Posted on 10/16/2015 4:11:00 AM PDT by Maceman
Common Core Math Explained in Three Minutes
NOTE: This is not a joke, not a satire.
So glad they cleared that up.
“What am I missing?”
Just that quarter they shorted you the last time you ate at Burger King is all.
My older brother narrowly missed modern math. It wasn't implemented here till he was in high school (it was being taught to us in middle school/junior high). He did very well with algebra and the like, graduated from Pitt and became an engineer. I often wonder if he would have gone to college if he had taken modern math.
Both lists.
Homeschoolers, you need to see what you are protecting your children from.
My homeschooled children spend literally days, weeks, and months on projects. They were given the opportunity to concentrate and develop problem solving skills.
Get YOUR children out of the government indoctrination centers - NOW!
“The video also claims “borrowing” obscures what is going on with subtraction. To me it highlights the very concept of the powers of 10 embedded in numbers.”
Exactly.
And “borrowing” with the powers of 10 early in life, gets you set up to easily learn how to do math in hex, binary, and octal.
Cool gif...
divide algebras using field theory in abstract algebra
I know what my kids were protected from. Wife is a public school teacher.
I learned more from homeschooling my kids than my stint in the public education system did and I grew up in the *good* era.
And same for Saxon math. Math now makes sense and I can explain it to others. I used to think I was bad at math, but I find out that I’m not. I’m good at it. I was just taught poorly.
The trouble with common core math is that only those with an IQ of about 80 or below don’t intuitively understand that numbers can be broken down into units of tens, hundreds, etc.—and they are exactly the ones who would have no hope of mastering the stupid common core “long form” math exercises.
The ones who can do it don’t need it. Those who need it can’t do it.
Consider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 minus 173. Now, remember how we used to do that:
Three from two is nine, carry the one, and if you're under 35 or went to a private school, you say seven from three is six, but if you're over 35 and went to a public school, you say eight from four is six ...and carry the one, so we have 169.
But in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer. Here's how they do it now:
You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the tens place.
Now that's really four tens
So you make it three tens,
Regroup, and you change a ten to ten ones,
And you add 'em to the two and get twelve,
And you take away three, that's nine.
Is that clear?
Now instead of four in the tens place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,
That is to say, ten, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look in the hundreds place.
From the three you then use one
To make ten ones...
(And you know why four plus minus one
Plus ten is fourteen minus one?
'Cause addition is commutative, right!)
And so you've got thirteen tens
And you take away seven,
And that leaves five...
Well, six actually...
But the idea is the important thing!
Now go back to the hundreds place,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves...?
Everybody get one?
Not bad for the first day!
Hooray for New Math,
New-hoo-hoo Math,
It won't do you a bit of good to review math.
It's so simple,
So very simple,
That only a child can do it!
Now, that actually is not the answer that I had in mind, because the book that I got this problem out of wants you to do it in base eight. But don't panic! Base eight is just like base ten really - if you're missing two fingers! Shall we have a go at it? Hang on...
You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the eights place.
Now that's really four eights,
So you make it three eights,
Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones
And you add 'em to the two,
And you get one-two base eight,
Which is ten base ten,
And you take away three, that's seven.
Ok?
Now instead of four in the eights place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,
That is to say, eight, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look at the sixty-fours...
"Sixty-four? How did sixty-four get into it?" I hear you cry! Well, sixty-four is eight squared, don't you see? "Well, ya ask a silly question, ya get a silly answer!"
From the three, you then use one
To make eight ones,
You add those ones to the three,
And you get one-three base eight,
Or, in other words,
In base ten you have eleven,
And you take away seven,
And seven from eleven is four!
Now go back to the sixty-fours,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves?
Now, let's not always see the same hands!
One, that's right.
Whoever got one can stay after the show and clean the erasers.
Hooray for New Math,
New-hoo-hoo Math!
It won't do you a bit of good to review math.
It's so simple,
So very simple,
That only a child can do it!
Come back tomorrow night we're gonna do fractions!
Because proficiency in higher math was a requirement, I had to abandon my dreams of a college education, disappointing my parents who worked so hard so my brother and I could go to college. Essentially, modern math ruined my life.
