Posted on 10/03/2014 5:09:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
The other night I could hear my wife and third-grade daughter talking heatedly about something. I assumed they were having an argument. But eavesdropping on the raised voices, I realized that was not it. They were both loudly, angrily complaining about my daughter's math homework.
Her assignment involved one of several methods of subtraction she must learn. The way most people learn to subtract -- carrying numbers and borrowing -- is derisively called the "Granny Method" and is discouraged. The task at hand the other night involved subtracting using the "Counting-Up Subtraction Method."
This method of subtracting actually uses addition. For example, like the example given in the book, subtracting 38 from 325 can be derived by counting up. Raise 38 to 40, by going up 2. Raise 40 to 100 by going up 60. Raise 100 to 300 by going up 200. Raise 300 to 325 by going up 25. Then add the jumps together so that 2 + 60 + 200 + 25 = 287. That would be the answer.
There is only one page in the textbook that explains the "Counting-Up Subtraction Method," and that is the only example given. Again, this is third grade.
A few weeks ago, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News showed a video of a teacher explaining the method. The teacher was trying to explain that counting by 10s was happy and counting outside of 10s was somehow bad. The video hysterically showed how mind numbing the Common Core is in practice.
My wife thought the video was exaggerated. She knew it would never actually happen in our private, Christian school. Then she and my third-grader arrived at that very type of math. Our school did not want to be in the middle of this, but it has no choice. Standardized tests are headed in that direction. If children are going to be competent on standardized tests, schools have no choice.
What makes the whole ordeal more aggravating are the Common Core advocates who say these horror shows of math are not in the standards. The Common Core, put together by states and corporations intent on training up new cogs for the industrial machines of billionaires, just want common standards across the nation.
Nowhere in the Common Core are students mandated to learn how to add to subtract. But they are, for example, required to "understand multi-digit numbers (up to 1000) written in base-10 notation, recognizing that the digits in each place represent amounts of 1000s, 100s, 10s, or ones," according to the second-grade standard.
Textbook publishers have responded with various textbooks put together helpfully by people involved in developing the Common Core. Various textbook companies have all come to the conclusion that multiple bizarre subtraction methods are necessary and are related to "base-10 notation." Common Core supporters say the problem is not the standards, but the implementation of the standards.
This sounds like ivy-league marxists claiming the problem with communism was not the theoretical system, but as it was implemented by multiple societies around the world. No one has yet to get it right, but the ivy-league marxists are still convinced it is not communism per se that is the problem.
Compounding the issue is that the biggest advocates of Common Core tend to be 20-something to 40-something childless white men who are affiliated with various pro-business, pro-Republican think tanks, trade associations and the Chamber of Commerce. They are not having to help a third-grader do her homework at night, but want Mom to know the Common Core is really awesome if only everybody in academia would get it right.
My wife has a degree in computer programming and finds herself in lockstep with more and more mothers across the nation who just want to tar and feather the geniuses who came up with Common Core. This issue, once under the radar, is going to be keep growing into a major political issue as more and more mothers are less and less able to help their children with homework.
As I see it, the problem with common core Math is that it is very focused on getting kids to understand the why instead of the how. If kids can borrow and carry, that’s good enough. If they never learn the why behind it, they can still lead full lives as functioning adults. They can keep their own books, leave a proper tip in a restaurant, and not get cheated out of money. All this why is mucking up the works and making kids less able to become functioning adults.
Counting outside 10s is bad?
I guess that proves once and for all that there really are only 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand the binary number system, and those who don't.
Okay, fine. So how do you "check" your answer?
In our day, you would reverse the process.
For instance, doing it the way we were taught. To check that the correct answer was 287, we would take that and add it to the the number we were supposed to have subtracted.
How do you do this in this process without ever actually subtracting?
What if a kid accidentally rounded 100 up to 200 instead of 300? He would've come up with 187 instead of 287.
How do you show him the error of his arithmetic without actually subtracting?
“I’m OK, You’re OK!”
“You have your Truth, I’ll have mine”
“Everything is Relative”
“Reality is Relative”
Once you throw out the Benchmark and Compass, getting lost is simple for a culture.
“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,” Romans 1:21,22
We tutor elementary kids and they were taught this method. It enslaves them to using their hands, and they make a LOT of mistakes! I was angry that they would do this to the kids. How encumbering and ridiculous! Not only that, but I tried to show the kids a couple tricks to make it easier and they told me they’d get in trouble using ANYTHING but what the teacher taught them!
