Posted on 11/19/2010 6:55:16 AM PST by Gennie
November 19, 2010
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Make sure the following books are not in your child’s school library: King and King, King and King and Family, and And Tango Makes Three.
It won’t surprise you to find out that the Chicago education system was designed by Bill Ayres.
Well, in the meantime perhaps he can practice writing algorithms in C++. :-)
>Then he wrote, “because it is, always has been, and always will be”.<
LOL! Love it!
They could save so much money if they took that to heart.
Math doesn’t change. Grammar doesn’t change either, so why are they wasting billions of dollars on new textbooks all the time? I never understood that.
That’s how it was presented to my kids. They taught it to them in like 2nd grade and 3rd grade and only spent a small amount of time on it. (I think they only spent like 1 or 2 lessons on it.)
They also presented it as a way that is easier for some kids to understand the math.
I think each year (2nd & 3rd) they had one worksheet on those methods. They were never tested on it.
When they had their tests, they could use whatever method worked the best for them.
Good for your son! I bet he’s a great kid!
He should learn how to estimate. It is important.
For example, you have $100 to buy groceries. You don’t go around calculating the exact dollar amount for every item you purchase. You estimate.
There are a lot of other examples. How much paint should you buy to paint a room. You estimate how big that room is and then calculate how many gallons of paint to buy.
In fact, once a child has learned and fully MASTERED the basics, estimating comes **naturally**. It requires very little instruction whatsoever.
I've had some experience with this.
My homeschooled kids used Saxon Math. The entered college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All finished Calculus III by the age of 15. The two younger earned B.S. degrees in math by the age of 18.
Prove 1+1=2
Formula: n+n=2n
Basis: P(1)
1+1=(2)(1)
Assume: n+n=2n
Prove: (n+1)+(n+1)=(2)(n+1)
LHS
(n+1)+(n+1)=n+1+n+1=2n+2
RHS
(2)(n+1)=2n+2
LHS=RHS
QED
i^2 + j^2 + k^2 = ijk = -1
That is extremely impressive. It would have been an incredible help to me if I had understood more about various math concepts before I started working on F/A-18 electronics in the USN. I had to learn octal and hexadecimal conversions the hard way. Discrete logic circuits, capacitance variations in fuel quantity circuits, and gyro tweaking is much easier to understand if you have a strong math foundation. So my experience was well earned, but more painful than if I had applied myself more in high school. My parents were not very encouraging of logical and math oriented thinking, so it was only after I was an adult that I developed a love for computer science, electronics, etc. None of that is possible without significant knowledge and experience in math. So I applaud your efforts with your children, thanks for sharing.
Lol your kid is funny.
Another to not mention around me is “creative spelling” in 1st and 2nd grade. AARRRGGG do you know how hard it is to teach a kid to spell after them being indoctrinated in “creative spelling”? I do. My 13 year old hasn’t had anything over a D on a spelling test in 4 years. On the other hand, he would have GREAT texting abilities if he had a cell phone.
?
At one time it was **normal** and **expected** for young adults graduate from college at the age of 18 or younger.
Collectivist government schooling has trained several generations of citizens to believe that adulthood doesn't start until the mid twenties or later.
Honestly,..We infantilize our youth and artificially delay their social, academic, and career development. We have people graduating from graduate school today, just beginning their careers, who in the 18th and 19th centuries would have been considered middle aged.
Won’t disagree with you.
You must have had those boring SRA reading programs. Everyone who was tortured with those things did that because it was so much faster. They tried that with us when I was in seventh grade and I finished the whole thing before Christmas, so I got to read my library book in class.
At least it prepared us for standardized tests.
“We moved here in June of 2005, with the first of our four children entering kindergarten in 2007. Like many other conservatives who have been caught sleeping at philosophy’s wheel, we stupidly assumed that those persons running the local school district would hold values roughly in line with our own. We could not have been more wrong.”
If you want to know where the REAL problem is with education, it is NOT the liberals that run it, rather it is the ‘conservatives’ that REFUSE to accept just how bad it is. I had vowed that my kids would NEVER step foot in a public school, long before they even existed. Why? Not because I’m some kind of genius, but because I read and I BELIEVED Thomas Sowell...that is all it took. One man with credibility telling me just what the schools are. How about other people, like this airhead couple, or even Tony Snow...who thought that conservatives were attacking the schools for ‘ratings’ - they called Mr. Sowell a liar (in more words than one).
Which just leaves me still wondering: WHAT THE HELL IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT HOW SCHOOLS ARE RUN THESE DAYS?
Um, you used 1+1=2 to complete this line. That's assuming as true, what it is you have been asked to prove. It's a circular argument. Try again.
“So we drive them 20 minutes away to a Catholic school that teaches Saxon Math, phonics...”
You will be a VERY HAPPY parent if your kids learn that way...and the kids will be just as happy. Two pieces of advice for Saxon Math...do EVERY problem in each set (and make sure they understand each problem), and be sure to just use the old hardcover books. Follow that and you’re biggest problem will be slowing your kids down.
I taught in a school that worshipped Everyday Math aka “Chicago Math.” It was abominable.
Children can learn abstract math at an early age. There is no reason why they cannot be introduced to it. That’s not the issue. The point is there is no reason to confuse children with bombarding them with complicated algorithms when using the most efficient and most commonly used one gets the right answer every time. The other ones are only good for parlor tricks.
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