Circling the drain - it's getting crowded around there

[vaskidmark]

DUCT TAPE ALERT!  Antipsychotics are not needed - it is not you that is going crazy.

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2013/08/18/this-one-goes-to-11-2/

Quick: what’s 3 x 4?

If you said 11 — or, hell, if you said 7, pi, or infinity squared — that’s just fine under the Common Core, the new national curriculum that the Obama administration will impose on American public school students this fall.

In a pretty amazing YouTube video, Amanda August, a curriculum coordinator in a suburb of Chicago called Grayslake, explains that getting the right answer in math just doesn’t matter as long as kids can explain the necessarily faulty reasoning they used to get to that wrong answer.

“Even if they said, ’3 x 4 was 11,’ if they were able to explain their reasoning and explain how they came up with their answer really in, umm, words and oral explanation, and they showed it in the picture but they just got the final number wrong, we’re really more focused on the how,” August says in the video

Yes, there is a video of her saying that.  I cannot fathom why she allowed a record of her saying that.   

Comparisons are made to 1984 by George Orwell, Spinal Tap, and Nigel Tufnel’s Marshalls amplifier, that goes to 11.

stay safe.

[RevDisk]

Common Core was actually a pretty good idea. I worked for a place that made math books. There's no real national standard when it comes to math education, so this would have been helpful for folks that write math books. Incidentally, our books were meant towards home school market.

Home school parents are...  interesting folks. There was a drastic hostility towards Common Core. More than a small number literally (I mean  "in the literal sense", not meaning "figuratively") believe that Common Core is demonic, unchristian, a form of slavery, etc. More than a few made it sound like they believed Common Core was written by Satan himself to lure good Christian children away from the Lord. I'm not kidding. It was kinda awkward.

But now it's become heavily politicized and ayep, Education derps like that lady are now involved. So, it'll either be binned or implemented horribly between sabotage from the Right and fruitcakes from the Left.

[HankB]

I know a few folks who homeschool their kids - they've never mentioned Common Core, but they've said that in the homeschooling community, textbooks from the '50s and '60s are in demand to teach basics like arithmetic, American history, spelling, science, and grammar. (New developments - computers & electronics, recent history, current geography, etc., of course require more recent materials. Duh.)

And yes, they still do teach their kids how to write in cursive.

[Northwoods]

Why the hell do we even need a fed.gov mandated standard?  And Common Core is, as it is being implemented, evil.  It is designed, or at least being implented in a way to further destroy the ability of our kids to achieve an education.

[RevDisk]

Why the hell do we even need a fed.gov mandated standard?  And Common Core is, as it is being implemented, evil.  It is designed, or at least being implented in a way to further destroy the ability of our kids to achieve an education.

In case anyone thought I was kidding above, here's an example.

I concur that mandatory is a bad idea. But having even a voluntary unified framework would be a good idea.

[Tallpine]

I had a college class called "applied math" or something like that which meant that it was all word problems   

We were graded more on coming up with the right equation than on solving it.

Besides, doesn't everyone know that 3 * 4 = C      

[Perd Hapley]

If you keep watching, she's not quite as bad as some have made out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW0VxxoCrNo

Asked if she will correct the students, she says yes, she wants them to "compute correctly," but it's more important to understand why 12 is correct, than to focus on the answer itself.

Not that I'm defending Common Core.

[roo_ster]

I know a few folks who homeschool their kids - they've never mentioned Common Core, but they've said that in the homeschooling community, textbooks from the '50s and '60s are in demand to teach basics like arithmetic, American history, spelling, science, and grammar. (New developments - computers & electronics, recent history, current geography, etc., of course require more recent materials. Duh.)

And yes, they still do teach their kids how to write in cursive.

I have hunted down such on abebooks for family & friends who homeschool.  Matter of fact, one publisher/author team produced an excellent series of math texts from the 1930s through the 1960s.  I usually get them for $1 plus $4 shipping.  Math is great in that the basics have not changed a lick in 100 years.

[AZRedhawk44]

I remember having to memorize my multiplication tables in elementary school.

They weren't "word problems" where I had several minutes per question to create an 8x10 color glossy photo and write an explanation of each one on the back.  I remember that the whole class had a time limit to do about 50 random multiplication problems.  I want to say it was 5 minutes, but I don't remember.

I either knew the answer, or I moved on to the next one.  No time to take off my shoes and socks and start counting out 3 sets of 4 or 4 sets of 3.  Besides, that would have been unfair to the girls in class when 7x3 came around.

