Posted on 10/01/2014 6:36:29 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
As we’ve noted before, when proponents of the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms try to make the case for the program, they often end up giving material to its opponents.
Case in point: the Center for American Progress (CAP), in a recently released report on The Cognitive Science Behind the Common Core, attempted to show how much easier Common Core math is than traditional means of mathematical problem-solving:
“Elizabeth is at the grocery store buying fruit for the week. She wants to purchase $7.60 worth of apples with a $20.00 bill. How much change should the cashier return to Elizabeth? Illustrate your answer. Using the traditional method, the student would simply write:
$20.00
-$7.60
=$12.40
“However, this does not teach the student to do math as it is done in everyday life; it simply involves plugging new numbers into an algorithm learned through hours of rote memorization. Under the Common Core, the student instead would follow a process similar to Elizabeth’s actual mental computation while standing at the register:
$7.60 + $.40 = $8.00
$8.00 + $2.00 = $10.00
$10.00 + $10.00 = $20.00
“The cashier should give Elizabeth $12.40 in change.
“This is exactly how someone with a strong grasp of numeracy does calculations on a daily basis. Furthermore, solving the problem in this way teaches the relationship between different values far more effectively than the traditional method of plugging numbers into a formula. It is critical that students grasp the concepts behind subtraction before they rely solely on the traditional algorithm.”
I’d really like to see them try this in Starbuck’s at rush hour.
“No government educational initiative, be it federal, state, or local, even a private one, will ever bring students up to speed or have them reach the bar, as we use these strange gymnastics terms to discuss education,” Ulf Kirchdorfer avers in an essay which appeared on the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “The reality is that many teachers, whether prompted by supervisors or of their own volition, continue to pass students so that we have that we have many that reach college with the most basic of literacy skills, in English, math, science, the foreign languages.”
Kirchdorfer is a professor of English at Darton State College. “Tired of listening to some of my colleagues complain of college students being unable to write, I went to look at learning outcomes designed for students in secondary education, and sure enough, as I had suspected, even a junior high, or middle-school, student should be able to write a formulaic, basic five-paragraph theme,” he recalled. “Guess what. Many college students, even graduating ones, are unable to do so.”
“For many years the state of Georgia had a kind of graduation test, the Regents’ Essay, which was required for any student of any institution in the System, be it Georgia Tech or what was then Darton College, to obtain his or her four-year degree. There were cases of students taking this essay test a number of times reaching the double-digit range. The test has now been abandoned and other measures have been implemented to ensure literacy-competencies of college graduates.”
Wow, as one who started out with a double major in math and physics and consequently found advanced degrees quite easy due to the heavy math fosted upon me by that first major, I’m sooooooo glad that these education doofuses (spelled correctly?) were not around to ruin me before I learned from intelligent teachers.
Find these folks, tie them up, burn them, and launch their ashes into the sun.
Now!
I recall when they instituted the “New Math”. That too was a colossal failure.
$7.60 worth of apples? That’s alot of apples.
Doofi......................
I am not a math genius...I wish I were. I use Excel a lot and that plus logic gets me by. But this makes NO sense to me. How did they come up with the last step - the $10 + $10 ?? Why did they have to add up to $38 to figure out the change of 12.40?
Seems to me it’s much easier to do it the regular way - .40 to make it to 8.00 and 12.00 to get from 8.00 to 20.00
The only way to learn the multiplication tables is by rote memorization. 3rd grade students had to memorize the entire set from 1x1 to 12x12 when I was a kid. I have heard some places went as high as 15x15.................
You can learn arithmetic the way they are teaching Common Core, sure.
But without getting past “having to figure out the arithmetic”, you’ll never advance to any semi to advanced mathematics.
For that, the arithmetic has to be automatic, memorized, rote.
They want it to seem like it makes reasonable sense, when in fact they are simply preventing education.
“How much change should the cashier return to Elizabeth? “
The first thing Elizabeth should be taught is...
COUNT YOUR CHANGE rather than relying on Shaniqua to give you the correct change.
My 3rd grade grandaughter used to love math. Now it’s sheer torture for her & those who try to help.
Wrong answer; the correct response is she gets to keep none of it: hungry unemployed rob her outside the store, ‘cause they need to “get paid”.
I’m reminded of the story about Gauss when his teacher thought he would keep the class busy with the problem of adding up all the numbers between 1 and 100. I’ll bet the morons that came up with Common Core would look at Gauss’s work and fail him for not demonstrating the use of the techniques which they claim are how we really do math in our heads.
These morons’ obsession with eliminating rote memorization is also completely laughable in that they insist their inefficient algorithms be memorized. I would solve their simple math problem in my head quite differently and though I will arrive at the right answer, I will be marked wrong. What then is the purpose of Common Core if not to get everyone to think exactly the same. Just a little beyond that is to get people to accept that the correct way to think must be determined by our superior educators.
Common Core is setting education back, but isn’t that what the elitists want? Dumb, compliant and accepting dolts for citizens? And are not colleges obliging them?
As a former grocery store cashier, this is simply ‘counting back’ change. It’s a skill every teenage should know - but AFTER they learn how to do traditional addition and subtraction!
I wonder how many McWorkers can count back change. I bet most are completely dependent on the register to tell them the correct amount of change to give.
I can gather a couple of things from this example:
1. I must have missed something in school because I've never had an "actual mental computation" like that.
And
2. Elizabeth has trouble making timely decisions and is in need of therapy.
I was helping my 10 yr old grandson with his math homework this last weekend. I've work in the Apollo and Shuttle programs and couldn't figgure out what in the hell they were talking about!
I can gather a couple of things from this example:
1. I must have missed something in school because I've never had an "actual mental computation" like that.
And
2. Elizabeth has trouble making timely decisions and is in need of therapy.
I was helping my 10 yr old grandson with his math homework this last weekend. I've work in the Apollo and Shuttle programs and couldn't figgure out what in the hell they were talking about!
Nevermind...I guess I see it ....but not saying I like it. Seems like the long way around.
My kids found an app from India that goes up to 20X20. I figure they’re young and have plenty of spare brain cells right now. Why not...
You, sir, are much more qualified to teach math than those common core idiots.
No use trying to understand the convoluted logic of these science dropouts. There is a reason they are in “education” vs something useful. (No insult meant to real teachers, who are invaluable.)
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