Posted on 04/28/2014 7:31:06 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
If the Common Core education reforms introduced by President Obama and supported by big-name Republicans were subject to peer review, they might become a “whatever became of?” question.
“Take, for example, my first-grade son’s Common Core math lesson in basic subtraction,” David G. Bonagura, Jr., writes in an article which appeared in The Education Reporter. “Six- and seven-year-olds do not yet possess the ability to think abstractly; their mathematics instruction, therefore, must employ concrete methodologies, explanations, and examples.”
“But rather than, say, count on a number line or use objects, Common Core’s standards mandate teaching first-graders to ‘decompose’ two-digit numbers in an effort to emphasize the concept of place value. Thus 13 – 4 is warped into 13 – 3 = 10 – 1 = 9. Decomposition is a useful skill for older children, but my first-grade son has no clue what it is about or how to do it. He can, however, memorize the answer to 13 – 4. But Common Core does not advocate that tried-and-true technique.”
The Education Reporter is published by the Eagle Forum, an organization founded by conservative attorney, author and activist Phyllis Schlafly. Bonangura’s article was reprinted by permission from National Review, in which it originally appeared.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
It's the New Math, all over again.
Same idiots, different, newer batch.
You just can't fix stupid.
Every new generation of professional educators (the dregs of the university population) believes that civilization begins when they are born, and that they have all the answers, and they all try (incompetently) their "new" thing, and they all fail.
The true and tried methods of several hundred years are abandoned, and they screw things up all over again.
Unless parents get serious and lean on their individual school boards, this stupid process will keep repeating forever.
Another new teacher heard from?
All Common Core does is confuse and blur truth and discourage true learning (makes children “feel” stupid because of lack of logic) and it is boring (”Jump, Jane, Jump” and “informational texts” of PETA, Global Warming radical indoctrination).
G. K. Chesterton stated a hundred years ago....” The purpose of compulsory education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.” Dennis Prager stated that the longer children are in schools (PhDs) the more irrational they become.)
G.K.C. also stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” Our schools quit being that when John Dewey kicked out the Bible and Classical curricula to erase all the greatest ideas and Traditions in our children so they could posit irrational Postmodernism/alienation themes of “hate America” (Capitalism, Christianity).
“13 – 3 = 10 – 1 = 9”
There is no more powerful symbol in all of writing in any language than the equal sign.
Look at what these ‘educators’ are doing with it:
‘13-3 = 10 - 1’
What in the name of communication and clear understanding is the idea of the above collection of characters?
Orwell, may God rest his prescient soul. A man dead at 48 not so much out of misfortune at a life cut short, but out of the mercy of a God that would not subject him to witness the inexorability of his prophesies.
Now, finally, 2 + 2 indeed now somehow equal 5.
In programming you see this all the time:
count = count + 1;
Now how can something equal itself plus unity?
This is why the syntax was changes to:
count++;
which means the same thing.
We started giving our daughter an allowance when she was three. Pennies at first, graduating to nickels, etc as she got older. She would count her stash regularly as part of play time. She had counting, adding, subtracting and reading all mastered by the time she started kindergarten. By the third grade she could make change better than 90% of the McDonald's crowd, without benefit of a fancy computerized cash register.
All without pressure, unreasonable expectation, or schizophrenic teaching methods changing every year.
Yes daily personalized attention and challenges have always been a parent's primary duty. It's always possible, even when both parents work.
What is most parents' present priority? Zombie fancy cell phones! Going out these days and watching adults is really scary! No wonder kids are mostly self-centered zombies, too.
BS.
Unless you forgot the < /s> tag.
Math never came easily to me, but I managed math through integral calculus, and 40+ years as a competent civil engineer.
Your "simple" comment made me laugh out loud.
Hello retired math teacher. When my son was going through his primary school years in Hawaii, he had the benefit of 10 extra digits. He refused to wear shoes to school like his Hawaiian buddies :)
Math was never his best subject, so I started reading Piaget and Montessori and learned that children go through developmental changes when it comes to number and order.
As you well know, if you show a picture of an assortment of flowers ( a majority of which are roses) to a child and ask “Are there more roses in the picture or more flowers ?” Almost all kids will answer with ‘roses.” That is one of Piaget’s elemental stages of number conservation.
The point being that Common Core does not seem to acknowledge the great work of Piaget and confuses children’s understanding of grouping which is already not yet fully formed.
Children are unbelievable mind mops in their primary years. Rote and memorization work best and understanding can come later.
I agree with the point of the article I disagree with the poster’s choice to pimp his blog. Clear enough for you?
Children just are not ready for such complications in the early grades. They are sponges ready to memorize facts to use as they become adept at reasoning.
Common core is rape of the child’s brain, mind and psycholology.
Read Dorothy Sayers lost tools of learning. Although old and the musings of one not steeped in modern educational techniques, she has a lot to say to those who have forgotten the past:
“My views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor enlightened. Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know best and the only child I can pretend to know from inside) I recognize three states of development. These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic—the latter coinciding, approximately, with the onset of puberty. The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to “catch people out” (especially one’s elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form. The Poetic age is popularly known as the “difficult” age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others. Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.”
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
Easily.
Programming is not language grammar; it is a series of shortcut statements. I learned programming in the late 70s and really miss basic. I really wish some modern version of it still was available.
In your example, the statement says, "there is a new count, and it is the existing count plus 1" In early computers economy of characters was critical. And the statement was easily understood.
A mathematical impossibility.
In a true or false question the answer would be false.
No.
As a well balanced adult, I don't succumb to trivial irritations.
I know what you are saying, but I was in a programming class and a guy was arguing with the instructor, “a can’t equal a + 1”. After a while he shut up then he dropped the class. Some people should not program.
LOL!
Agreed.
The real irritation is that many who shouldn't be programmers, never learn when to just shut up, but will hone a need to beat any dead horse at the slightest opportunity. Yes, even adults. Here in FR.
You have to understand that it is meant to be separate steps.
13 - 3 is 10, 10 -1 is 9.
I'll write in shorthand like this when solving problems.
Oh. I understood what was meant by it. But it is still wrong. Your shorthand version is more correct than the way it was presented.
I taught one of those new common core grouping lessons to a grade 4 class last year. You have more knowledge of how children learn math from your research than anyone involved in those lessons.
I've always used Piaget for common-sense information about how children learn math. That "grouping" lesson making a 4x4 grid (terrible on all levels, using the same number twice) confused them unbelievably. All the kids saw was one array. I partially saved it by "skip-counting" the grouping.
That is THE LAST time I used a common core lesson.
My daughter has a “special needs” situation where she cannot “memorize” large blocks of information. We found out when she was trying to memorize her times tables. I used to get mad at her when she would ask what day it was. Every day.
It is a “wiring” issue and no amount of work is going to correct it. So, rocket scientist was out of the question.
But, the teachers worked on concepts. They worked on the concept of subtraction, multiplication, and addition. And it worked. Generally, they figured she would have access to a calculator so if she understood the concepts...it would be OK.
We were lucky to live in a community where the teachers and the special ed folks had some brains.
When I read stories such as this Common Core stuff, I cringe at the thought of my daughter having to try to deal with this. She would have given up.
Instead, she is going to be a senior in college, on the deans lists and scholarships to the tune of no loans and a college tuition bill I can put on my low rate visa card...and pay it off in two months.
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