Rote memorization for multiplication and division creates people that don't need to get bogged down in the mechanics of math when applied math problems come around.  When you're trying to rationalize a way to understand those two trains from Chicago and San Francisco, there's no reason to introduce sub-variables by not knowing what your basic add/subtract/multiply/divide operations are for the components of the problem.

Yes, you need to know how to do "long" multiplication and division when problems come up like 5189*2654 or 902/87.  But you're still going to start that problem by knowing (rather than laboring to know) that 4*9 = 36, or that 87 goes into 90 1 time.

[HankB]

I had a college class called "applied math" or something like that which meant that it was all word problems   

After the first two calculus classes, the college courses for math at my college got titles like "Applied Mathematics I", "Applied Mathematics II", etc.

The problem is, there were nearly NO applications taught; the instructors were from the math department rather than physics or engineering, and besides being in love with the sound of their own voice, they thought that math was to be applied to prove theorems, not something icky like application to the physical world.

[230RN]

I either knew the answer, or I moved on to the next one.  No time to take off my shoes and socks and start counting out 3 sets of 4 or 4 sets of 3.  Besides, that would have been unfair to the girls in class when 7x3 came around.

QFH  (Quoteable For Humor.)

[Fitz]

For as long as I can remember, math teachers have held the position that how you arrived at an answer was more important than the answer itself. Computational errors can be easily corrected, but reasoning errors related to arriving at the correct formula or equation are more difficult.



This is yet another example of folks making a much bigger deal out of things than they are.

Actual situation: "The process is more important for teaching than the answer"

ZOMGOverreaction "TEH OBAMA IS GONNA CHANGE MATH SO THAT WRONG ANSWERS ARE RIGHT!"

[Balog]

I have hunted down such on abebooks for family & friends who homeschool.  Matter of fact, one publisher/author team produced an excellent series of math texts from the 1930s through the 1960s.  I usually get them for $1 plus $4 shipping.  Math is great in that the basics have not changed a lick in 100 years.

We're fixing to homeschool our small people, care to share a name?

[tokugawa]

Kind of sorry how since the 60's , every 10 or 20 years we come up with some revolutionary new way to teach kids stuff they were successfully taught for generations.  Jerry Pournelle has gone about this at length, how English nannies would teach their charges to read at 4.

 I wonder how much of the "education reform" is a product of trying to teach the unteachable.

[Balog]

Kind of sorry how since the 60's , every 10 or 20 years we come up with some revolutionary new way to teach kids stuff they were successfully taught for generations.  Jerry Pournelle has gone about this at length, how English nannies would teach their charges to read at 4.

 I wonder how much of the "education reform" is a product of trying to teach the unteachable.

Was it Arfin Greebly (where is that guy anyway?) who was always talking about reverting to the last known good version?

I think the frontier to early West model of schooling is the best fit for American society as it stands. Many of the "innovations" introduced after that were to help train kids to be good little drones working in factories, and are horrible at preparing them for the current world. And of course anything that commie bastard Dewey did needs to diaf.

[Jocassee]

voluntary unified framework

This is the federal gov't we're talking about here.

Based on what I know of it, it's like most gov't programs--good in theory, terrible in implementation, and will further degrade Liberty.

[Hawkmoon]

We've been there before.

My little sister was born in 1955. When she was in grammar school, somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade I'll guess, I was in college as a pre-architecture major. That meant, essentially, an engineering/physics/art curriculum that included taking the math majors' math courses. I was home on a visit when my mother asked me to accompany her to the grammar school one evening for a presentation on what they were then touting as "the new math."

I confess that I was lost and totally baffled. The "new math" was Cuisenaire Rods. They are sort of like a cross between Legos and pick-up stix. Apparently they still exist, and it is still claimed that they somehow teach fundamental math concepts. It didn't make sense to me then, it doesn't make sense to me now, and the school system in my old home town stopped using it within a couple of years so I guess it didn't make sense to them, either.



http://www.hand2mind.com/cuisenairerods/cuisenairerods.jsp

The social engineers never rest in their continuing drive to dumb down education to the lowest common denominator, and to find any potential excuse for why teachers can't make dumb kids smart.

[Hawkmoon]

I wonder how much of the "education reform" is a product of trying to teach the unteachable.

DING!

The unspoken, dark side of "No child left behind" is that no child shall be allowed to forge ahead.

[AZRedhawk44]

I've never seen those before, Hawkmoon, but I see how they could be useful for developing rapid associative values and relating those values to one another. 

