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Maggie’s 9+6=15 Common Core. Are you fucking kidding me?
- Thread starter Maggot
- Start date
That's what can happen when you confuse education with knowledge. The common thread I see a lot these days is the more degrees one has the less cognitive ability they have also. You must need to trade common sense for a BS,MS or PhD. Just my observation. I don't know how we got this advanced without common core.
Yep, and the more letters yo have after your name the less you are able to actually communicate with others of your species, because at a deep level of your own insecurity, you feel that if they dont have an equal or greater number of letters, they cant be as intelligent as you. When that happens, you dont speak WITH others, you speak TO them.
You are more correct than you might realize. "I have always maintained the higher you go the dumber you get." And for the vast majority this holds. Seeing as I have been in University for the past ten years and hoping to round out in the next year, I have a rather long and colorful history of the bubble that is academia.
Strictly speaking you get two groups of PhD's: the first are those who think that anyone with out a PhD is not worth their time, and the second are so focused on one topic that they can't tie their shoes!
Personally I take jobs and opportunities to get dirty and work with everyone. Most of my work experience has been with people who may or may not have a GED. Still learned lots, and quite enjoyed getting back to the real world. I aim to be one much like the illusive 'honest lawyer'.
I went back at 40. Went to three years at the local community colllege, then two at a prestigious university. I found that at the Community college level, the instructors were there for you. A couple of them truly inspired me to love learning. When you reach 'major university' level they are no longer there for you, they are there for themselves...to publish, and build their esteem amongst their peers.
like yourself, most of my work experience is/was in blue collar work. While there are a lot of morons, the true skilled craftsman has as much or more knowledge as most Phd's. Then there are cases like the Polynesian boatmen who can travel across 3000 miles of ocean with only the seat of their pants knowledge passed down by oral tradition. I read that some of them can predict a storm three days in advance just by the type of wave slapping the boat, and detect 14(?) different types of waves that way.
You attach the 5 to the one group, divide by 19.78, then begin multipyling at random. Sooner or later you will come up with something or other.
Im on a roll.
Glad to see that people keep open minds, and stereotyping is not the norm!
This is coming from someone who has served in the Military, worked in Public Safety for 20+ years, has been in academia part time for 10+ years, and has a number of graduate level degrees (MS, Ed.D.)
Maybe I am an exception to the "rule" that everyone above seems to believe in, but I don't think that I am some egghead who can't function with all members of society, given that I do that on a daily basis
I would agree that our "Education System" is a joke on many levels, however without some form of higher education, where are we really going to be?
As precision long range shooters, where would we all be without higher education? Sorry, but things like Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics are not just things that you are born with or just pick up. Personally I am glad that people like Bryan Litz are around, someone was willing to teach him, he was willing to learn, and he has been willing to share what he knows.
Hate to say it, but given the parenting skills of today, and the kids that are a result of it, hats off to the teachers who can came up with anything to help them learn and move forward.
Feel free to stereotype and bash on!
This is coming from someone who has served in the Military, worked in Public Safety for 20+ years, has been in academia part time for 10+ years, and has a number of graduate level degrees (MS, Ed.D.)
Maybe I am an exception to the "rule" that everyone above seems to believe in, but I don't think that I am some egghead who can't function with all members of society, given that I do that on a daily basis
I would agree that our "Education System" is a joke on many levels, however without some form of higher education, where are we really going to be?
As precision long range shooters, where would we all be without higher education? Sorry, but things like Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics are not just things that you are born with or just pick up. Personally I am glad that people like Bryan Litz are around, someone was willing to teach him, he was willing to learn, and he has been willing to share what he knows.
Hate to say it, but given the parenting skills of today, and the kids that are a result of it, hats off to the teachers who can came up with anything to help them learn and move forward.
Feel free to stereotype and bash on!
Mine, at least, was not intended as a bash, but rather, my observations. Of course engineering, math, physics, etc. Are important. My comment was intended more to reflect on how the attitude and intents changed as you progress' up the letter ladder. And thats not to say I didnt have good instructors who were Phd's. I did, but in general (call that a stereotype if you like), I found there was a major division in those who really cared about teaching as opposed to ....being Phd's. Perhaps things were different as well at lesser academically rigorous schools than mine...no slight intended as I just dont have experience to authenticate that one way or another.
