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You can’t fight an enemy if we don’t even see them as such.

My doubt stems from the fact that ‘modern math’ sprang out of NCTM back in the early 70s before hating our country and undermining it had become fashionable, but I admit I could be wrong.

I do see NCTM’s approach to the teaching of math to be both wrong-headed and unproductive and I will say so to anyone willing to listen.

I don’t think the problem is necessarily with the teachers of math, at least in my limited exposure to them, they all agree that we’re doing things wrong. The big problem lies with the states’ education departments that mandate tests that mirror ‘common core’ approaches to math which then get passed down to the teachers in the local schools. Every year they are judged on how their kids do on state tests.

Even before ‘No Child Left Behind” that monstrosity gifted to us by Ted Kennedy and G.W. Bush, there was a move to judge schools and their teachers by how well students performed on standardized tests. Naturally everyone started teaching to the test—or as we have since found out cheating to the test. What the kid actually learns and knows how to do is nothing. It’s how the class did on the test.

I retired 9 years ago and as I said earlier I still sub at the school I taught at. I was lucky because I taught history, which was and is not considered important enough to be tested. I was actually told that my main mission as a history teacher was to help raise reading and math scores.

Now as to the motive of those ‘leading’ state education departments. Are they willfully dumbing down the next generation to cause the fall of America? Are they just stupidly following an educational philosophy as to how kids should learn in an idealized world, or are they coming up with excuses as to why their newer methods constantly seem to fail.

I frankly don’t know, but I agree with you, they need to be opposed no matter their motivation.