It reminds me of when my own kids were in Algebra and the textbook was teaching a ridiculous method. I showed them the method simply, but they could not see that because it was missing half the “steps” their teacher taught them, but they could NOT get the right answer using her method because it was so easy to make a mistake! K.I.S.S. has always been the best method of teaching almost ANYTHING!
Common Core dreamt up by some Godless left wing educrat working on a doctoral thesis is blamed on the obvious suspects. They only missed claiming, "it's Bush's fault," by a fraction.
“My wife has a degree in computer programming and finds herself in lockstep with more and more mothers across the nation who just want to tar and feather the geniuses who came up with Common Core.”........
The best and ONLY way this is going to stop is to get EVERY Mom and Dad in this country to call, seek out and harass their congress and senate representatives to dump Common Core in the garbage because that is what it is. This, and every other advanced country in the world, has gotten along quit well without CC math and today’s modern technology proves it.
I’m a homeschool mom with a young child (she’s five). I’ve already made sure I have her middle-school and high school math textbooks (well, have claimed them from a relative, to be acquired at a more convenient time) because with this common core nonsense, I don’t trust that there will be good sources available in ten years. This common core nonsense is worse for homeschoolers than a lot of other educational fads because it’s going to effect the tests.
Oh well. So I have to add a few hours of instruction on how they want you to answer before she takes standardized tests. We’ll manage.
Ping
” is derisively called the “Granny Method” and is discouraged”
Si Common Core is another part of the agenda to destroy traditional culture. Your granny did so it can’t be any good. Only new “progressive” ways are acceptable. Granny knew her arithmetic.
From dosage help.com:
"Question: Give patient 12.6 mg of dopamine in 137 mL of D5W to be infused at a rate of 18 mg/hr. Calculate the flow rate in mL/hr. "
or
"Phenytoin (Dilantin), 0.1 g PO, is ordered to be given through a nasogastric tube. Phenytoin is available as 30 mg / 5 mL. How much would the nurse administer? "
I prefer doing those of calculations with pencil & paper the old fashioned way. I always had my cheat sheet of formulas at hand because not all are as easy as:
"Ordered Lasix 40 mg IV push now. Available: 80 mg in 1 mL. How much will the nurse draw up? "
(sigh)....I remember the first New Math. It so confused the hell out of me as a first-grader that I never did get the hang of that subject, which really hamstrung my academic career.
When will these morons in ivory towers quit monkeying with things that worked perfectly fine for centuries?
The way to kill "Old Math" for good would be to label it "Eurocentric Math."
***I hadn’t realized that Common Core was a Republican plot.***
This was news to me as well.
I used the rote, “Granny” method to teach my youngest to read, his dad did the math with a program he wrote for the old Commodore 64. We took a child the teacher said was disabled in math and reading from D’s to A/B in both subjects in just a matter of a few months.
I got every Dick and Jane style book from the library. And when I got tired of telling him the word WE for the 20th time, I turned him over my knee and spanked him. He never forgot words again. He read to me every night, and did math with his dad every night. First thing that had to be taught was to SIT STILL and CONCENTRATE. He learned because he knew he’d not be allowed out side until he did what was required.
You use math every day for cooking to shopping. You do not have time for CC nonsense math to do those things. I do them mentally, these kids would need a high priced calculator.
Agree 100%. The way I describe the fallacy of that is to compare it to my college days as a swimming instructor. If we had taught the kids the "why" of swimming and buoyancy and body mechanics, they'd never swim.
The "how" comes first in anything. "Why" comes from experience. Figuring out the "why" on ones own leads to creativity and invention.
(oh....I have a petty gripe about "borrow". "Regrouping" is better because the number isn't being given back.)
My BS meter pegged when I read this statement. Our daughter and SIL were discussing this not long ago. She used to teach middle school science and had enough trouble getting her students regular math, much less something this complicated.
First & foremost a child must learn the concept of subtraction, & must understand it equally as well as addition. Counting Up Subtraction doesn’t satisfy that requirement. Actually, it is a crutch for those who have not mastered the SIMPLE concept of subtraction.
And if you don’t understand subtraction, then you are doomed with negative numbers.
Now, I am just as befuddled with Common Core math as the next guy, but isn't this just the process we would expect the cashier to use when making change?
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