Here’s another impossibly stupid Common Core math worksheet

dailycaller.com ^ | January 22, 2014 | Eric Owens

[Leaning Right]

What in the world is wrong, or so difficult, as learning the multiplication tables, or “i” before “e”?

Nothing is wrong with that! From memorization comes knowledge. You cannot move forward in any field until you know the basics. And the basics are most efficiently acquired through memorization.

Sadly, this latest fad, Common Core, frowns on memorization and is trying to replace it with gimmicks. This will cripple a generation of students.

[MrB]

Indeed - that probably IS the true goal of common core.

To turn out handicapped kids incapable of critical thought.

The libs envision “Idiocracy” as a goal, only with them and their offspring who haven’t been handicapped leading the idiots they created.

[Reddy]

Memorization makes perfect sense for a child at this age because young children have a natural affinity for storing up tremendous amounts of information. Classical education calls it the trivium. The first stage is memorization of facts called the grammar stage. It isn’t until later that the next stage is reached, dialectic, where children are able to use the foundation/pegs of knowledge to reason.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Isaac Asimov had a book in the 60s called “Quick and Easy Math”. Popular Science magazine included excerpts in the December 1964 issue:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WCYDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA77&pg=PA77#v=onepage...

The technique shown on this test is nothing new. What IS new is shrouding a simple concept in incomprehensible gobbledygook so no sane person could understand it. Thanks, Education Establishment.

I put the tips in the PopSci article to great use immediately after I read them (8th grade) and still use them every day. Teaching these brilliant shortcuts to 9 year olds is just nuts because they haven’t mastered the basics.

[Svartalfiar]

[kitchen]

CC is kaka.

So now you want to introduce Greek into the equation?

[lacrew]

I have always used these types of methods when doing math. I can generally add 4 digit numbers together in my head, and multiply 2 digit numbers together in my head, accurately.

I remember in the 5th grade, I went to a math contest, and they had something called ‘ciphering’. They would flash a problem on a screen, and you had a few seconds to write an answer down - deliberately so quick it had to be done in your head. I won the event.

And I’ve spent my entire life doing math every day at my job (engineer). So this is a very good method.

Having said that - it is most definitely not a method that most kids can use. Throughout the years I have tried to explain how to do math in your head quickly...only people who are already real good at math can do it. I don’t think they should be teaching this at all.

[sheana]

I do that in my head for large numbers too I was helping my granddaughter one time at math when she was about 9 or 10 and she said how did you know the answer so quick? When I explained to her something like...I just added 10s and then subtracted 2 twice because...... she looked at me like I was nuts. Blank stare. Lol

[sheana]

This is nicely stated and absolutely correct.

[old and tired]

I do that when I’m computing large numbers.

Me too. And I'm known for being quick with addition. However, I picked it up on my own.

[MrB]

Can’t build a house without a foundation, and you can’t teach a child to think without a firm foundation in the grammar stage.

However, as another poster pointed out, we make a mistake in assuming that the authors of Common Core actually want an educated populace.

[Resolute Conservative]

My nieces and nephews in publik junior high do not have their multiplication tables memorized. They said they were told they don’t have to anymore.

Such crap.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Common Core was not developed by teachers, it was developed by big business and the governors association.

Actually, it was not developed by the Governors' Assn. It was 2 firms of lobbyists, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Governors signed on to get money grants and to get out of "No Child Left Behind". Now they are stuck. They can't get out without paying back the money that they took.

Text book and test publishers are behind Common Core too. But, if enough states opt out of this program, the text book publishers will follow with appropriate materials. I heard a lecture (anti Common Core) where a college professor says that you can take your child to any college administration and offer to take the college's own placement tests in English and Math, instead of the SAT. And the colleges will be happy to comply and admit your child without an SAT score.

Did you know that the head of the SAT also sits on one of the lobbyist groups behind Common Core? And Tuessday morning the SAT people announced that they were revising their tests andd their scoring methods.

[NorthMountain]

That’s an application of the Associative Property of Addition. It’s useful, as you say, for adding large numbers. Multiplication also has an Associative Property, and can be handled similarly. Again, it is useful for managing large numbers.

Seven is not a large number.

Memorizing that 7+7=14 is useful.

[nitzy]

The way I have always done (9 * x) is: (x-1) is the first number and 9-(x-1) is the second number.

So in (9 * 8)....the first number is one less than 8 (7) and the second number is what ever needs to be added to the first number to reach 9 (2)......72

[Bob]

Cat-skinning is only useful cooking and taxidermy. Math abilities are more widely applicable. :=)

[MamaTexan]

You can’t teach algebraic principles to,kids who are still learning basic math.

No, but you can so frustrate them trying to 'teach' them this intellectual swill to the point they no longer even TRY or WANT to learn....they just do what they're told.

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My twins graduated a few years back, and when they were in elementary school they were given some asinine homework with addition and subtraction by grouping into tens. I called the teacher at home to discover it was a backasswards way of what we called 'borrowing'- (but then, we spent a solid year just adding and subtracting different amounts with various-sized groups of numbers)

It was shortly afterward I discovered the lessons hopped back and forth in mathematical principals to the point they made little sense.

Kids in todays *educational* system no longer suffer through the angst of having to recite multiplication tables until they puke like their parents did.

[MamaTexan]

And Tuesday morning the SAT people announced that they were revising their tests and their scoring methods.

I freaked when I saw that! Wrong answers will no longer count against you.... WTH? Why bother taking the test, then, buddy! Just give me my grade!

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The 'Everybody Gets a Trophy' method of education! ACK!

[RightField]

When each of my kids turned 3, I hung a multiplication table (one that went all the way up to 12x12) in their room. I got it from a teacher supply store. I never mentioned it or asked them to look at it.

Years later, when it came time to learn multiplication, wonder of wonders, they had already memorized not only the chart, but lots of relationships between the numbers as well.

[PieterCasparzen]

You can only really learn the short cuts when you’ve mastered the topic. Using shortcuts before that inhibits the learning process because you have no way to verify if your shortcut is a valid one because you cannot compare with the longer method.

This gets at the core of why there are so many stinky computer programmers.

One must first understand exactly "what" is being done by an algorithm.

Then one can reduce the algorithm to its simplest form, i.e., get "what's done" done in the fewest possible steps.

Most of the time in the business world programmers jump in and start coding without "getting it", the "big picture" of what they are actually trying to get to happen.

This is ALWAYS going from A -> B. It's a transition from one "state" to another, final state.

What is normal today ? We would have a set of programs, starting with an initial input of some data, which is then mish-mashed six ways to Sunday to wind up with various results.

A -> C -> D -> R -> Q -> Z -> M -> W -> B

I ask them, what are you doing ? Why are you writing program R ? What is the point ?

Well, R is the flux capacitor, we have to R every D. The D's all have to be R'd.

I ask, do you understand the whole process ? Yes, they know that there are many steps to the whole process. But rather than question anything, they dutifully focus microscopically on their D -> R program. And even at that, they struggle mightily. They write some code. Their changes don't work. They are baffled by the code they just wrote.

The whole key, of course, is really understanding, having a completely clear picture, of what it means to A -> B. Exactly what IS A, exactly what is B, exactly what are the differences. Then how do we most efficiently make the transformation - hint, there may be intermediate steps that are very efficient, that provide for a robust program that can restart anywhere in the middle, that provide a full record of the A -> B transformation, but these need to be no more than absolutely necessary to do the transformation.

Learning programming "tips & tricks", gimmicks, the latest language du jour, that's all waste and confusion. The way to become a competent programmer is to really understand the basics of math very well. Only when one really understands the "what" can one simplify the "how".