Though I posted it in Maggies, Ill repost here, as this photo would never have been taken sans education.
Taken right after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Can you imagine what that must have felt like?
No offense Maggot, but this is Dunning Kruger at work. Ask any undergraduate computer engineering student who has had to build a decimal calculator with binary circuits. Base 2 and Base 10 conversions come in handy.
The sooner kids are introduced to more complex ways of thinking and their aptitude can be identified, the further along they will be when they finally enter the job market. We have the most developed education system in the world, and foreign students are the ones who seem to be taking the most advantage of it, especially in the STEM areas.
The sooner kids are introduced to more complex ways of thinking and their aptitude can be identified, the further along they will be when they finally enter the job market. We have the most developed education system in the world, and foreign students are the ones who seem to be taking the most advantage of it, especially in the STEM areas.
I wonder how many people on this site who have earned a degree, actually work in the area of that degree. Most of the guys I know do not. It usually has to do with the opportunities that present themselves.
Well said, and in that part, I stand corrected. The more alternatives one has to choose from, the more tools to employ, GENERALLY the better.
Not I. I was in stonemasonry, got hurt, went back to school and studied philosophy. 4 years of that convinced me I didnt want more. Now, I buy houses, and flip them, and buy and sell art and audio gear.
Turns out philosophy is what I do, but unless you teach, which doesnt interest me, there's no $$$.
Philosophy, in fact university, was an excellent discipline, but for me no more than that.
Unfortunately teachers have to work with the lowest common denominator in the classroom, which means the others in that class will only receive that level of instruction. We will continue to let the rest of the work catch and surpass us in education until we allow the grade placement based on capability, not age. But that would be unfair. 'No child left behind' is really 'no child move ahead'.
As to common core, I have Electrical Engineering degree and Computer Engineering degree, suffice to say I've got my maths pretty much down... and this sh&t is ridiculous. If a system this complicated is needed to teach simple addition, God help them when they move to differential equations and n-dimensional math. At least I have job security, I don't have to worry about my job being replaced by some youngster one day! (joking of course)
As to common core, I have Electrical Engineering degree and Computer Engineering degree, suffice to say I've got my maths pretty much down... and this sh&t is ridiculous. If a system this complicated is needed to teach simple addition, God help them when they move to differential equations and n-dimensional math. At least I have job security, I don't have to worry about my job being replaced by some youngster one day! (joking of course)
How about this one boys:
1. Let a and b be equal non-zero quantities
a = b
2. Multiply by a
aa = ab
3. Subtract bb
aa - bb = ab - bb
4. Factor both sides
(a - b)(a + b) = b(a - b)
5. Divide out (a - b)
a + b = b
6. Observing that a = b
b + b = b
7. Combine like terms on the left
2b = b
8. Divide by the non-zero b
2 = 1
Now, can anyone find the fallacy? Think dividing by "zero".
Enjoy.
1. Let a and b be equal non-zero quantities
a = b
2. Multiply by a
aa = ab
3. Subtract bb
aa - bb = ab - bb
4. Factor both sides
(a - b)(a + b) = b(a - b)
5. Divide out (a - b)
a + b = b
6. Observing that a = b
b + b = b
7. Combine like terms on the left
2b = b
8. Divide by the non-zero b
2 = 1
Now, can anyone find the fallacy? Think dividing by "zero".
Enjoy.
Me too, even use the toes, and I especially like when I have to count to twenty one.
I am anti common core as anyone and was taught to just learn 9+6=15 but in my head I have always done it the way that she is teaching. I have to do calculations in my head at work all the time and that is how i do them. I just taught myself to do it that way.
it took me a half hour to figure out my kids 2nd grade math last year finally said fuck it and showed him how people in the real world add.
G
Guest
Guest
I watched a video of a chimpanzee fucking a frog the other day. I didn't have to divide by any-goddamned-thing.
My experience is generally those that degrade education don't usually have much and struggled with academics in the schools they did go to.
