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2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

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Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#91

Post by gnaritas »

dkhenry wrote: post #82
gnaritas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being ruled by fear. Fear is not a place from which good logical decisions are made; if the research says it's better, then it's better; you don't keep doing the worse way just because you're used to it and fearful of anything new.

This isn't a place for "some research points to this being better" we currently raised millions of children who _can_ do math just fine the current way. Do you want to just change it because someone says they might have found a better way. This is the kind of change that should have happened over _decades_ slowly to prove its self not as one big political push with no real world example of broad success. What happens…

> we currently raised millions of children who _can_ do math just fine the current way

Unfortunately that’s simply not true, we live in a culture where most people can't do math, and find it acceptable to not be able to. How math is being taught is simply wrong and those methods you're so resisting aren't new, they're decades old and they're already proven.

> What happens when it turns out a combination of poor training of teachers and lack of exposure by parents combines to produce an entire generation that can't do the most basic of math problems.

We're already there.

You're just fear based and will resist any change whatsoever.

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#92

Post by ebrenes »

todd8 wrote: post #79

I suffered through this sort of math with my kids. I'm afraid that this may end up being flamebait, but here goes... These reformed Math programs are a tremendous mess being foisted on us by "Education" professionals and academics. Instead of teaching one, well-tested method of performing operations (addition, subtraction, etd.), these programs present a number of alternative "algorithms". In Everyday Math (the progr…

What was the Singapore book you used to re-teach your daughter mathematics if you don't mind me asking?

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#93

Post by groovy2shoes »

hga wrote: post #64
groovy2shoes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never particularly good at math. I also never took precalculus in high school. It was Algebra 2, Geometry, Discrete Math, and Statistics for me. I struggled a little with Calculus when I got to university, but managed to pass the class and got pretty good at it by the time I was in Multivariable Calculus. I know many people who were in the same situation. I don't think "precalculus" is requisite for learning ca…

Precalculus as I'm using it is a level of math, not a particular course (although there are of course courses with that title). In addition to what you learned in high school, assuming your Algebra II was like mine, plenty of analytic geometry, it would also include trigonometry. To do as well as you did, you obviously picked that up on your own, as did I. (While in theory I took a trig and further analytic geometry…

Thanks for the clarification. I changed schools a few times growing up and "missed out" on some actual courses called "prealgebra" and "precalculus", which lead to my assumption.

I think what really helped me pick up different branches of math was actually getting the motivation from somewhere. My learning of Discrete Math was fueled by my interest in programming; for Calculus it was the neat applications in Physics. Calculating for calculation's sake was always pretty boring, and I'd tune out without some other kind of applicable motivation.

By the sounds of it, I'm much younger than you (having attended high school in the mid-2000s), but it's interesting that I did pretty similar stuff when I was bored in school. I wrote more than a couple of essays using groff just for the hell of it. Good times :)

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#94

Post by ollysb »

Catalyst4NaN wrote: post #40
ollysb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes they need to do higher order problems... For the majority of people some basic mental arithmetic is all they're ever going to need.

That's a pretty horrible attitude to take to learning. It's like asking why ever read a book, with a level of english past the level of a memo asking if you have completed a task. This article also seems to suggest that people don't understand how to preform basic mental arithmetic. In the states there also seems to be this insane way of thinking that you should learn an algorithm to do things in a particular way, if…

There's an infinite number of things you could be learning, wouldn't it be better to concentrate your efforts on the things that are valuable to you individually? I'm not of the belief that you need to learn things at specific ages and I also believe that you learn much faster when you have an application in mind for a particular skill. That in mind I think students should be encouraged to explore the things that are of interest to them. (hey I took double maths for A-level and enjoyed every minute of it)

(hey I took double maths for A-level and enjoyed every minute of it)

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#95

Post by dkhenry »

gnaritas wrote: post #91
dkhenry wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a place for "some research points to this being better" we currently raised millions of children who _can_ do math just fine the current way. Do you want to just change it because someone says they might have found a better way. This is the kind of change that should have happened over _decades_ slowly to prove its self not as one big political push with no real world example of broad success. What happens…

> we currently raised millions of children who _can_ do math just fine the current way Unfortunately that’s simply not true, we live in a culture where most people can't do math, and find it acceptable to not be able to. How math is being taught is simply wrong and those methods you're so resisting aren't new, they're decades old and they're already proven. > What happens when it turns out a combination of poor train…

I guess we just have a different outlook on the world. If your working under the assumption that people currently can't do basic math nothing I can say will change that opinion.

