Posted on 07/04/2014 1:37:17 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
The Education Establishment went way too far, and this has presented the country with a unique opportunity for real improvement of the public schools.
As never before, parents across the United States will tell you emphatically that they hate Common Core, and they especially hate Common Core Math.
The Education Establishment will try to maneuver around this revulsion. Compromises will be offered. The same dumb ideas will be repackaged as something new and wonderful. The challenge is to refuse to compromise. Sometimes a good thing, compromise is now the biggest threat to genuine reform.
Our Education Establishment has been selling inferior goods for more than half a century. They know how to bait and switch, and how to lie. Ordinary citizens stand little chance against these cunning maneuvers. So let’s keep it strategically simple. Go for total victory. Reform Math should be discarded, inane root and goofy branch.
By way of background, Reform Math comprises a dozen separate but similar math curricula created in the 1980s. The most hated of these is Everyday Math (Mathland used to be the most hated, but it has been buried, which is what we need in every case.) Here are some of the other titles: College Preparatory Math, Connected Math, Core-Plus Mathematics, Discovering Math, Number Power, Interactive Mathematics, Investigations Math, Trailblazers, Chicago Math.
But why did the experts create so many basically interchangeable programs? The answer is that when a community learned to hate one of them, the experts could say, Okay, you win; let’s try this one. And they bounced the people sideways from one bad program to the next. If you like cynical, you have to love this.
During the 1960s, the Education Establishment watched New Math, in development for a long time, crash and burn in a few years....
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yep, been there, done that (many times):
Mathland —
My kids were guinea pigs with this one. I couldn’t do much to help. No books, pages were xeroxed at school. Homework was different than the day’s lesson at school. Kids hated it. They hated me trying to help, because I was ‘teaching’ and off track with what was going on at school. One son was flunking Geometry, but scored gold star in Calif Geometry exams. (He knew his stuff, but school method was a disaster.)
During the 1960s, the Education Establishment watched New Math, —
My younger brother got caught in this one. He was getting stuff in grade school that I was getting in HS Math Theory. I could discuss ‘sets’, etc. He was just not ready for that, and suffered because of it.
I thank God that I slalomed between the crappy math offerings. I had the traditional add, subtract, mult, divide, memorize the tables. Then a little pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, adv. algebra, then “Math Analysis”. Math Analysis as an HS Senior was what they are trying to give kids today in the early grades. We got logs, trig, square roots of negative numbers, number systems, math principles at that time (not before; not needed before).
I had good, math-smart, and caring HS math teachers. Did me well all through college (and to this day).
I tell the parents of kids I tutor - Make sure your kids learn math the way you learned it. The approach they are using today comes from Bachelor PhD Math Professors who do not remember ever having LEARNED math. The kids will still have to know long division, borrowing and carrying, fractions, multiplication tables. IF they do not learn this in school, make absolutely sure you teach them.
I can do what I can do to help the kids learn these things, but parents must carry the burden as well.
“But why did the experts create so many basically interchangeable programs? “
Money.
My son went tru Saxon math in school. He got a perfect math SAT score. I highly recommend Saxon!
If parents have to carry the burden, they might as well homeschool. Either that or send their kids to private school.
It must be maddening for parents to have to pay taxes for schools that don’t educate their children.
I attended a Jesuit prep school so long ago that the Jebbies were still Catholic. I have kept my textbooks. The math texts we used were vastly inferior to Saxon. My wife teaches Saxon Math (among other subjects) to junior high and high school students at a parent owned private academy which pays serious attention to academic excellence.
What the parents don’t realize is the common core is a front for a big data trove on students/families that can be shared with who knows! Pre-K through career! Michelle Maulkin warned everybody.
Parents are very aware of data mining. That’s the main reason why they are opposed to commiecore.
How about this? Your local schools are bad, so you either homeschool or find a nice private school. But you still PAY for those Marxists to cram their stuff down the throats of the next generation. So it’s aggravating and turns your stomach. I have always thought taxes could have a list. “You may use my taxes for the following:” and then you check ONLY the things that you support. There, the people speak.
I know it’s HOPELESS here, even on FREE REPUBLIC, but I’ll state the obvious anyway:
This article makes it clear that Common Core is nothing new, it is just picking up with Mathland, Everyday Math, and all the other garbage left off.
Some of us have actually FOLLOWED WHAT WAS GOING ON - for decades in my case. Some of us put two and two together and figured out that the people running education, most of whom HATED math (which is why they’re stuck in ‘education’), are the LAST PEOPLE you ever want to trust in teaching math (or for that matter, reading) to your kids.
