Posted on 09/16/2010 6:44:01 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
For a few years I thought the worst possible gimmick in education was Whole Word, basically a device to make sure kids don't learn to read.
In the last few months, the clamor grew about Core Standards and National Standards, and I started to focus on arithmetic. More and more I’m struck by the parallel with Whole Word. The Education Establishment seems to specialize in coming up with techniques that are almost guaranteed not to work.
I know there are cynics who will say, well, of course, everyone knows this. Even so, the thing that fascinates me is the amount of skill and intelligence needed to create something that is not what it appears to be. I’m still stunned. Did people really go into a room and say: how do we teach math so that nobody learns math??? Well, it sure seems that way.
I think we can see the phenomenon best in New Math. Experts said it was the perfect way to teach math; but it was trashed only a few years later. The flaw was that easy arithmetic was mixed in with advanced concepts so that kids were too confused to learn even the basic stuff. Unfortunately, that central flaw was rolled forward into all the subsequent programs, for example, the many programs within Reform Math.
As so often happens in education, the public has to deal with this weird choice: are the people in charge hopelessly stupid or hopelessly subversive?
For a sense of how bad things are, here is a scary report from C. F. Navarro, PhD (on the excellent site Illinoisloop.org):
“At the George Washington Middle school where I taught eight-grade math in 1998, only a few of my math students were at grade level. The rest were at a fourth-grade level, or lower. Most had not yet learned their multiplication tables and were still counting with their fingers. By the end of the year some had progressed to about a fifth-grade level, a substantial improvement, but far short of the comprehension and skills required for algebra. Nonetheless, all were required to register for algebra the following year.
More troublesome still was my algebra class. The students in that class were all nice kids, mainly from middle-class families and, therefore, on the school's "talented and gifted," program. Yet, with few exceptions, they didn't know how to work with fractions, decimals or integers. They lacked the power of concentration to set up and solve multiple-step problems. They were incapable of manipulating symbols and reasoning in abstract terms. Like most of my general math students, some had not yet learned their multiplication tables and were still counting with their fingers.”
Could things really be that bad if the Education Establishment were sincerely trying to teach math? Hard to imagine.
So what is the answer? Many businesses and parents (with kids in public schools) have to consider tutoring (e.g., Saxon Math, Singapore Math, Math Mammoth, MathUSee). Next, the more I look at the National Standards and Core Standards, the more I hope that states will reject these federal proposals. If you’re curious, go to corestandards.org to read some of these bizarre so-called Standards.
One of the distinguishing traits in the newer Standards is a gimmick called spiraling. Children are moved quickly from topic to topic. Teachers introduce as much variety as possible. Just as a “thought experiment” I wondered, well, what would total simplicity look like?? I wrote a piece for hubpages called “Price’s Easy Arithmetic For First Graders.”
( http://hubpages.com/hub/PricesEasyArithmetic )
For a more studious look at the whole problem, see “53: One Thing We Know For Sure: The Education Establishment Hates Math” on Improve-Education.org.
( www.improve-education.org/id78.html )
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For anyone curious about New Math, here's my review of a book published about 1964 to tell parents how to understand New Math. Funny in a grim way. See the one review of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/teachers-parents-elementary-school-children/dp/B0007DO4K2/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
. .
I love what you said here. It captures so much that is so sad.
Thank you.
One of my other methods was to let them go to the library and pick out any books that interested them (non-fiction or biography), read as much as they wanted, and then do reports, often illustrated, about their topics. They would usually read every book in the library about the topics that interested them - North American Indians, bats, volcanoes - to mention a few.
When children can follow their natural interests that helps them become enthusiastic about learning, IMO. I have friends who homeschooled all three children and really put time, energy and money into allowing the kids to follow their interests - art, astronomy, music, computers - and the two boys, now adults, work in their fields and are doing very well in life. The girl is still younger and don’t know what she’s up to.
I personally have a very checkered history - taught myself to read when I was 4, and hated every minute of public school that I was forced to attend until I quit high school. Did attend some technical schools briefly and other than that am self taught, with many large holes.
It seems so bad that it has to be intentional, they way they used to teach math and reading obviously worked just fine.
They want stupid children? I have trouble believing such grand conspiracy theories.
My cousin is gonna be a math teacher.
So does “reading instruction” I’ve been forbidden to
exhibit the alphabet to people being tutored. I finished
the orientation training, just to see what could be seen,
but didn’t proceed beyond that.
Thanks muchly, again. On a slight tangent, serious greenies
should clamor for the revival of the slide rule. Only
mental power required.
Adult literacy programs about 12 years ago forbade tutors
to teach students the alphabet, i.e. A B C D E .... Z,
let alone any discussion of phonology beyond that, however
informal. A few years late they began screening out those
with old-fashioned attitudes before orientation. I’ve met
some Chinese who want to improve their English who know
the IPA OTOH. I’ve also seen “alphabet memos” distributed
to student interns, consisting of the letters in order
on a letterhead page. A rather impressive exhibit in its
way.
I taught my 4 year old son to read by playing basketball.
P.I.G. spell PIG and you’ve lost.
D.O.G. spell DOG and you’ve lost.
H.O.R.S.E. spell HORSE and you’ve lost.
Etc.
I taught my daughter math by using money, work, and what she wants to buy.
“Education” is no substitute for hands-on parenting.
see my other posts in this thread.