Pat
Yeah, at step #3 you got 0 = 0 and then went haywire with it. I'm teaching college calc and still trying to convince kids they can't divide by zero and that they shouldn't divide by variables for which they are trying to solve.
Just how far backwards do these people want our civilization to go?
I just glanced out at the nearly full moon tonight. We sent our best and bravest there using "computers" made of wood and celluloid. If the math of 1969 is not sufficiently "comfortable" for these people, then I fear we have no great achievements in our future.
I love to observe to others that we were the first to the moon, but that wasn't enough. Being Americans, we had to get a car up there too!
Murica! Hell yeah!!
Cheers... Jim
I just glanced out at the nearly full moon tonight. We sent our best and bravest there using "computers" made of wood and celluloid. If the math of 1969 is not sufficiently "comfortable" for these people, then I fear we have no great achievements in our future.
I love to observe to others that we were the first to the moon, but that wasn't enough. Being Americans, we had to get a car up there too!
Murica! Hell yeah!!
Cheers... Jim
Actually decomposing numbers is a very useful tool when doing calculus by mind (if using paper there is no need for that) of big numbers like 234 x 55.5 or 2343 / 23 you need to break it down to round numbers and add up (like 234x50 + 234x5 + 117). But i agree that generally speaking schooling system is going down the drain, here math and physics are still rather ok (though deteriorating) but writing skills and expression of thoughts (essays etc...) are completely botched and people finishing primary school are basically illiterate. I have one kid in primary now and i'm having huge problem with the fact that he is being punished for not being slow enough (he and some of his friends are being damaged by adapting teaching level to the slowest kid in class - we used to have special schools for those who were unable to reach certain standard but now they just simply put all kids into one class with "no one left behind" motto and you can imagine what that does to a person who has to keep hearing what 9+6 is over and over again) and causing trouble due to excess free time during class. The fact that majority of the teachers being ecobiofascistfeministlesbianbitcheswithpermanentpmsandhugepimpledassandsmallboobs also doesn't help much when trying to get point across to them. Home schooling here is considered weird and there has been a case where 7 kids from religious family who were home schooled were simply taken away regardless of them achieving all the required exams (they were later returned but noone said sorry or answered for it and you can imagine what that does to kids and parents). I think people need to realize this destruction of schooling system is not random or accidental because in my country in evil socialism schools were much much better than this shit in free capitalism today is. Dumb down population enough and you can sell them anything with a lot less effort than trying to fool educated people.
I cannot recall the whole story but I will give it a shot..
I remember quite a few years ago where a 12 year old from another country was on his 6th surgery. None of which he was receiving.
He was taught how to do a certain surgery from other surgeons and was about to enter our country to perform.
Our country would not allow that.
The story on this is whether or not to allow this to happen, but it was happening.
In our day and age, I would guess a steady hand and good eye and hand coordination , a 12 year old could perform surgery.
Many of our children do play video games which require good hand and eye coordination.
We see in our surgeries today that there is a place for everyone in the surgery.
Would the common core of surgery then be 1 (being the 12 year old)
and 6 (others) also taught in their own particular field
equal 7?
In that case, 7 people did the surgery.
I remember quite a few years ago where a 12 year old from another country was on his 6th surgery. None of which he was receiving.
He was taught how to do a certain surgery from other surgeons and was about to enter our country to perform.
Our country would not allow that.
The story on this is whether or not to allow this to happen, but it was happening.
In our day and age, I would guess a steady hand and good eye and hand coordination , a 12 year old could perform surgery.
Many of our children do play video games which require good hand and eye coordination.
We see in our surgeries today that there is a place for everyone in the surgery.
Would the common core of surgery then be 1 (being the 12 year old)
and 6 (others) also taught in their own particular field
equal 7?
In that case, 7 people did the surgery.
That's a good point and possibly the crux of the problem. Teaching down and passing some who don't deserve passing. When I taught in a tech school I had students that were certainly challenged to keep up. Extra help and assignments would often fix the problem but some were so entrenched with the participation trophy mentality that doing more was not going to happen. In that case passing my course didn't happen either.
