Thanks. Help yourself.
Aside from agenda issues,
it is based on a fallacy.
Memorization of facts, under time constraints,
and the regurgitation of them under stress- testing,
is the foundation of higher learning.
Then they move on to the syncing facts, relating knowledge, applying problem solving, and critical thinking.
Lots of people don’t get past the foundation,
so education gets slammed for not producing critical thinkers.
The fact is some people do so naturally, and some more can be trained.
Not everyone can be a critical thinker.
Even less will be when they go straight to it without a foundation to build on.
The naturals and bright people will pull through as they always have no matter how bad the education system, but we will lose out on those that could have been potentially trained.
This program is feel good BS that we are going to train a bunch of geniuses out of everybody when they can’t do the basics.
It is like thinking your military is going to be better by giving everyone berets or your LEA more high speed by giving them the same kit as a Tier 1 unit.
Many of us have grand parents that barely made it past grade school. Buy they could read the newspaper, balance their checkbook, and had some Algebra, Latin, and Classics under their belt. To this day they can cut, measure, and do multiplication and division in their heads based on wrote memorization when they were like 8 years old.
The boomers took over the education system, because they knew so much better than their parents,
and now we have a few decades of HS graduates wasting tax dollars to go to college, where they take basic English and Algebra that used to be junior high and freshman stuff before dropping out- school still gets the money. Some graduate. Yay.
Now we have even more feel good stuff that is great esteem and agendas, but won’t cut it.
It is “better” now because such a higher percentage of kids graduate HS and college. Vs there used to be less graduates but more people were functionally and mathematically literate.
If the nation was serious about education, it would focus on the best and the brightest, each month would be testing that ability grouped, each level would be tailored to the group. This produced adults that can tell you that for that sized river, with this percentage waste heat production in this nuc plant, for this gross power production, raising this percentage of water flow that many degrees, goes back to the river, with an overall temp increase of x, meaning the trout breath 2 more respirations a minute at the temperature but will be perfectly fine.
Right now we import of shitload of adults like that because we don’t produce enough from population demographics capable of producing a surplus.
But, at least the guy who never had more potential than dancing in front of a mattress store in a mascot outfit will feel good about himself while he goes to school. .
Lots of opinions here.
“Common core” is exactly that–an attempt to specify what material a student should master by grade level and subject. It’s an excellent idea that will probably be screwed up by bureaucracy. It’s not centered around creative thinking or a liberal agenda.
It’s neither good nor bad in and of itself; it’s entirely dependent on execution.
Bad teachers hate it because they risk being held accountable. Many experienced (read older) good teachers don’t like it because they’re already doing a good job, yet they’ll have to re-do a lot of lesson plans that they haven’t had to touch for years.
What I like about it is it’s causing those of us in the field of education to re-examine what we’re doing and why.
Bulk memorization is absolutely not the foundation of higher learning. It is a crutch for shitty teachers. Obviously, memorizing some things is necessary in order to move on but STEM education should never try to use it as a base. Students should learn methods and ways of thinking about the problems. The memorization will come with practice, it doesn’t need to be forced.
Maybe you were talking about history degrees or something. That is the only way I could possibly agree with you.
Tangential to this thread, as someone who made the transition to teaching later in middle age, teaching–when done right–is hard.
Yes, there are some wackadoodles in the profession, and these folks always seem to make the news, but in my limited experience the vast majority of teachers and educators are doing their best to prepare the overstimulated, oversexed, and under-parented youth of America for success.
There are days in the classroom when I wish I was back in Iraq or Afghanistan…
Thanks for a positive report from somebody on the “front lines.” And thank you for your service . . . both in the military and in the classroom.
I don’t know ya from Adam, but I suspect you do a fine job and your students are lucky to have you.
Me too.
Nope.
I was talking about all learning.
A fund of knowledge is the foundation for higher level performance.
It is fine with me if you do not agree.
I don’t know a whole lot about how it’s supposed to work. But i know personally a few teachers. And liberal and conservative are not happy with it at all. I’m getting from them that they want to be left alone to teach.
Isn’t that the definition of a compromise? An agreement where no one is happy?
About time someone had the balls to step up to the plate:
Open the floodgates? Indiana becomes first state to scrap Common Core
I learned most of my critical thinking skills in elementary school. I had one class in college called thinking outside the box that was very helpful though.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/common-core-parent-facebook-post-indiana-school-181841158.html
Thankfully Texas doesn’t have it as this only makes education worse. We already have standardized tests which are a failure. Teachers will tell you they have little academic freedom because of these tests they have to teach to which becomes the new metric by which they are judged. We have tests here a majority of students fail and it just goes on and on. We were told privately to discount entire sections of the results because they’re so convoluted they don’t make sense to math majors. Common Core just further convolutes basic skills.
That has been floating around social media and I think it’s complete bullshit (the letter the parent wrote).
I have limited experience with Common Core; mostly from my Conservative friends who have children enrolled in it and “don’t like it.”
To me, it is plain as day what that question was asking the student to do. It’s a math trick that can explain what is happening during the process, not just what the answer is. If that parent is as smart as he says he is, it should be pretty easy for him to figure out. I solved the concept in about 30 seconds, and that was without a teacher at the front of the room lecturing me about it.
Now, none of that means I “support” Common Core. Anything that divides the Left and Right probably has some truth in the middle.
One question I have been asking, without a solid answer yet: Is there data proving the success or failure of CC vs “old” methods? Is it still experimental and too early to have such data? If so, why wasn’t it vetted before being rolled out nation wide? Or (and I’m betting this is likely) has the grading scale changed to make it appear Common Core is doing the right thing?
Based on the math alone, I don’t see a major issue with it. I was never great at math, and CC teaches “tricks” that I had to learn on my own to be able to solve it. I’m very much a visual learner, and being able to “see” what is happening helped me when I was younger. Many of my friends said they use the same tricks, and some of them are much smarter than I am, so I don’t feel like these techniques are out in left field.
Very interesting reply: do you know anyone or have a love one who has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) AND let alone in 2nd grade? If not you should spend some time walking in the shoes of love ones whom have a child with those attributes.
As and old man, I would take:
7 minus 6 is 1
2 minus 1 is 1
4 minus 3 is 1
Yep, I would complete the answer in three steps.
Why complicate to 10 friggin steps?
My fellow forum member, we are our worst enemies.
Where does ASD come into this?
He has a point. I don’t agree with him completely but his point is valid. As I stated in an earlier post, we need to be teaching why math works the way it does, not just that it does. Just teaching that 5+5=10 doesn’t really help in a post industrial world. Critical thinking, deductive reasoning, and an understanding of the processes is a must if we are to regain any standing in education. That was actually one of the original ideals behind CC. It just went off the rails as most every government program does.
The “Frustrated Parent” son is in 2nd grade with ASD.
Ahh ok. I was not aware of that.
I do not however feel that it changes the facts of the letter. If we are going to teach critical thinking we need to do it right.