Yeah - I found her when I was trying to figure out my kid’s math. My wife ended up going in to volunteer so the kids could get their “Math Facts” taught/memorized. She would spend time with each kid during reading time as the teacher’s were not supposed to teach the basic facts (you know 2+2 = 4, 6x6 = 36, etc.) She helped all the way from 1st to 6th grade.
What the teacher DID teach (an example):
36 + 52 = ?
Well, 36 is close to 40, and 52 is close to 50.
So 40 + 50 = 90.
But it was 36, so 40-36 = 4, so subtract 4 from 90 = 86.
BUT it was 52, not 50, so add 2 more into the 86 to make it 88.
My one daughter could wrap her mind around this (as well as just “regular addition”), my other could not. The one that could not I told her just to add it up the regular way and I would make a comment on her homework and sign it. The teacher never said a thing - even on the exams. (He thought it was stupid too - but would lose his job if he didn’t teach it).
They keep getting some bad teachers. And I perhaps shouldn’t, but will say in front of them that these crummy teachers should be shot. (Well - at least fired and never allowed to teach again). But they are ruining these kid’s learning. Either by not giving them the proper tools, or worse - causing them to hate education.
Too many college professors are *not* motivated to find
a good textbook, but to cobble together one of their own
and require its purchase. Not only that, but to require
an updated edition every year or so. It’s truism especially
in Computer Science classes: don’t trust a textbook written
by the teacher. There are indeed exceptions, e.g. Patt
and Patel’s Introduction to Computing Systems. But the
contrary is too common. I was unaware of this at one time
but an upper classman’s dismay at the contents of an
introductory calculus book, which shall be unmentioned,
clued me in. Later I bought, unrequired, a text on Calculus
by one Michael Spivak which I simply liked. (Not cheap either,
this was years ago too.)
I have hung onto some of the books that we read to our kids (including twins!)
Goodnight Moon
Cars and Trucks and Things that Go (by Richard Scarry?) A favorite of my sons.
Caps for Sale
Make Way for Ducklings
And many more that I have now forgotten - but all were a pleasure to read. Plus - I would make up stories that would drag on for months and months adding in new characters (with the kid’s help), and the kids would remind me of what had happened earlier in the story.
“So, now who was on the raft in the raging river when we left it hung up on the rock?”
“Bigfoot, Godzilla, a raccoon family, a kangaroo, Spiderman and Robin.” (I think in that episode Superman and Batman came to their rescue!).
My sincerest and humblest thanks to you for your teaching
efforts.
More on college textbooks: I have no problem with college
instructors mentioning supplemental books; for instance,
strongly advising anyone taking a C programming course to
acquire a K&R C book (even if they don’t do many of the
exercises there.) and a Steele and Harbison C Reference
Manual. And as I said, the good books have to be written
by *someone* (typically several someones) and one can’t
fault the authors for recommending these.
Another issue I have is that some books are TOO BIG,
this is has gotten worse lately. Lastly, substantially
the same content is sold abroad in smaller, cheaper
editions (my information on this is about 3 years old
now)
Reneging on my my implicit closing statement, textbooks
in some subjects have cut down on self-text questions
in favor of eye candy. The worst example was in a subject
I won’t name since this was more than 12 year ago.
What about slide rules? There’s a fascinating discussion
in one of the Petroski books (popular discussion of
engineering) of the formative effect of slide rule versus
calculator use. I bought one on eBay but haven’t quite
sussed out how to use it.... Make that, to be honest,
can do very little with it. (I do have a manual.)
Slide rules are great. You can learn it almost instantaneously when someone sits with you and shows you how easy it is to use. It’s a SIMPLE analog computer.
Anything that follows an equation y = f(x) where f is step-wise continuous can be put on a slide rule.
I loved teaching kids. Just did it rather informally for some years. A few years ago I got to teach a 11 year old girl who was about third grade level (or less) and hated everything connected with learning. Her family situation was dreadful. She lived with me for a few months. She would get frantic, couldn’t do any work, writing was horrible, etc.
So I told her she could only work for 20 minutes and then had to go outside and play/run around/play with the cats for 10 minutes. What a relief for her! Usually she would have been forced to sit in front of a wretched page of “work” for hours, maybe never finish the torment, not getting to eat dinner, etc.
So then in for another 20 minutes. I would vary what work I gave her.
Within a week she was finishing the work and begging for 25 minutes. I made up exercises instead of the nasty work sheets. Her writing improved; I gave her a nice pen and good paper.
Etc.
She cried when she had to leave my house and go back to her family.
I think much of teaching is that the teacher has to actually care about the students as human beings, and has to be interested in the subject matter.
Also I taught reading phonetically - using a technique I learned from a book who someone here on FR reminded me of, cannot remember the author again. Anyway, I made my own lists and comparisons of words. Kids learned so easily that way.
Maybe someday there will be some kids around I get to teach again. But nothing past basic arithmatic! heheh
God bless you and your work.
You are very kind. Too kind.
Maybe I’ll get the opportunity again.
My experience is also that you can sometimes buy textbooks with the same content overseas for much less. My copy of John Hull's old classic Introduction to Future and Options Markets was bought overseas, and has the admonition "It is not to be re-exported, and is not for sale in the U.S.A., Mexico, or Canada." It was quite reasonably priced, and it came from the international branch of Prentice Hall.
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