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#96

Post by zo1 »

hga wrote: post #80
zo1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are peoples' lives they are affecting. "Hope" and "politics" shouldn't be a part of the decision making process.

They could have at least pretended to do some experiments, maybe even with proper controls (yes, that's a radical concept in education "research", e.g. how phonics were tossed in the middle of the last century, resulting in a massive decline in literacy), that showed the Common Core was good before imposing it on the entire nation.

Being able to apply "common core" to a cross-section of schools, one would have been able to control for a lot of the "unknowns" and common "problems" that is complained about in education. Sadly, they didn't do that and instead pigeon-holed this solution onto all schools. Wonderful opportunity missed, for the sake of politics.

I'm not aware of the phonics things, though? Care to elaborate on it?

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#97

Post by hga »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #93
hga wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precalculus as I'm using it is a level of math, not a particular course (although there are of course courses with that title). In addition to what you learned in high school, assuming your Algebra II was like mine, plenty of analytic geometry, it would also include trigonometry. To do as well as you did, you obviously picked that up on your own, as did I. (While in theory I took a trig and further analytic geometry…

Thanks for the clarification. I changed schools a few times growing up and "missed out" on some actual courses called "prealgebra" and "precalculus", which lead to my assumption. I think what really helped me pick up different branches of math was actually getting the motivation from somewhere. My learning of Discrete Math was fueled by my interest in programming; for Calculus it was the neat applications in Physics.…

You're very welcome, and indeed, back in my days, late '70s for high school, not only did we have to walk uphill both ways in snow to get there, but the computer programming course was taught in conjunction with the local college, probably the same course they used. It was punched card FORTRAN "IV" on an IBM 1130 (scare quotes because IBM's definition of FORTRAN IV was so permissive this compiler only have numeric ifs; that is, an if statement evaluated an expression and it had three lines it would goto if negative, 0 or positive).

It wasn't as bad as it might sound; sure, punched cards were a bit of a pain, and we all knew they were obsolescent (1978-9), but then again it was a chance to learn how they did things when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But the neatest thing was no computer priesthood for this class: the main computer for the school was an 370/115 (360 series: revolutionary '60s architecture using discrete silicon transistors and core memory, the 370 series used ICs including for main memory (!), the -115 model was the lowest end/slowest, but it ran BASIC fine :-), and they leased the obsolescent 1130 and just put it in a corner.

We'd put our cards in the card reader, hit go, hit the right buttons or whatever to break it out of an infinite loop if necessary, feed in a boot card if it got really confused, all under essentially no supervision, but good help, of the priesthood in the other corner of the room tending the mainframe. It also had a console, and an interactive program was one of the projects.

Lots of people older than me also cut their teeth on the 1130, Wikipedia has a partial list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1130#Influence_of_the_1130 I wonder, if only the university library had a book on LISP; instead it had lots of good books on software engineering, which along with the programming taught me the basics. Like don't mix up '0' and 'O' in your variable names, especially if the first cut of the card deck is being produced by students learning how to do date entry from a coding form you filled out (http://www.atkielski.com/PDF/data/fortran.pdf).

Whereas the DEC PDP-11/70 running UNIX(TM) I used was at a big university's summer school following that. And fortunately not at all loaded down then, and it was a very fast system, even had a fixed head disk for swapping. So in my case I was semi-bored with the introductory programming course (at the end the professor privately but nicely called me out for being a ringer), and wrote up the final project using nroff and a XEROX Daisywheel to counter that. Just because even primitive word processing that was extremely neat, and a lot better than typing out a paper in the previous summer on a Selectric typewriter with auto-erase, the best there was at the time.

