As an elementary teacher, I can’t tell you how many of these “teacher indoctrination” sessions I suffered through concerning Common Core. Here is a true story:
A couple of years ago, (2010-11 school year) one of my colleagues attended a workshop with the intermediate school district on teaching math. At our grade level meetings (4th grade), this teacher relayed to us what she’d learned and what she had begun implementing in her classroom. They don’t want any division and multiplication problems used/taught in fourth grade. No pencil and paper work. They want the children to use “manipulatives” exclusively in fourth grade (manipulatives are blocks that they use in early el to teach math concepts.) One exercise she was particularly excited about was a division lesson in which the student used small pick-up trucks, blocks, math mats for their desks. They would load up the pick up truck with blocks, dividing a group of blocks to learn the concept of division. I was floored. I told her and the other fourth grade teacher I worked with at the time that I didn’t plan on using the new system, but was planning on sticking with the “old-fashioned” math. She told us the district would begin phasing-in this new system within a few years.
I had never thought of this before, but I'll bet it's true. This dumbed-down arithmetic is not to accomodate the students but the teachers. It's all they can handle. What do you say?