Posted on 04/20/2016 8:31:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
This upscale progressive magazine ran a super-long, super-detailed article titled "The Math Revolution." It basically wanted to proclaim the happy news that extraordinary things are taking place in American education.
The Atlantic fell all over itself with enthusiasm. You would reasonably suppose that some fresh winds were blowing, and students in America would actually know how to add and subtract with competence, and maybe even multiply and divide efficiently.
What else does the word "revolution" suggest but wonderful sweeping change? At last, at long last, our public schools will redeem themselves and began to turn out little math experts.
Then the writer gave it away: "The students are being produced by a new pedagogical ecosystem – almost entirely extracurricular – that has developed online and in the country's rich coastal cities and tech meccas."
Ooh.
Please savor the words "almost entirely extracurricular." In other words, these superior, successful math students are not in essence attending American public schools. They are going outside of American public schools, to something separate, uncontaminated, and therefore superior.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
We use the Saxon math books for the kids who can’t be trusted on the Internet.
Parents have to teach their own children to memorize basic math facts. Been that way for decades now.
We used the Saxon math books while homeschooling both of our sons. It’s just straightforward, no cartoon characters or eye-candy, and as logical as can be. It was a pleasure to teach.
We used them too. I tip my hat to you both.
Patrick went past my competence a long time ago. I’m great through Algebra I, but then things get weird.
Yeah. I loved Trigonometry, but Algebra II about knocked me out.
I liked trig, but integral calculus was very hard for me. I could never figure which formula to use. They all looked the same to me...LOL
I made through the easiest calculus section in college - it was popularly known as “Calculus for Poets” - because I had a good instructor.
Did he read Chaucer or Robert Burns during lunch hour ?
No, Dr. Judson, “Flunking Phoebe,” as some called her, was an artist in her spare time. According to the university’s website, she retired in 1999, ten years after I graduated with my one lone calculus credit.
Well, public schools are pretty contaminated. Can you quote the part that explains why getting kids out of them is a bad thing?
Either that or a way to make the smart kids do as badly as the ones who are already doing badly, in the name of getting equal racial outcomes.
We used Saxon too.
We had to get a tutor for my daughter for pre-calc. She was at the place today. “I actually like going there. We skipped ahead to tomorrow’s lesson - it is real easy. But I’m going to do the problems tonight before the teacher can confuse me tomorrow.”
At the elementary school the “math facts” were against the rules. The teachers COULD NOT teach them. So my wife and another gal asked the two math teachers if THEY could teach them in the hallway. One-on-one. The teachers thought it was a great idea. They asked the Principal. She (the Principal) looked at the rules, and it said something like the school, or the teachers could not teach math facts.
“Well - I’m not going to bring this up to anyone else for clarification. But I don’t see anything about PARENTS not teaching it.”
My wife did it for four years. “Math-in-a-minute” Started off with addition, then subtraction, multiplication and division. The kids would work one-on-one with her, then would answer the flashcards. Once they got them done in a certain time (not sure it was a minute) they would get a sticker and could move on to the next row of numbers. They were up there every day.
Even now in helping my daughters with homework I say “Just think how are this would be if you didn’t have your basic facts memorized! You need to remember to thank mom again!)
When I was tutoring in San Antonio in the early 90s, the program director mentioned that one of the big problems students had with passing the (then new) high school graduation exam was that they didn’t know the multiplication tables.
Oh, come on! You are being too modest. Some of us know you as one of the nation’s leading experts and practitioners of, ummmm, multiplication. God bless!
They must have scored it differently back then, but I took the ASVAB straight out of high school in 1978 and got a 110. Or at least that’s what the recruiter told me at the time.
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