Woojos just sent me a great video explanation of the basics of multi base number systems. Very interesting. I still dont think what I saw in the first video of the common core is an excuse to skip the fundamentals. I really wish I had better math skills but being numerically dyslexic really puts a crimp in that.
Binary, Decimal and Hexadecimal Number Systems - YouTube
Binary, Decimal and Hexadecimal Number Systems - YouTube
My father only had a 3rd grade education, writing any more that his signature was a challenge, reading required sounding out each word. Not so with numbers, he could add a row of five digit figures (especially if it had a decimal point) as fast as he could move a pencil down the column. In his head he "broke down" the numbers, then added the results, just as common core does. NOT being numerically blessed, that seemed truly awesome (and impossible) to me. Perhaps it has a place in higher math related education, but just being properly versed in the basics as always taught would be a huge step upward for most modern high school grads. Notice the look of terror that crosses their face if you offer em a penny or two in change AFTER they ring up your sale.
Bob
Bob
My grand dad was much the same. Imagine what these guys could have done with an opportunity.
The problem with common core is that the morons who designed it are forgetting that you need the basics BEFORE anything else. Yes, there are rules to mathematics. It is a language, like any other, except that it is more precise. This precision allows us to do great things with communication in mathematics. But you have to learn the vocabulary, the grammar, the syntax.
You had darn well better teach kids to add and subtract BEFORE you start having them make up their own equations to model real world examples. Similarly, asking a five year old to make change for a dollar on a $0.76 purchase is crazy if you haven't taught that five year old how to add and subtract except by drawing out dots for everything. The stuff they are having kids do in common core is crazy - it is an explanation, one way to look at what you are doing, but to REQUIRE that kids draw out dots and boxes for simple addition is nuts. It makes a one or two step problem take 20 steps and turns a 10 second thought into a 10 minute excursion of the mind.
We teach kids why things work, and then we teach them how they work. You need both. Common core tries to use the why as the how. In essence, they are asking the child to demonstrate everything they do, from simple addition to manipulation of equations. I bet if any of those teachers had to write out a mathematical proof, where you have to do this justification of everything you are saying, they'd probably crap the bed. Worse yet is that the questions designed to get the students to demonstrate the why for everything they do are just insanely cobbled together, unintelligible nonsense. I looked at one exam for a 1st or 2nd grader and I couldn't figure it out. I have a BS in applied math, a year of analysis, and a semi-technical graduate degree. How the heck is a 5 year old supposed to figure out what is being asked if I can't?
Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EL5zuUvfcs
The video is unpolished in terms of narration and editing, but it gets the point across. Maybe if the editing and narration were better organized and carried out, this could be used as a good bit of evidence against the current "new methods." Seriously, why the heck do we need a new way to teach math? In the end, it's all about the $$$. Sad...
You had darn well better teach kids to add and subtract BEFORE you start having them make up their own equations to model real world examples. Similarly, asking a five year old to make change for a dollar on a $0.76 purchase is crazy if you haven't taught that five year old how to add and subtract except by drawing out dots for everything. The stuff they are having kids do in common core is crazy - it is an explanation, one way to look at what you are doing, but to REQUIRE that kids draw out dots and boxes for simple addition is nuts. It makes a one or two step problem take 20 steps and turns a 10 second thought into a 10 minute excursion of the mind.
We teach kids why things work, and then we teach them how they work. You need both. Common core tries to use the why as the how. In essence, they are asking the child to demonstrate everything they do, from simple addition to manipulation of equations. I bet if any of those teachers had to write out a mathematical proof, where you have to do this justification of everything you are saying, they'd probably crap the bed. Worse yet is that the questions designed to get the students to demonstrate the why for everything they do are just insanely cobbled together, unintelligible nonsense. I looked at one exam for a 1st or 2nd grader and I couldn't figure it out. I have a BS in applied math, a year of analysis, and a semi-technical graduate degree. How the heck is a 5 year old supposed to figure out what is being asked if I can't?
Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EL5zuUvfcs
The video is unpolished in terms of narration and editing, but it gets the point across. Maybe if the editing and narration were better organized and carried out, this could be used as a good bit of evidence against the current "new methods." Seriously, why the heck do we need a new way to teach math? In the end, it's all about the $$$. Sad...
