My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
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Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#2Your unspecified taxes pay for teachers whose students get straight A's in the tests the teachers set.
What if you paid the teacher through the school principal?
What if the invoice for your school fees were on the bottom of your kid's annual report card?
And you had to pay it, with a bank cheque, in person, to the teacher, on the Tuesday before Christmas, after waiting in the queue with all the other parents.
With your kid and the principal looking on, all minds focussed and incentives painfully exposed?
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#3I mean if your kids think that college is easy then they probably aren’t taking challenging classes. I don’t remember anyone thinking weed out Chem or physics was easy except one or 2 genius kids. Also if you take regular level classes you do indeed learn almost nothing because the curriculum is designed so median level achievers.
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#4The author's polemic only shows that his middle-school children have no intrinsic interest in the history of the Roman Empire, and also don't memorize arbitrary durations. Quick: how many years between the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War? What's the air speed of an unladen swallow? Is this the author's idea of an education?
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#5The author's polemic only shows that his middle-school children have no intrinsic interest in the history of the Roman Empire, and also don't memorize arbitrary durations. Quick: how many years between the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War? What's the air speed of an unladen swallow? Is this the author's idea of an education?
African or European swallow?
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#6The author's polemic only shows that his middle-school children have no intrinsic interest in the history of the Roman Empire, and also don't memorize arbitrary durations. Quick: how many years between the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War? What's the air speed of an unladen swallow? Is this the author's idea of an education?
>Recently I tried to help my son with his seventh grade math homework. I couldn’t do it.
This is not a ringing endorsement of the author's own problem-solving skills.
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#7The author's polemic only shows that his middle-school children have no intrinsic interest in the history of the Roman Empire, and also don't memorize arbitrary durations. Quick: how many years between the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War? What's the air speed of an unladen swallow? Is this the author's idea of an education?
>Recently I tried to help my son with his seventh grade math homework. I couldn’t do it. This is not a ringing endorsement of the author's own problem-solving skills.
Have you tried the new math? The challenge is not a matter of the math, it’s a matter of formatting components of the answer in boxes. Without exposure to it, it’s nearly impossible to decipher. Which felt like half the point when I was doing it with my son.
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Recently I tried to help my son with his seventh grade math homework. I couldn’t do it. This is not a ringing endorsement of the author's own problem-solving skills.
Have you tried the new math? The challenge is not a matter of the math, it’s a matter of formatting components of the answer in boxes. Without exposure to it, it’s nearly impossible to decipher. Which felt like half the point when I was doing it with my son.
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!
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#9Approximately 206? How about approximately 200?
Re: My Kids Are Straight-A Students and They Know Nothing (2017)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Recently I tried to help my son with his seventh grade math homework. I couldn’t do it. This is not a ringing endorsement of the author's own problem-solving skills.
Have you tried the new math? The challenge is not a matter of the math, it’s a matter of formatting components of the answer in boxes. Without exposure to it, it’s nearly impossible to decipher. Which felt like half the point when I was doing it with my son.
I understand the vitriol pointed at the “new math”, but it seems to me the complaints always focus towards “I got the right answer, why was I not rewarded?”. For it’s flaws, its seems these new programs are more focused on teaching kids how to reason, and as a result ask them to follow the process instead of simply arrive at the answer.