Posted on 10/04/2013 9:46:54 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
I was a teacher’s aide (oh, sorry! “educational assistant”) about 20 years ago when they were just starting to introduce this sort of math, along with “make your best guess”. The teachers called it “fuzzy math” and most of them ignored it and continued to teach memorization and “older” new math. When we moved to Mass. and this became mandatory, I pulled my kids out and started homeschooling.
The way they break up the numbers and re-combine makes very little sense. I could see breaking out the 10’s (for example, 26 + 17 you might take out the 20 & the 10 to make 30, and then add the 6 & 7 to make 13 and add those to the 30 to make 43) but the random pulling out of non-related numbers makes no sense and becomes very confusing.
Honestly, is it really that hard to memorize 15-7 ??
Side note, this reminded me of something from the 70's: "Chisanbob", remember those commercials?, I could swear Leonard Nimoy did them, my Brother & I to this day still do our chisanbob schtick...
This is third grade. Not college. You don't teach nine year olds like eighteen year olds.
These new techniques have it *ss backwards. They start with the touchy-feely and the shortcuts and the individual discovery (mostly discovered wrong) and nobody can really tell what's correct anymore.
I lost it in a class one day when they were factoring quadratic equations as a group exercise where everybody was expressing an opinion.
It is a lot easy to add 7 + 6 to get 13 and then carry the 1 for 43. Much Much Easier.
These math problems appear to be some elitist’s delusion of his (or her) discovery some magnificent method to teach mental mathematics and show us all how clever they are. The simple, direct and more effective method of simply memorizing addition and multiplication tables doesn’t satisfy their desire to show us just how smart they are.
I recall tutoring my son’s friend in “college algebra” (it was really 9th grade algebra) when he had to solve 18/3. He reached for his calculator and I slammed the book down on his hand. “Use your brain and save the battery for when you really need it!” He never did that again but it showed the pathetic state of education that requires a college freshman to re-take high school algebra and depend on a calculator for such a trivial mental exercises.
If you learn to memorize math tables and vocabulary words (in different languages no less), you might also improve your ability to remember names, dates, and historical facts as well as passages of the US Constitution.
Better to have sheeple fall for whatever lie the leadership wants to tell them each new day.
Can someone link the images from a non twitter site? I can’t get twitter at school. (Twitchy, I can get, just without the images.)
otherwise, ping for later.
I still was taught vocabulary and math equations with flash cards primary school.
Well, someone has to post the link to the Tom Lehrer song, so I guess it might as well be me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vetg7vWitTU
My wife took a cookie and broke it in half and handed one half to our 4 year old son.
If I keep one piece and give you the other piece what do you have?
He replied a semicircle.
I use plenty of tricks to add numbers quickly, so I get the logic in the second problem.
BWTH is the first math problem? I don’t understand at all what they are trying to do.
What difference does learning math make anyhow?
Kids have smartphones with math apps now. Plus, if it’s too confusing they can just cheat and text a friend.
Or, they can call 1-800-F1UCKYO.
/s
“Total lack of logic in my opinion”
But it makes your feel good.
Try teaching long division (LD) to a young person that has had this mush driven into her brain. Lol, I had her doing LD my way, not the schools way, problem after problem after problem for over two hours (she hated me) until I had pounded into her head how to do LP properly so that she would always get the correct answer. Part of her problem was that she wasn’t very good a multiplication to start with! This is a high school senior honor student and she multiplied at a six grade level! Do not send your kids to public schools.
I recently bought a book called “Algebra Demystified” and it goes through everything step-by-step, is easy to follow, explains the rules before you are asked to apply them, and costs probably about half of what a Common Core text would cost. From what I’ve seen of these Common Core questions, they are suited only for the very bright and will leave everyone else befuddled, including many who could easily learn math using more traditional methods. CC seems to try to force you to run before you can walk, and seems designed to produce failure in most students.
the answer is C, not sure what the point is, but I know the answer :)
Correct. If you want to know what, say, 156+74 is, just grab a piece of paper and add the numbers up. That worked for Newton, and that worked for Einstein. It should work for today's students.
I would like someone to seriously tell me what this lesson is supposed to teach.
I was a public school teacher for many years, and I taught math much of the time. So I'm not guessing here. This is something I actually know about.
The administrator who mandated the program will tell you something like "this method teaches higher level numerical analyzing skills". Of course, that's just buzzword crap.
When you get past all the window-dressing, the bottom line is this. The administrator read a BS educational research paper somewhere. The administrator needs to justify his job, so he MUST change things around.
I see this all the time. Administrators are constantly reinventing the wheel. Students, and their teachers, are constantly being pulled this way and that.
Meanwhile, great damage is done. Students taught these weird methods are at a disadvantage going forward.
Oh, and a prediction. In a couple of years, this weird way of adding numbers will no longer be taught. It will be replaced by a totally different weird way.
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