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#98

Post by zo1 »

agumonkey wrote: post #86
zo1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are peoples' lives they are affecting. "Hope" and "politics" shouldn't be a part of the decision making process.

It's a choice, known but flawed vs potentially better or worse. It's already there in many places, the world is complex and everything moves from imperfect state to another imperfect state. To me the value is that it's obviously the right direction. Mechanical learning in mathematics is very very damaging for kids that can't click right away, and even those who get the picture may fail later on by abstracting at the…

"To me the value is that it's obviously the right direction."

Yes, but if all we're going on is "hope" and "politics", then we have absolutely no way of knowing if it's the right direction as you say. As the other poster mentioned, they could have easily done some studies of common core before throwing it at the wall to see if it sticks.

Change is never good if it's for its own sake. It may be intuitive for us to think that "mechanical learning" isn't the right approach to solving literacy in subject X, but we could very well be entirely wrong. The point I was trying to draw upon was the parent's initial comment about "let's do Y, and hope it works". Hoping is absolutely no substitute for hard research with tests and controls.

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#99

Post by danielweber »

tzs wrote: post #87
tptacek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Common Core prevents students from taking calculus is disputed: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2014/04/a_sorry_at... Further, a citation to Caltech's admission policy would be handy; I found sources directly disputing your claim (also in the context of Common Core), citing Caltech Math1a to rebut it.

Academic preparation Caltech says you should have [1]: 4 years of math (including calculus) 1 year of physics 1 year of chemistry 3 years of English (4 years recommended) 1 year of U.S. history/government (waived for international students) They really want you to have calculus. From the admissions FAQ [3]: What if my high school does not offer Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses? Many…

What does CalTech do for students who didn't get first semester calculus? Are they basically not admitted, or is there some summer crunch course for bringing them up to speed?

(Most, but not all, MIT students enter with their first semester under their belts and part of the second, so the second semester calc class offered to first semester freshman is traditionally a wild monkey cage of chaos and freshmen held inside a giant lecture hall. This may have changed in recent years with on-line courses -- this would definitely be the perfect class to kill the lecture. But the first-semester calc is still offered in various difficulty levels for the first semester.)

(Oh, and MIT uses the same freaky unit numbering.)

Re: 2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

#100

Post by hga »

zo1 wrote: post #96
hga wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have at least pretended to do some experiments, maybe even with proper controls (yes, that's a radical concept in education "research", e.g. how phonics were tossed in the middle of the last century, resulting in a massive decline in literacy), that showed the Common Core was good before imposing it on the entire nation.

Being able to apply "common core" to a cross-section of schools, one would have been able to control for a lot of the "unknowns" and common "problems" that is complained about in education. Sadly, they didn't do that and instead pigeon-holed this solution onto all schools. Wonderful opportunity missed, for the sake of politics. I'm not aware of the phonics things, though? Care to elaborate on it?

Errr, entire forests have been consumed in the fight over phonics and teaching reading, what in particular would you like to know? Note also this is intensely political, e.g. I just noticed the Whole World article on Wikipedia was purged, apparently without a replacement or significant inclusion of what that was all about. The Whole Language article pretends this all started in the 1960s, instead of 1920s or so. And, absolutely seriously, after poking around some more, it looks like a whole bunch of history has been airbrushed out of Wikipedia, not sure much of anything goes back further than the '50s.

For a tl;dr (heh), Progressives in the early-mid part of the century decided rote memorization was bad per se, a new "Whole Word" method was developed but only? tested on children of University of College professors, who would have been in the large cohort of children who'll learn reading pretty much on their own, by the mid-50s it was widely realized that this left behind a larger cohort who can't learn how to read without phonics, and to this day the issue is still a battle to the knife.

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