Posted on 11/19/2010 6:55:16 AM PST by Gennie
November 19, 2010
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Idiotic school taught my oldest son lattice math in elementary school. He has shown me several times how it is done and it confuses the heck out of me. It takes him much longer to do a math problem than his classmates.
Remember the silliness of “New Math” in the 1960s?
I know who was responsible. One of my friends was a student test subject. He maxed out every test which convinced the pedagogues that they needed to change the textbooks and teach “New Math”.
However, he turned out to be an anomaly. With an IQ of 180, he was the wrong test subject.
When I was doing scientific research I learned to beware of researchers who chose the data set which would prove their hypothesis.
As soon as your kids are through with these lessons, make sure they are working on their Indian and Chinese.
With morons like this running our schools, this century will belong to the Chinese and the Indians. Might was well be able to speak the language of the people they’ll be working for!
I am a public school teacher and I am going to homeschool my son. He is two, so of course we have started with the basics. It is disturbing to know how many parents don’t teach their children ABC’s and 123’s. That is what Dora and free preschool is for, I’m told. My school system uses SFA reading and math, which focuses on group dynamics and partnerships. Bull crap. My juniors and seniors can barely read or write. SFA does have a list of congratulation methods though. All of my students know how to do the around the world clap when they almost get something correct!
I feel like they are intentionally making the basics complicated in order to dumb people down and make them doubt their own thought processes.
You can start to “homeschool” almost immediately,
you just take responsibility for educating your child.
You start with basics and advance them as they are ready.
My 3 yr old is learning phonics and has started to read.
Of course she already knows all the colors, shapes, numbers to 100, ABC’s, etc.
It’s really quite rewarding to teach them yourself.
My brother and his wife pulled my niece out of her public school because of one of these silly math programs. They put her in a Catholic school where she did very well.
Looks like these parents will have to do the same because when a school signs on to one of these programs, it’s very hard if not impossible to get it removed and children suffer.
Whole language and fuzzy math — a double whammy. If a school can’t teach children to read and do math, why bother to send your children there?
ping for later
“With morons like this running our schools, this century will belong to the Chinese and the Indians. Might was well be able to speak the language of the people they’ll be working for!”
Throw in the lack of work ethic in Americans, and the resultant avoidance of hard science programs in college by those Americans, and I have to agree with you 100%.
It’s been predicted, and it’s coming to pass. American won’t fall by the sword, it won’t go out with a bang. America will go out with a wimper, killed by her own hand.
This is really a bad example to use because some kids actually do need to learn different ways to do math.
As long as they are taught the basics of math, this is okay.
My kids learned both of the methods show in addition to regular math. My kids went to both public and private school in elementary school, and I actually liked the way the public school taught math. They had lots of repetition. The private school used Saxon Math, and I hated that curriculum.
Then they are complaining about estimating. Well, you have to estimate things in life.
By the way, my husband and I are engineers, and all my kids test very high in math and are all in honors math. My son is in AP Calculus as a junior in high school.
x=(2+1)
y=(1+3)
What is x+y? y-x?
I keep wanting to jump into quadratic equations but he's just a first grader so have to keep things kinda simple for a bit longer...
I have had discusions with teachers who have marked math questions wrong that had the correct answer. The standard response I get is, "I didn't understand how they arrived at the answer". To which I have told them that if the answer is correct what does it matter if "you" don't understand how it was arrived at. I have also suggested to them that if they have questions they can ask my children, who are 11 and 13, to explain it to them. The look on their face is priceless....
BTW all work is shown and it does not take a rocket scientist to follow the progression to the answer, and my children are being asked by the other kids in class to show them how to do it their way.
A friend of mine was a company rep in India during the 90’s, and the schools over there are BRUTAL. Constant repetition and drilling, constant reminders that this is your only chance for a better life. And competitive as hell. I won't even mention the level of discipline and control exercised by teachers.
It's no wonder that so many of our scientist and technical people are coming from there.
Which is the bad example to use? Regarding kids that may need to learn a different way(s) to do math, I don’t see any reason why something like this couldn’t be offered as an alternate to traditional math but not trump the original method.
If Hillary gave Barrack 1 of her 2 balls then Barrack would have 2 balls and Hillary would still have 2 balls or
2 - 1 = 4
My Chinese girl, educated at Fudan, taught her daughter (the light of my life) the Chinese system of mathematics after school every day. She started Grad School this year at age 20. BioMechanical Engineering and Chemistry. Her Mom says she might not have qualified for college in China. That’s how bad our schools have become! Personally though, the kid’s brilliant, and she wants to learn. She’s aggressive about it! Pursues learning relentlessly.
When I was in prep school during the first half of the Sixties, all the standard tests, PSAT, SAT, etc., were multiple choice in the math sections. I’d look at the answers first. Looking at the “spread” would tell me how much I could estimate, simplify, and have a good enough answer to choose the correct multiple choice answer. Saved me a lot of time, as I was not a good math student. And I did better than many of the good students on those tests. Just seemed the logical way to do things, in that situation. Plus I hated sliderules!
If you want to see how horrendous and destructive the “math” that is being taught to innocent unsuspecting kids is, check out the expose of the TERC program recently adopted in Pike County, PA for grade schoolers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
(Sorry,don’t know how to underline to make this a quicker link)
Of course children learn differently, so the school should also teach traditional methods for those who don’t understand the new math equations. Also, if students are taught basic addition and memorize math facts without the use of calculators, there is no need to estimate 58+24; they will be able to figure it out in their heads. Finally, what is the advantage of knowing three different ways to solve basic addition problems? Couldn’t the time spent learning to add one’s columns and ten’s columns and then doing whatever the heck the equation called for next be used for learning something else of value?
Our school system uses SFA math, and it is similar to the math described in the article. With my seniors I was explaining the value of college credits per class versus the value of high school credits per class and how the difference affects GPA. When I asked my students to add up the college credit column and then the high school credit column, they began shouting out various numbers. Finally a student asked if he could take out his cell phone to add the numbers.
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