Fuzzy math: A nationwide epidemic
My column this week covers the long-fought fuzzy math wars and the parental revolt against poisonous edu-fads. The Texas state school board voted before Thanksgiving to ditch the infamous “Everyday Math” textbook for third-graders. This is the faulty curriculum the NYC schools were forced to adopt despite an outcry from teachers and parents. It’s difficult to find a school district where this dumbed-down virus hasn’t infected the education bureaucracy. If you know of any, let me know. Here’s my article:
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Fuzzy math: A nationwide epidemic
Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are you worried that your third-grader hasn’t learned simple multiplication yet? Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as “spiraling,” which is used to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busywork of cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers who emphasize “self-confidence” over proficiency while their students fall further and further behind? Join the club.
Across the country, from New York City to Seattle, parents are wising up to math fads like “Everyday Math.” Sounds harmless enough, right? It’s cleverly marketed as a “University of Chicago” program. Impressive! Right? But then you start to sense something’s not adding up when your kid starts second grade and comes home with the same kindergarten-level addition and subtraction problems — for the second year in a row.
And then your child keeps telling you that the teacher isn’t really teaching anything, just handing out useless worksheets — some of which make no sense to parents with business degrees, medical degrees and Ph.D.s specializing in econometric analysis. And then you notice that it’s the University of Chicago education department, not the mathematics department, that is behind this nonsense.
And then you Google “Everyday Math” and discover that countless moms and dads just like you — and a few brave teachers with their heads screwed on straight — have had similarly horrifying experiences. Like the Illinois mom who found these “math” problems in the fifth-grade “Everyday Math” textbook:
A. If math were a color, it would be –, because –.
B. If it were a food, it would be –, because –.
C. If it were weather, it would be –, because –.
And then you realize your child has become a victim of “Fuzzy Math,” the “New New Math,” the dumbed-down, politically correct, euphemism-filled edu-folly corrupting both public and private schools nationwide.
And then you feel like the subject of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” as you take on the seemingly futile task of waking up other parents and fighting the edu-cracy to restore a rigorous curriculum in your child’s classroom. New York City teacher Matthew Clavel described his frustration with “Everyday Math” in a 2003 article for City Journal:
“The curriculum’s failure was undeniable: Not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal. . . . what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth-graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?”
But don’t give up and don’t give in. While New York City remains wedded to “Everyday Math” (which became the mandated standard in 2003), the state of Texas just voted before Thanksgiving to drop the University of Chicago textbooks for third-graders. School board members lambasted the math program for failing to prepare students for college. It’s an important salvo in the math wars because Texas is one of the biggest markets for school textbooks. As Texas goes, so goes the nation.
Meanwhile, grass-roots groups such as Mathematically Correct (mathematicallycorrect.com) and Where’s The Math? (wheresthemath.com) are alerting parents to how their children are being used as educational guinea pigs. And teachers and math professionals who haven’t drunk the p.c. Kool-Aid are exposing the ruse. Nick Diaz, a Maryland educator, wrote a letter to his local paper:
“As a former math teacher in Frederick County Public Schools, I have a strong interest in the recent discussion of the problems with the math curriculum in our state and county. . . . The proponents of fuzzy math claim that the new approach provides a ‘deep conceptual understanding.’ Those words, however, hide the truth. Students today are not expected to master basic addition, subtraction and multiplication. These fundamental skills are necessary for a truly deep understanding of math, but fuzzy math advocates are masters at using vocabulary that sounds good to parents, but means something different to educators.”
Members of the West Puget Sound Chapter of the Washington Society of Professional Engineers also stepped forward in their community:
“For 35 years, we have been subjected to a failed experiment, ‘new math.’ Mathematics depends on individual problem-solving ability to arrive at the correct answer. Math does not lend itself to ‘fuzzy’ answers. The solution is to recognize the failure of the Constructivist Curriculum as it relates to mathematics and science, eliminate it and return to the hard core basics using texts like the Singapore Math.”
If Fuzzy Math were a color, it would be neon green like those Mr. Yuk labels warning children not to ingest poisonous substances. Do not swallow!
***
A classic, anti-fad video from M.J. McDermott in Washington state:
And check out Weapons of Math Destruction, a cartoon website dedicated to “peacefully disarming fuzzy math.” You need a sense of humor to fight this crap. Otherwise, you’ll go mad:
***
Update 10:18am Eastern. Fuzzy math goes hand-in-hand with fuzzy reading. And the results show: It’s failing. This just in…
U.S. fourth-graders have lost ground in reading ability compared with kids around the world, according to results of a global reading test.
Test results released Wednesday showed U.S. students, who took the test last year, scored about the same as they did in 2001, the last time the test was given—despite an increased emphasis on reading under the No Child Left Behind law.
Still, the U.S. average score on the Progress in International Reading Literacy test remained above the international average. Ten countries or jurisdictions, including Hong Kong and three Canadian provinces, were ahead of the United States this time. In 2001, only three countries were ahead of the United States.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind law requires schools to test students annually in reading and math, and imposes sanctions on schools that miss testing goals.
The U.S. performance on the international test of 45 nations or jurisdictions differed somewhat from results of a U.S. national reading test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card. Fourth-grade reading scores rose modestly on the most recent version of that test, taken earlier this year and measuring growth since 2005. During the previous two-year period, scores were flat.
