Posted on 10/06/2014 1:47:52 PM PDT by therightliveswithus
Imagine a teacher asks you to solve this question: 568-293. Depending on your age you might do one of three things...
...Third, you might use the new common core was to subtract, which is much simpler, with only... 10 steps.
First, you would take the 200 out of the 293, and save the 93 for later. Then you would take 568 and subtract 200 from it. Then you'd take the remaining 368 and you would subtract 60 from it, because you are taught that, for some reason, you cannot simply subtract 90 from 368. 368-60 equals 308. Then you subtract 30 from 308 because, again, for some reason 368-90 doesn't exist. 308-30 equals 278. Then you take the three that is left over from 293-290, because you already subtracted 200, 60, and 30 from 293 to get three, and you minus that 3 from the remaining 278 that you got from subtracting 290 from 568. Still following? Good, because one you minus 3 from 278, you get the answer of 275! Then, you double check your answer by adding up 200 + 60 + 30 + 3 to get 293, which is the number you subtracted from 568. Much, much more complicated than the other two methods and an over-complification of a simple problem. More than that, the way to figure out this problem is literally more than the other two methods combined.
This is an actual common core problem which, hilariously, tries to tell students its a mere three steps:
(Excerpt) Read more at thepunditpress.com ...
I don’t get why teaching long addition or long subtraction is suddenly some kind of antiquated way of solving problems like this... it still requires thinking and it takes less time!
Do you have any sources for that? I would just LOOOOVVVE to keep that handy information in reserve for some special relatives of mine. :-]
(Because educators are the smartest people in their little world.)
I even tried again as an adult, but got completely lost when it got to sines. Fortunately 99% of people never actually need to know algebra in their adult lives.
How is it considered “common” when no one anywhere has ever done it this way? If I had been paid by the hour for all of the tables of rote math I performed in grade school, year after year I would be rich. We did tables until I could recite any calculation of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division in seconds - and for years ever after you could wake me from a sound slumber and ask me any basic math question and I’d blurt out the answer - still within seconds. The function of doing math at the basic level is not important enough to do it using this kind of method. The value of rote memorization is that you retrieve the answer from the old memory bank. The value of muddled cross-skipping is? What? Anybody know?
That’s a trick we learned in 3rd grade or so...
My 4th grader’s teacher is hyped up on some kind of new math meth.
one more thing...
She has been told by those managing the Common Core process in her district that it will probably take somewhere around 13 years of failure before you start seeing success with type of program.
Your kids are screwed if you are relying on the Public School system to adequately educate your children.
I think Common Core is intended to isolate the children, make them children of the “state” by convincing them that their parents don’t know anything (Common Core) but the teachers at school know everything. Parents can’t help kids with their homework but the school can. I think it’s a means to train the children to look outside the home for knowledge.
I’ve learned more about reading, writing, and arithmetic from the homeschooling curriculums we use than I did in thirteen years of public school! My kids will NEVER be exposed to the same nonsense I had to deal with.
I’ll also give credit where credit is due and note that just reading Free Republic for the past five years has improved my spelling, my writing, my reading comprehension, my vocabulary, and my ability to see through media BS!
Slow down folks. I haven’t even put the numbers on paper yet.
Let’s see now. Was it 593 or 275? Geez, I’m confused.
I was helping my son with his Common Core math homework the other day. The topic was mean (average), median (middle element in a set) and mode (the most frequently occurring element in a set).
The last question read something on the lines of “The term (mean, median, mode) best describes the following: 1,1,3,5,7,7,12.”
I sent the teacher a note saying the question was absolute gibberish. None of those terms can describe a set. They each can describe a particular property of the set (i.e., the mean would be approx. 5.1, the median would be 5, and the modes would be 1 and 7), but the terms cannot describe the set.
The teacher agreed with me, and just gave all students a correct answer on the question regardless of what answer they gave.
High schools in China do not allow the use of electronic calculators. All calculations are performed by hand. I found this out when a chinese college mate quickly found the square root of a number by hand. Intrigued, I asked, and got the explanation above.
It is worse than that. I teach 5th grade Math. They don’t want us to call it “borrowing” any more. The correct term now is “regrouping.” I actually had a negative comment on an evaluation once because I said “borrow” instead of “regroup.” As far as how I actually teach how to solve the referenced problem, I only teach the so called “long subtraction” method.
As this example illustrates, it is not the teacher who is the problem. It is the educational elite who come up with this crap and then dictate that teachers use it.
Good point, I would add whether it is intended to do that or not, that is what it is doing.
Isolating parents from children.
“Your kids are screwed if you are relying on the Public School system to adequately educate your children.”
My kids are screwed because my health prevents me from doing more than supplementing—or contradicting—what they get at school.
I tried to homeschool, but I was not able to do it.
Whatever method is used, has to give the student the ability to look at an arithmetic problem and know right and wrong...if they are doing calculation on a machine. Machines can replace our drudge work calculations, after they have become drudge work, not before.
My parents would not allow any of us children to go in the water on an inner tube before we were competent swimmers. Relying on calculators or computers, is the same just different context of getting out of your depth.
DK
Step 2 is just “borrowing” in disguise, but the justifications are very confusing - to me at least! “Subtract the 6 tens that are there.” ... where? ... Oh, in the minuend. So then they subract 6 tens also from the subtrahend, then subtract the “remaining” 3 tens from the reduced minuend of 308, but how do you do that? There are no tens left! I guess it’s supposed to be easy to subtract 3 tens from 30 tens, but this is a shift in terminology, and a deeply buried and unexplained version of “borrowing”.
Can you count by 2s? Is it as easy as 1-2-3? Do you like your 9 to 5 job at the 7/11?
Consider these dates in 2015 and into 2016.
2/last, 3/21, 4/4, 5/9, 6/6, 7/11, 8/8, 9/5, 10/10, 11/7, 12/12 and 1/23 (the following year)
The dates above will all fall on a Saturday. The same series for 2016 into 2017 will fall on a Monday
Leap year complicates things so we have to start with February last, either the 28th or the 29th, but if you verify one of those dates and can remember the series, you can always figure out what day of the week any day in the year falls on.
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