There are OTHER OPTIONS (believe it or not). Many of us, me included, simply looked at grade school as nothing more than DAYCARE and taught our kids ourselves, and got them WAY AHEAD of their grade level. Others use after school learning centers, which actually work (how do you think Asians do so well here...when their immigrant parents are otherwise clueless in understanding this country?) It’s not hard...in countries like Singapore and Russia, even students that are considered learning-impaired are still years ahead of “normal” students in the United States.
But no matter what I post, no matter what my kids accomplish, 90% (or more) of you FReepers WILL STILL send your kids to that public school and still hope and pray that things will turn out differently - because you pay PROPERTY TAXES and dammit, you are going to make those schools teach your kids right (as if they care, at all, what you say). And I know, it’s one or the other - either I abused my kids by making them learn reading and math early, rather than playing video games - or they are simply geniuses and no other kids can do as well (except for the billion or so in Asia).
So, go back to listening the smiling teacher and the principal with his 7 degrees in “Education” (they ALWAYS brag about their degrees) and let them show you how Everyday Math and daily calculator use (often starting in Kindergarten) will make your kids the next Einstein, because they will develop “higher order thinking skills”.
...but remember, YOU WERE WARNED.
Exactly.
They treat a simple math problem like a geometry proof. Umpteen steps to do simple division. WTH? No wonder kids can’t count back change. They can, if you give them 5 minutes and a pen and paper to write out a formal proof.
One poster insists that I am **personally** insulting him when I, too, post the truth.
I also believe that it is hopeless. Very few conservatives understand or recognize the threat that the public socialist-entitlement and single-payer K-12 schools ( which preach godlessness) are to this nation’s freedom.
Experiencing the same thing with my youngest son who just finished freshman year in high school. He aced Algebra and Algebra-II in Junior High, Geometry he barely made a C grade his Freshman year.
This common core crap doesn't TEACH the kids anything. And the "methods?" Teachers print out the assignments, tell the kids to "work through it for themselves and in groups" and don't INSTRUCT the kids at all.
Purchased "Geometry for Dummies" and he flew through the book with some assistance from Wife and I and was able to learn an entire Freshman year of Geometry in the last 6 weeks.
The schools -- public AND private -- are a disaster. Even the private schools here are doing it!!
It can be proven that government socialist-entitlement and single-payer school are NOT NOT NOT religiously neutral. No school can be because such a philosophic state of religious, political, and cultural neutrality can NOT NOT NOT exist in the mind of any sentient human being.
Government schools are establishing the religious philosophy of godlessness and that is NOT religiously neutral and actively undermines the religious faith of those children who come from God-centered families. The children who are forced into godless school MUST MUST MUST think and reason godlessly just to cooperate in the godless classroom. How could it be otherwise?
Why should any taxpayer be under police and court threat to pay for the **ACTIVE** destruction of their religious worldview.
Maybe some smart and aggressive attorney could challenge this in court before all courts in this nation are filled with godless MarxOfascist judges who just can't wait to persecute Christians.
Bruce,
You post here but rarely respond to the comments.
And....GIVE IT UP!
The only way you will see the reform that you seek is to abolish the government owned and run single-payer ( and GODLESS) K-12 schools.
Goldi,
Funny, I have to admit I didn’t think of your name commiecore, even as I believe it is quite correct. (I’ve got a piece coming out next week titled “Education: none dare call them Commies.”) All the nonsense in the schools makes complete nonsense when you ask, “Well, what would Commies do?”
It can take days to write an article like this; so people know exactly what I have to say on a subject.
I don’t want to seem to be lecturing. On the other hand, when people ask me questions, I answer them.
But you, all you’ve ever said to me for five years, or is it eight, is give it up. As I’ve tried to explain to you, give it up is not a position I’m interested in. The country stopped Common Core; I like to think I’m one of the people who helped do that. We’re not going to get anywhere with the expression give it up. In fact, my agenda is to make the public so pissed off they will fight back. So if give it up is all you’ve got to say, you can’t expect me to answer that. Having one answer for all occasions is rarely a help. We have to be strategically and tactically clever. What can we accomplish now and in the near future —that is what interests me.
**That** is the problem. Expecting to see the reforms you seek from a service whose market government has totally corrupted through its price-conrtoled monopoly is not rational.
And....No, you have not beaten back Common Core. It may hid for a few years but it will be back with a reinvented name. It's like playing “Wack-a-Mole”.
Parents would be much better served if they were educated about the fundamental corruption of government schooling and urged to remove their children. Expecting to reform a single-payer socialist-entitlement run from top to bottom by Marxists is like spreading icing on a poop cake.
Solution:
We must get as many children out of the government single-payer schools as possible. This saves the kids and starves the beast of money.
Begin the process of privatizing all K-12 schooling. The ultimate goal must be complete separation of school and state.
There are entire counties and even whole states in this nation where, if conservatives and Christians simply remove their children, the entire abominable system of single-payer and socialist-entitlement schooling would immediately collapse.
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