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Not wanting to get into the problems with standardized education, or the effectiveness of common core, these kids are gaining an intuitive understanding of more abstract concepts of general base number systems and exponents. They just haven't put the mathematical language to it yet. I think I was a in high school before I saw this stuff.
It's 3 lessons in one, and they are learning much more than just how to balance a checkbook or count change.
It's 3 lessons in one, and they are learning much more than just how to balance a checkbook or count change.
As the few people who personally know me on here can attest, there are not many who believe in a formal education more so than I, especially when it comes to the sciences. A friend of mine worked with a small team designing the refueling dynamics of the space shuttle while in orbit (the space shuttle, not them). He was in the final year of a combined undergrad/masters program at a very good engineering school. This effort would simply not be possible without many years of serious academic effort. Does anyone need a PhD in English? I think maybe not and most people with a decent academic underpinning and a critical mind would be equally successful by just reading. And I think they would also be happier in the process. I have too much schooling and only half of it appears on my resume because not only does it become a visual riot of academia but it reminds me of all the years I could have spent earning money rather than spending mountains of cash on it.
I have many criticisms about our educational system and there are two that are relevant to the conversation. The first criticism is social stratification. Does anyone here think that Common Core would fly at Andover? Not a fucking chance. Those kids are being prepped for an exceedingly competitive higher education and they look to be prepared in every way possible. Common Core is stunting to that effort. And you simply do not social engineer the upper crust, they do the engineering. The second criticism is in what having an education really means. I was once impressed by expensive letters. How terribly foolish I was to ascribe to them so many qualities that were implied and not necessarily earned. To paraphrase Lowlight, ownership does not signify competency.
Because I keep ranting-deleting, ranting-deleting... I will quote someone far more eloquent:
"It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about thirty-five. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was—a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent—and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being canceled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled, is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.
...
But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “oh,” when people told me they went to a less prestigious college. (If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all. Elite institutions are supposed to provide a humanistic education, but the first principle of humanism is Terence’s: “Nothing human is alien to me.” The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from."
- William Deresiewicz
Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—William Hazlitt, 1821
Having been to the schools of both the haves, and the haves-not, I think the primary difference is with the parent (early on) and with the students (later on). Without a parent(s) or other role model capable of making a serious impression it is less likely for the child to pursue a good education. The problem of education in America will not be solved by think tanks, congressional sub-committees, or teachers unions. They will be solved, or not, in the home.
I have many criticisms about our educational system and there are two that are relevant to the conversation. The first criticism is social stratification. Does anyone here think that Common Core would fly at Andover? Not a fucking chance. Those kids are being prepped for an exceedingly competitive higher education and they look to be prepared in every way possible. Common Core is stunting to that effort. And you simply do not social engineer the upper crust, they do the engineering. The second criticism is in what having an education really means. I was once impressed by expensive letters. How terribly foolish I was to ascribe to them so many qualities that were implied and not necessarily earned. To paraphrase Lowlight, ownership does not signify competency.
Because I keep ranting-deleting, ranting-deleting... I will quote someone far more eloquent:
"It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about thirty-five. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was—a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent—and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being canceled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled, is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.
...
But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “oh,” when people told me they went to a less prestigious college. (If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all. Elite institutions are supposed to provide a humanistic education, but the first principle of humanism is Terence’s: “Nothing human is alien to me.” The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from."
- William Deresiewicz
Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—William Hazlitt, 1821
Having been to the schools of both the haves, and the haves-not, I think the primary difference is with the parent (early on) and with the students (later on). Without a parent(s) or other role model capable of making a serious impression it is less likely for the child to pursue a good education. The problem of education in America will not be solved by think tanks, congressional sub-committees, or teachers unions. They will be solved, or not, in the home.
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Well said, Mo. Mr. Deresiewicz nailed exactly what I was speaking of in an above post. Higher education has its values, bout one of those values is not in education for educations sake.
Now for a fun trip to Maggie's.
Now for a fun trip to Maggie's.
If you have Kumon in your area and you want to supplement the kids public ed I strongly recommend it. Sure it's aimed at the kids but really what it does is give parents direction and discipline to work with the kids nightly.
