (HAVO) it was full of lazy students although that might have more to do with being a teenager.


I'm not going to claim it's uniform around regions and schools. My main point was really that the school system isn't there to entertain the brightest, but to educate the masses. It just served as an example that a good school can do both, and given all the accounts over the last few pages, I was either really lucky with my specific school, or with schools in the Netherlands in general.


Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain18216 Posts
December 01 2016 11:07 GMT
#126957
On December 01 2016 18:23 Laurens wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 01 2016 18:16 Acrofales wrote:
Reading the last few posts makes me very very happy I went to school in the Netherlands. Now I happened to have a pretty easy time with math. And all throughout both primary and secondary school, my teachers gave me (and others who were ahead of the curve) extra stuff: harder problems, alternative content, etc.

The normal curriculum was never about teaching the brightest: it's about teaching as many people as possible. And if that happens to be by making kids color their tens on yellow and their hundreds in blue, then that sounds good. Kids good at math will be just as bored as they are now, unless their teachers are like mine and give them extra content to work through.

Also, looking at that sheet of problems, it shouldn't take a parent more than 5 seconds to figure out what's going on and be able to help his/her children with their homework again. Of course, if the parents only know the rules and not why they work, it might be harder, but that's not a problem with today's education, it's a problem with the parents' education.


Yeah same, I'm in denial that there are parents who can't help their children with basic maths homework tbh.

Show nested quote +
Otherwise you get phenomena where, for instance, your kids can add 7+2=9 and 3+4=7 but they can't add 73+24=97 because they view 2-digit addition as a completely different thing.


Does this actually happen or was that just a made-up example?

Some of the stuff on that common sheet seems like it would make children worse at math instead of better.



Plenty of parents aren't able to help their children with basic maths homework. I know a few people personally who can't do basic arithmetic to save their lives, and if I know people, insulated up in my ivory tower of highly educated friends and colleagues, imagine the actual average population.

But that wasn't really my point. I was in no way trying to argue that there aren't parents who are incapable of helping their children with math (or other) homework. There are. My point was mainly that if they are incapable of understanding the new math methods, they didn't really understand math enough in the first place. And what they would probably teach their children would be along the line of "oh, you don't need to know why addition works like that, you just follow these rules and it works", which just perpetuates the problem: parents who don't know math teach their children to not know math. While these common core methods seem tedious, I'm sure education specialists realized that this works better to teach more people about how and why addition works than what we learned at school. Moreover, I'm not sure these are actually in common core, which insofar as I understand it is a pretty vague set of standards. It seems more likely that these are state or even school specific implementations of common core. Which of course can be just as wrong and bad as any specific implementation of the system that was in place pre-CC.

To return to the specific math sheet linked in order to ridicule CC: I think every single method on there is a good way of teaching kids how to add numbers. Of course, at some point, you're also going to have to teach how to carry over, and then writing it out as 60 + 2 and 20 + 4 (or writing out tens and ones in letters) doesn't really add value. But by that time you'd hope they understand why addition works like that, and carrying over becomes a trivial addition (no pun intended).

Moreover, they will probably eventually also be taught the "stacking" method of addition, because it is shorthand for all these fancy things with colors and number lines. By the time you understand it, you can see that stacking is simply another method for achieving the same goal. But if you don't understand it, then they seem like completely different things.
Clonester
Profile Joined August 2014
Germany2808 Posts
December 01 2016 11:28 GMT
#126958
How long do you have to do this kind of math?

When multiplications come arround (end of 2nd year, begin of 3rd year of school), this seems to stop working.
I dont see a reason not do this, if it actually helps the children (even tho I cant understand how bad your teaching "the old ways" must have been for pupils to not understand "normal" addition). But how long do have children to mark their numbers with different colours, how long do they have to take the long way or even use these long drawn out ways of doing addition?

In Germany we have an equal discussion about writing: There is a new way of teaching, called "writing as hearing" (not well translated) in which the teachers of the first 1-4 years of school do not correct the spelling of the pupils in any way. Now there is a discussion how much this helps pupils in developing a "feeling" for spelling and writing or if this is just stupid new wave teaching that turns pupils in misspelling idiots. Because from the 5th year, the spelling yet again gets corrected and wrong spelling gives you bad grades. And there are alot of pupils who cant understand why they were not wrong in 1-4th grade and now are.

But I guess, school is for the 0-70% masses. Everyone above will just sleep their way through school till he can move to an university. The problem is, that the sleepers lose potential during it, as boredoom and no challenge gives a bad attitude to learning.
Bomber, Attacker, DD, SOMEBODY, NiKo, Nex, Spidii
{CC}StealthBlue
Profile Blog Joined January 2003
United States41117 Posts
December 01 2016 11:33 GMT
#126959
So Pat McCrory gets a recount in Durham County. A largely black county.

Quite obvious what his strategy is now, to get enough percentage of votes disqualified in order to win.
"Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules."
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11749 Posts
December 01 2016 11:43 GMT
#126960
On December 01 2016 20:33 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So Pat McCrory gets a recount in Durham County. A largely black county.

Quite obvious what his strategy is now, to get enough percentage of votes disqualified in order to win.


Why are there so many recounts in american politics? And why do people expect them to change the result? Is your counting really that bad in the first place?

If the results of a recount are not almost always extremely similar to the first count, you have a systemic problem in place. Furthermore, why are the results of the recount expected to be more accurate than the first count? Doesn't this just leave more room for manipulation?

And as far as i know, the US uses electronic voting machines. How does one even recount those?
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