Posted on 02/26/2021 9:21:03 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
I homeschooled my boys.
Most of their elementary years were tons of reading, and memorizing math rules (like multiplication tables), history and science facts.
It wasn’t until middle school they began to learn to learn how to take the facts they learned and how to apply them to real life situations, or how to write about the concepts.
I see now so many schools try to get young kids to analyze or write about topics before their brains are even able to do that.
Every teacher I know that has had to use common core hates it. My son took some online classes in high school and while they did not advocate common core, they did explain the concepts only because it would show up on the SAT. My son thought it was the stupidest thing ever.
Sadly, teachers are told to discourage rote and recitation, which are necessary tools in the learning toolbox. If a student is not allowed to have or not given the proper tools, a student will not only have trouble learning, but be discouraged to learn.
> I do blame the teachers. If they were more interested in the kids instead of their union benefits, things would be different. <
How different? No teacher can successfully challenge school board policies for long, and get away with it. It doesn’t matter whether their benefits are their number one priority, or no priority at all.
I was a physics teacher for many years. And for some unfathomable reason, I was told that I must not teach the concept of “torque” anymore. Torque was no longer an approved topic. Teaching an unapproved topic was a firing offense. It was called “infidelity to the curriculum”.
Well, I taught torque anyway. It was just too central to mechanics to be ignored! And I got away with it - of my supervisors didn’t even know what torque was. I was close to retirement anyway. If I was caught, I’d be able to retire before all the firing paperwork was finalized.
But good teachers I know did get fired. For example, a friend of mine would dress up as Shakespeare when he covered Shakespeare’s works. But that was not in the curriculum! He was fired. And since he didn’t have tenure yet, he was fired quickly. Gotta make an example of those rebels!
I wish I were kidding. But I’m not. And notice that nothing here involved unions, or union benefits. (And by the way, yes, teacher unions are corrupt. But that has no effect on curriculum.)
(Sorry for the rant.)
So your teacher’s union support those firings?
What I have seen in WV teacher’s union & school boards work hand in glove against the parent & taxpayer. Both have a sweet gig at the expense of teh taxpayer its their interest to work together.
> So your teacher’s union support those firings? <
Absolutely. And please remember I’m talking about good teachers being unjustly fired. I don’t know about other unions. But our union did nothing.
And here’s why. When I first started teaching, our union leaders were corrupt, but they had our backs. Many of those guys had worked in the mills. Some were military veterans. We were a priority for them.
Our current union leaders are corrupt (nothing has changed there), but now they are focused on the school board’s progressive agenda. Unfair firings are no longer a priority.
It’s a fair question to ask how those corrupt union officials keep on getting elected. I could tell you stories that would make Stalin blush.
Teachers were my heros. I thought teachers were the smartest people on the planet. Then I grew up and discovered that most teachers aren’t very bright.
The WV twist on the alliance is, in several counties I am personally familiar with you have.
Family members occupying school board positions, teaching positions (union members), and have school administrator positions (principals & such!).
It's one big happy family ot nepotism & control.
So now you know why a fast-food clerk cannot do basic math.
= = =
I hand them bills and change, so my returning change will come out even, or minimal.
Some times they think I am trying to rip them off.
A college friend told me that the only way to pass Organic Chemistry was to memorize the entire book. He was right.
I took both Organic Chemistry I and II, and your friend sure was right. Memorization was the key there.
But I had a friend who thought he had a better way. Our Organic I professor was fond of True/False questions. And something around 50% right was passing. So my friend decided to mark “True” for every question on the final exam. No need to even read the question. Pass Organic I, then move on to bigger and better things.
Well, every last question on that exam was false! Moral of the story: One should never tempt fate in Organic Chemistry.
Happily his dad was a teacher in another school in the same district and when he found out about it got him transferred to another class where the teacher was actually competent.
The second teacher used drills rather then abstract explanations and lectures about the Beauty of Numbers.
Most people are not math nerds. They can do math the same way they can drive a car without knowing how to rebuild the engine.
Or read a book without knowing how to write a world class play.
Most of us hit in the middle. We can handle higher maths if it is taught to us correctly. The current curriculum does not want to do it that way. It designed to get us accustomed to having elites who can do things and the rest of us are dumb and should get used to being at the bottom.
First I will answer the question of whether math is for all of us? The answer depends on how much we need to understand. Common core mixes understanding and “turn the crank” type of math processing. To me, the teacher needs to be fluent in understanding why all this works. The students can fall short of understanding if they can get the answer by following the required steps. (Think of long division for example)
Math has always expected that the student will stop somewhere along the way. (I had a lot of college math, but not number theory— our son had to take college calculus even though his major was in the business field.) In my HS teaching we expected what was called eight grade level for a diploma. Many students stopped there but many more went on to Algebra and Geometry — BTW, Geometry was often the deciding skill set for going farther in math.
Now, the question of how to intermix the understanding part with the problem solution part. This is (has) always been a dilemma for teaching math. As a teacher, I always loved it when I saw the light brighten a bit as my student actually understood how the math worked. Many teachers do not know this part of math themselves, and it is easy to hide this in a class, but you will end up giving poor answers to student’s questions. (Why is a fraction written with a division sign between the two numbers? Can all numbers be represented as a division?)
The best hope is to keep working to get good people into the profession of teaching — the unions do not stress this, because they are defensive and protective for the staff who want the jobs without the skill set to teach well. (OK, this is my opinion — not easy to prove)
Common core requires a higher level of skill set to intermix understanding of why math is useful and how to get solutions and at the same time teach step by step process and repetition. This in my view is why math keeps looking for a solution to organize the teaching. But common core, spends a lot of time explaining what the subject lesson is to be named. Don’t get me wrong, I respect that subjects have to be clear, both in the teacher’s notes and the student’s expectations. But we really don’t use the names much after this do we?
#4 One thing to remember is never stand in front of the reactor when the door is open....
Perhaps memorization has something to do with expanding, developing and exercising the brain so that problem solving skills follow. We also use to read voraciously, learn a second language and play musical instruments.
I spent part of a summer moonlighting coaching kids on the ACT for one of the big name tutoring companies. Found out they were essentially a fraud and never went back. But in the meantime the kids I worked with were mostly hopeless at math - couldn’t add 2 + 2 without a calculator.
If you don’t have your basic arithmetic facts embedded in your brain you cannot be good at math.
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