I played a lot with Legos and Construx as a kid and they helped develop similar ratio estimation skills.

I don't think they really have a place in math curriculum, but as an educationally-oriented toy they are okay.

[TechMan]

Ever seen Montessori Math Beads?

[Scout26]

We had to memorize addition tables (and take timed tests like AZR44 mentioned about once a week.  We generally did one number per week.  2+1, 2+2, 2+3, 2+4, etc.)  same thing with subtraction tables and multiplication tables. 

Memorize and recite in class (both individually and as a group) "7 times 1 equal 7, 7 times 2 equal 14, etc. as the teacher point to each equation(sans answer) on the board, then Friday a timed test or two.  One on this weeks "number" and on a "number" from a previous week, and it could be an addition, subtraction, multiplication, or a combination.   

Math was drilled into us the old fashioned way.  These also helped and if you sang the times tables when called upon the teacher would smile. (we had to go up to 12, not just 10 though). 

Long Division was just Multiplication enhanced.   

[Angel Eyes]

Besides, doesn't everyone know that 3 * 4 = C      

Keep yer Satanic hexadecimal cipherin' to yerself, ya heathen.

[HankB]

. . . My little sister was born in 1955. When she was in grammar school, somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade I'll guess . . . when my mother asked me to accompany her to the grammar school one evening for a presentation on what they were then touting as "the new math."

I confess that I was lost and totally baffled. The "new math" was Cuisenaire Rods.

I'm just a little younger than your sister, and until your post, I never heard of Cuisenaire Rods. Nor have I ever seen adively's Montessori Math Beads, which look significantly less useful than an abacus. Sometimes they did use props - apples, pennies, whatever - to illustrate basic arithmetic concepts in the early grades; I remember once a nun asked me in class "HankB, if you were walking down the street and had five cookies, and you met Fred there, how many cookies would you have?"

"Five" was my answer - but it wasn't the one she was looking for. 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

For as long as I can remember, math teachers have held the position that how you arrived at an answer was more important than the answer itself. Computational errors can be easily corrected, but reasoning errors related to arriving at the correct formula or equation are more difficult.



This is yet another example of folks making a much bigger deal out of things than they are.

Actual situation: "The process is more important for teaching than the answer"

ZOMGOverreaction "TEH OBAMA IS GONNA CHANGE MATH SO THAT WRONG ANSWERS ARE RIGHT!"

yup    and judging from the math classes my kids taking  and will be taking the results are good. the old man has one of his phd's in somekinda math and he was floored with what they cover in a "gasp"  public highschool.

[vaskidmark]

Beads and sticks and such are merely a way for visualizing an abstract concept.  Since the schools are not teaching the abstract concept, there is really little benefit in being able to visualize it.  Better to learn how to use an abacus (which some schools used to do) or a slide rule (remember that 12-foot monster mounted above the blackboard?).  And even with slip sticks we learned to manipulate then rather than what the concept driving that manipulation was.  (See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule and their example of addition and subtraction.  Somebody long ago did the head work - which never changes - and how to get it accurately printed/etched onto the rule.)

As for the "applied mathematics" issue - while it is true that most of us never had to speak algebra after 10th grade, we do use it every other day or so without really noticing that we are.  Most of us do not need to sit down and write formulae out and then "show our work" in arriving at the solution.  We just apply the process (not the concepts) - usually because in spite of our best efforts the process was drilled into our heads, along with the ability to create word problems in our head and solve them there.  The reason that train from San Francisco never meets the train from Chicago is more likely because of a failing rail infrastructure than because we still do not care whether they ever meet or not.  The only people who officially care are in the railroad business and they had "computer" programs developed for figuring it out shortly after the second head-on collision suggested they ought to know that sort of stuff.  The clerks who sweated out changes that needed to be made up and down the line when the 4:37 was late never knew or cared what the concepts were that drove those tables - they just learned to manipulate them.

So it's not applied math that we need to teach.  It's manipulation of math.  Well, until the physical world changes sufficiently that the tables that have already been worked out no longer give us answers that work.  Maybe on Mars 2+2 will in fact equal 5.  If so, we will need a limited number of geeks and nerds who actually know and care about the concepts to develop new tables for the rest of us to use.  All we need to do is remain aware that those geeks and nerds should not be interchanging meters and inches without actually converting from one to the other.

Which is why Common Core will not build bridges that hold up or machines that sort eggs into dozens.  Cipherin' and gozinta does that just fine.

stay safe.