My kids get six lessons a week of a more traditional nature. My wife or I do the short lessons with the kids and one night a week for about 45 minutes we go to the franchise to go over the weeks work.
I think my kids are doing better than their peers in school due to the extra work.
My kids get six lessons a week of a more traditional nature. My wife or I do the short lessons with the kids and one night a week for about 45 minutes we go to the franchise to go over the weeks work.
I think my kids are doing better than their peers in school due to the extra work.
I will be teaching my kids math every darn night. They will not grow up ignorant. They will be doing 2 equations 2 unknowns in fifth grade and understand derivatives by high school. No math, no dinner. You logic for your food. ETA: this is hyperbole for those who will find this and try to use this in the future...
MTT and PM have, in my opinion, called out the crux of the problem. One needs to learn how to learn before formal education can be successful and that does not happen at school. I managed a $10+ mill annual budget from a large Tech company donating technology to local public schools. Ones skin color, zip code, etc had very little to do with students that learned more efficiently and achieved 'success' by common public educational standards. Students that had parent actively invested in thier education almost universally were ranked at the tops of their class.
The single biggest impediment to implementing new technologies, processes and ways of thinking.............. Teachers Unions.
If your child is not learning DO NOT point a finger at teachers/profs. Its no secret that the vast majority of them are not there to conduct a knowledge transfer. That has to come from you. True education is a 'pull' activity and not a 'push' activity.
Base 10 is nothing new to me. I was not taught this way when in school over thirty years ago but this is what I figured out as it made math easier for me.
Starting at about 8th grade through high school I used to fail math tests because I did not show work so teachers thought I was cheating. Not sure why or how but numbers/answers came to me as I was some how able to do math in my head. Not until teachers threw equations at me and I gave them answers from my head did they wonder how I got answer. Most teachers passed me with 65's or similar because I could not show work.
Above doesn't mean much except "Whatever works to obtain answer is what works for individual."
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[MENTION=18615]rdsii64[/MENTION], this cannot be the case. Common Core has brought us fiction merged into fact. Common Core is born of a philosophy that has transitioned us from the medieval world, at last dying an uneasy death thanks to the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. Or maybe, just maybe, it's that schools serve the political and economic order in which they operate, and whether they deserve a passing or a failing grade begs the prior question asking what it is they’re supposed to teach. The answers change with time and circumstance.
Addressing a meeting of the New York City High School Teachers Association in 1909, Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, set forth the requirements of America’s newborn industrial civilization. “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education,” he said, “and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific manual tasks.” The revised purpose of an education in America displaced Jefferson’s hope of a citizen schooled to the tasks of self-government and encouraged “to judge for himself what would secure or endanger his freedom.” Wilson as president of the United States in 1917 deleted the civics lesson with his promulgation of the Espionage Act, which marked as criminal any word or action unaligned with the imperative of “the national defense.”
"There are two big problems with the hysteria from right-wing critics and teachers’ unions over Common Core: lack of easily available alternatives with comparable rigor to Common Core standards, and timing."
- Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post 5/14/14
I wonder how it is that Rubin, a Berkeley educated lawyer, cannot for herself divine an academic philosophy more, or at least equal to, the rigor presented by Common Core? Perhaps she missed the 5th grade "trick" that rdsii64 alluded to, in addition to side-stepping the last few millennium of educational theory and practice. To Rubin it may all seem lost in time and remains buried in the historical obscurities of the 1970's and under the blinding lights of a disco ball. If indeed our national education is suffering relative to past achievements, maybe we ought to look at how we achieved the summit from which we have slipped. To me it seems Wilsonians are alive and doing well at the Washington Post.
The message of the Wilsonites to the proletariat is that to operate outside the realm of Common Core (as several posters have vowed to do) is to dabble in forbidden arts, and about as useful as smuggling into your course of study old wives’ spells and absurd love-charms designed to endanger innocent folk. I wonder, more like worry, how we as Americans will digest Common Core and what will come out on the other end.
"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."
—E. M. Forster, 1951
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That's what I'm saying.
Am I the only person who DOES think that's a better way of teaching it?