I have been thinking a lot about how many abuses should be, and whether or not they could be, actionable. I was told of a star football player who didn’t get a scholarship because the guidance counselor, a true lib, thought that since he had advantages already as the son of an auto dealer - and cooked the books to prevent it. I mentioned it to my boss, who had been trained as a lawyer, and he responded, “I would think action would lie.” And I think it did, and that counselor paid a lot for his sin.It seems like we have a somewhat similar case here, but not one perhaps of malice but of negligence. If I drive my car and am at fault in an accident, you don’t have to prove that I meant to do it, only that I did it. Same thing here. The “New Math” people - and now the “Common Core” people - have caused a catastrophe. Not just for one kid, but for legions of them. It should be possible to sue for malpractice - and the (supposed) fact that they didn’t mean to make education FUBAR doesn’t mean that they are not responsible for the fact that it is FUBAR. And “responsible” doesn’t begin and end with an apology. Certainly not a “I’m sorry you misunderstood me” apology.
I have no active connection to homeschooling. When I saw the topic on FR, I thought it over - and I concluded that in the worst case - a parent unable to support the child’s education for lack of sufficient grounding - at the very least the parent would learn a lot.
The ones who can do it don’t need it. Those who need it can’t do it.
Just to confuse things, I will relate my interaction with math theory. A friend who doesn’t have a high math background likes to teach the use of computers. But he tried to research what “Analog to digital conversion” was - and he couldn’t figure out what “analog” meant. He knew me for an engineer, and asked via email what it was about. And he was asking the right person, because whenever I got a problem wrong in college it bugged the heck out of me, and I really wanted to know what was what. And I had gone through that, in the start of an analog computation class.The trouble with the term “analog” is that it derives from “analogy," and yet “analogy" doesn’t easily carry over into computer/information thinking.
The first thing you learn in a course on analog computing is how to make a circuit to do addition. So your lab work on that lesson is to input voltages into an addition circuit, and measure the output voltage. So I did that, and the circuit worked as advertised. But, I saw a problem. It was not easy to accurately set the dial to create exactly the input voltages you wanted, and it was not possible to read the output voltage to more than about 1% accuracy. And, in the mindset I then had, that seemed to be a show stopper.And the reason it seemed like a dead end was the very fact that I was not distinguishing between addition as a concept and addition as the algorithm (“recipe,” in the lingo of the video that started this thread) which yielded a digital result. The confusion is actually that we use digital numbers as an analog of real quantities. It is not the real thing - the length of a board, for example - which is an analog, it is the number we create when we measure the length of board which is the analog of that physical thing.
So in that sense the term, “analog-to-digital conversion” is a misnomer, complete gibberish. What "A-D conversion" actually is, of course, is automated voltage measurement.
And I put it to you that some analogous form of sloppy thinking is going on when we take a low-IQ child who has trouble with the “recipe” and “rote learning” regime, and expect him to become more adept at the recipe after we befuddle him with abstractions. The result being that, not only the dullard but the smart child fails to understand (no wonder, because the teacher herself probably doesn’t understand) the abstract concept, and doesn’t get the “recipe,” either.
And if indeed the teacher does understand what she’s teaching, her understanding is probably at a sophomoric level which motivates pride more than wisdom and compassion. If you want analogies and graphical demonstrations of math principles, good - find someone who is at least as good at that as I am - and put them to work making illustrations of math thinking which is simple enough for a parent before you go inflicting in on children and their parents via a game of “telephone.”
Children won’t learn from teachers unless the teachers have parental support. And, teachers cannot expect, and do note deserve, parental support unless teachers respect parents.
And that, to me as a grandparent, is the real bottom line. Note that I did not qualify that bolded statement above with the phrase, “if the parent has a PhD in every subject the child is being taught."
Well, if you want to use the wrong definition for analog, I suppose. ;-)
Good pedagogy in reading, math or whatever, should preclude any need for parents to get involved with what teachers are teaching. That we think of parents needing to be involved shows just how bad the teaching that the teachers’ unions and colleges have got us to.
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