Posted on 04/08/2025 2:38:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Common core math is horrendous. They want the kids to be able to estimate and variously map out by about 6 different ways roughly what the solution is to an equation instead of giving them one sure way to get the exact answer.
We now have a lot of barely numerate and barely literate college students—and college grads.
I had a terrible time trying to help my kids with the new math. My wife and another gal went in for a couple of years (4th and 5th grade??) to teach them the math tables. “Math in a minute”. They took alternating days and the kids would come out in the hallway and would get tested on the flash cards that they took home. And when they could do them in a minute they would get a new set.
The teachers and principal were 100% behind it. But warned if they ever got caught by the higher-ups they would probably be banned from the school.
One year a teacher kept giving my one daughter poor grades because she didn’t “show her work” using the new math. She would just write down the answer, or use the old math. The teacher even called my wife and I in, worried about her poor grades.
“Are the answers correct?”
“Well yes, but...”
“Great. That’s all we care about. Flunk her if you need to and we can talk about this again if you do.”
Math is all wrong. They tried to tell me pie are squared. No, I said. Pie is round, cornbread are squared.
Oh yes! Pure math just didn’t make sense to me. What did is its applications. Show me how it’s used and I’d ’get it’. Guess I’m too concrete.
Parents don’t fear math..
Parents fear the psychological crap that now passes as math.
If you have to go to the school and take a class so you can help your child with 3rd grade math..
IT IS NOT MATH!!!!
Math is absolutes, there is no guesswork.
2+2 always equals 4.
4×4 always equals 16.
24÷4 always equals 6.
W6is being taught today is not math
I know you are being a bit facetious about doing new math, but there are old math expressions which are nonsensical.
My son said “1/2 TIMES 1/2 doesn’t make any sense, dad.”
I said you are right. We shouldn’t say 1/2 times 1/2, we should say
What is 1/2 OF 1/2 ?
Saying it that way makes it easier to show and draw an explanation of the problem.
Draw a box. Draw a vertical line down the middle to make two halves.
Now draw a horizontal line across the middle of the box to turn the box into fourths.
The first line created the one-half
The second line created the one-half OF one-half.
Any fraction is a representation of something less than a whole.
1/2 means one half of a whole.
So the problem is asking what is 1/2 of 1/2 of one whole?
When calculating the answer one has to look at the whole, not just half of the box we drew.
The whole in this case consists of four-fourths.
Two fourths = one half
1/2 OF 1/2 or 1/2 OF two-fourths = one fourth - which is the answer to the problem.
That my son understood because using the word OF instead of TIMES made the problem easy to illustrate and way more logical.
Perhaps you should actually read some of those books of the past.
We did using table first, especially the addition and multiplication. The teacher wanted to remember at least up to 9x9 by heart.
Quadratic equations are not hard if you pay attention.
The children are not paying attention, they have been given no reason to.
Me with failing grades were not acceptable at home.
I didn’t have to be best in class, I was expected to pass.
“So, we need to see that 23+14 means 2 parts of ten plus 1 part of ten. Then 3 units plus 4 units of singles We then have 3 parts of ten (30) and 7 single units, which total 37. Bingo!”
LOL. When I see 23+14. I add left to right “3” then “7”, and if there’s something to carry, then I go back and deal with that - virtually by sight, as you suggested. None of the crap from above is needed if you’re taught right in the first place, as I was.
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