Posted by Tina
I love people, they can be so creative! Daily Mail:
Fed up with Common Core, Doug Herrmann went for common sense.
The Ohio dad was sick and tired of not being able to help his son – who is in the second grade – do his homework, after his school adopted the controversial Common Core standard.
In order to make his point, Herrmann wrote a check to Milridge Elementary School in Plainesville, using Common Core numbers – a chart with x’s and 0’s – in order to show just how confusing the technique is.
Gotta love it.
Well first, he didn’t even bother to do the method correctly; note the number of boxes on the two lines. They don’t match up with each other; he wrote two different dollar amounts.
Second, this response was juvenile and teaches a bad lesson to our kids: when something is too hard for you, don’t try and learn it, just give up and say it’s stupid.
Patheos had the perfect response to this celebration of ignorance:
“Common Core isn’t the problem here.
The problem is all the parents who immediately dismiss better, more effective ways of teaching math because it’s “different” from what they learned.
If Herrmann doesn’t understand what his son is doing, then they should sit down together and work through it. Read the textbook. Go to Google. Ask the teacher for help. Any of those things would have helped and none of them would have taken very long.
Instead, Herrmann wasted everyone’s time by writing a useless check and putting it on Facebook.
Because, to people like him, ignorance is hilarious. He’d rather see his son learn math the old-fashioned way, putting him in danger of struggling in his math career as he gets older, instead of course-correcting early in his education when everything is still fresh.
To answer the obvious rebuttal, yes, a lot of adults are able to get through the day just fine even though they were never very good at math. But why wouldn’t they want their children to aim higher, understand things better, and think more critically?
I’m not a shill for Common Core. I’m just someone who understands what it is, unlike Doug Herrmann, who couldn’t explain it to you if he tried.
Dave Powell at Education Week has it exactly right:
[Common Core is] not a conspiracy to make your kids dumb; it’s actually a conspiracy to make your kids smart… It’s about helping them work confidently with numbers and mathematical concepts so they don’t have to go through life with a cheat sheet hidden in their back pockets. It may not look that way to parents who are struggling to decipher the homework their children bring home, but if we commit to teaching math this way we can actually change the way people think.
I spent seven years teaching high school math. I’m a National Board Certified Teacher. I’ve written multiple posts explaining this “new” math (that really isn’t new at all).
I’m telling you this new way is so much better for students, but we need parents willing to get on board with it instead of complaining because it looks weird.
At the very least, it sends the wrong message to really impressionable kids.”
Re : “I’m not a shill for Common Core.”
Yes you are.
Common Core reminds me of an “experiment” in teaching reading in the 50’s. (Oops, I’m dating myself)
I was taught to read using the phonics method and spouse was taught to “sight read” and still has a hard time sounding out an unfamiliar word. Not sure which method is taught today, but if it’s the “sight” then it’s no wonder we are turning out students that can’t spell – even using Spellcheck!
That’s been my experience as well. People taught to sight read have a heck of a time…they was robbed!
Tropic of Calculus 1 (New Math)
The Derivative Song
That’s Mathematics
TEXT HERE
I think the parent was just using humor to express his frustration. It’s a joke and so it matters not if the little boxes are exactly right…most Americans wouldn’t know the difference anyway since they weren’t taught with the CC method.
The transition for older kids is causing them frustration. Young kids doing math this way may do okay in the future but it’s causing parents trying to help their kids a lot of frustration. Schools complain that parents need to get involved and then the powers that be throw up roadblocks!
Educators had a fit that No Child Left Behind created standards that forced teachers to teach for the test. My contention was that if they were doing a thorough job of teaching the material the students would pass the test.
Common Core is now being criticized in many ways but one of the common complaints is that teachers have to teach for the test.
Education bureaucrats, and now industry moguls, have navel gazed to “perfect” education for decades and entire generations of kids are failing in greater numbers. Maybe we should get back to basics, give more power to local school districts, teachers, and parents, and see what happens. I have a feeling the kids would do better.
Articles of interest:
How Common Core Standards Kill Creative Teaching
The Battle Against Common Core:
Central planning by the new world order anyone?
Tina, I see the problems mentioned above as having more to do with the choices of individual districts. There is nothing in Common Core that requires schools to focus on rote memorization, to get materials from publishing houses, or to teach to the test to a degree that didn’t exist prior to implementation. My district has been implementing Common Core for years, and the majority of the material I use in the classroom is made by either myself or someone else in my department. The last district I worked for did almost nothing but test prep, the teachers had to teach much more lock-step than before, and the transition to Common Core actually spurred slightly more creativity rather than less. Common Core is just a set of standards, which are readily available online to anyone:
http://www.corestandards.org/
Sure there may be incentives to use certain materials but that is still a choice. Perhaps I’m spoiled since I’m a California teacher and my district is one of the highest paying in the state, so maybe we just haven’t had the need to take up those incentives. It could be different in other states.
Re “My district has been implementing Common Core for years, and the majority of the material I use in the classroom is made by either myself or someone else in my department.”
That is the best argument for Common Core I have ever seen.
OK, that was a good one.
Sort of reminds me of the Ebonics craze as legitimized by a Oakland School District:
Ebonics Phrases (which basically just raised certain teachers salaries who became proficient in it) So would any concerned English Major would want his PEEPS to graduate with “creds” speaking this street slang. Come on folks lets be keepin’ it real!
Yo – Hello
Sup? – How are you?
Dope/Dizzle – good
Off da hook/hizzle/hizza – very good
Whack/Whizzle – bad
Da Kronik – good weed
Peeps – people
Ni/Nizzle/Nizza – Man/friend
Dawg/Dizzle/Dizza – Man/friend
Beeatsh – Woman/female friend
Ho/Hizzle/Hizza – Woman/female friend
Pimp’d up/out- well dressed
Ride/Rizzle/Rizza – Car
5-0 – Police
phat – good
Fly – good
Supafly – very good
don’t be trippin’ – Do not be anxious (a difficult word to translate)
keepin’ it real – keeping things in prespective to reality
shortiez – children
livin’ it large – living a prosperous life
chicken head – ugly woman
pigeon – ugly woman
papers – money
to smoke – to shoot
to bust a cap – to shoot
Good response Harold!
AARP:
Students First:
I’ve read that America has never ranked high in the world standings. If this is true, then our further falling in the standings since the 70’s is even more troubling.