On the latest international exam, U.S. students posted a lower average score than students in Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Hungary, Italy and Sweden, along with the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.
Last time, Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore were behind the United States.
Hong Kong and Singapore have taken steps since then, such as increasing teacher preparation, providing more tutoring and raising public awareness about the importance of reading, said Ina Mullis, co- director of the International Study Center at Boston College, which conducts the international reading literacy study.
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In Indiana, the state has a standardized test that all students have to pass in order to graduate. When I subbed at the junior high, I could not administer the ISTEP test because I did not have a teaching license, only a substitute certificate. However, I had a PhD in history from a British University. Apparently, that didn’t qualify me to read “Please fill in the oval completely. If your mark is outside the line, please make sure to erase it completely, blah, blah, blah.” The teachers found it laughable but they had to comply with state regulations.
As far as the math goes, my nephew learned the lattice system. What a pain! It took a long time to get him to quit doing that so that he could handle multiplication of larger numbers quickly. My brother taught him how to divide using ‘the old-fashioned way’ to quote my nephew. Fortunately, my nephew is naturally gifted at math. The school now wants to put him in the advanced algebra class in 8th grade because pre-algebra is ‘too easy,’ again to quote my nephew.
I was very lucky when I went to school because I was streamlined into honors and ace classes which kept me challenged and prepared me for college. In several of my classes as a junior and senior, we took blue-book tests. When I went to college, I had friends who had never even seen a blue book, let alone knew what it was for.
The public school system has become pathetic and college profs complain about having to teach freshmen how to write, but can’t seem to make the connection that the teaching in the college education departments is directly responsible for the inability of the students to write or think when they start college.
Innismir –
Oh, I understand that you weren’t actually condemning it as a whole. I apologize if my comments sounded stronger than I intended. And you are definitely correct in saying that home schooling can create some odd ducks. I went to high school with a brother and sister who were home schooled through 8th grade. The boy was nice, but very introverted. The girl was the opposite, extroverted to the point of obnoxiousness. It was as though she had years of pent up social energy that she was expelling all at once. She would talk to complete strangers as though they were life-long friends. It was a bit off-putting.
I feel like I narrowly escaped this math trend, either because of location or time.
In college I majored in English and math is, by no means, a strength of mine. However, I was still able to take the accelerated math track in junior high and high school (8th grade: Algebra 1 & 2, 9th grade: Geometry, 10th grade: Precalculus, 11th grade: Calculus, 12th grade: Calc 2 – if you want – I did not.)
I don’t think I would have lasted through Algebra if I’d been taught that drivel instead of real multiplication and division. But, if children are taught to really grasp the basics, then even a math-tard like me can make it through more complex math classes. If we coddle children and teach them feelings-based math, or whatever the trend is now, they’ll never have the comprehension or confidence to even try some of those classes if they don’t have natural math abilities.
I pulled my kids out of school this year to homeschool them. My son is in 8th grade, my daugher is in 6th. We are using Math U See. I went back to basic multiplication for both of them. Now that my son (FINALLY!!) knows his math facts, he is ready to start 8th grade math (going Saxon math route now). It would’ve been a struggle for him because he didn’t have the multiplication facts memorized. We are taking our time w/ our daughter. She has alwasy struggled w/ math, and we have seen such a huge improvement with her. She is very proud of herself. She doesn’t hate math anymore. Both of my kids say that their teachers just didn’t know how to teach them, but I do.
I know this may seem strange coming from a guy only a few steps away from a PhD, but…
What is the purpose of education? When do you have enough?
Not to be facetious, but some people should not strive for graduate degrees, or in some cases, even a bachelor’s. There are many areas where the costs will never be recouped. If we fixed our K-12 system, we wouldn’t have this need for Bachelor’s Degree to go work at the GAP.
Now let me be clear, I applaud anyone who remembers that we need lifetime learning, but no one is a failure simply because they do not have a college degree. Manual labor is not bad. Artisans do not “need” special degrees. They need talent. If you just want to learn for the joy of learning, I highly recommend “The Great Courses” which is a DVD series that has the best professors and teachers doing an excellent job. (Yes, I fully acknowledge they exist in our mostly ineffectual system). If the public school system just played these DVDs, I would probably put my kids back in school. Well, maybe not, but I enjoy them immensely. Education works best when it is something you desire, not something that saps your will to live…
Back to the universal right to a college degree… It’s the two bombs on a plane fallacy. The likelihood of being on a plane with a bomb is close to zero. The likelihood of being on a plane with two different (independent) bombs is so infinitesimally small that it can be considered no different that zero; therefore, I should always travel with my own bomb to ensure my plane never blows up. At first blush, it sounds good, but I haven’t changed the equation at all. Many would have us believe that having any college degree increases our earning potential, therefore everyone needs to get a college degree. I am sorry, but that is the logic that “Our Dear Leader” uses to get the North Koreans to start playing basketball (basket ball playing makes you tall since almost all good basketball players are tall). It will not effect the stature of his population at all. An abundance of food from inception might…
If everyone is required to have a college degree, it is no longer a discriminator. It is a constant. It will just prevent a large portion of our population from becoming productive members of society for another four years and creating a larger debt.
What is the mandatory minimum skill sets/education level that every productive American must attain? That should be our “GED” and when you can do that, you should be able to move on. Let us have specific goals and ensure our programs address these requirements. This arbitrary age of schooling is an artificial impediment to the growth of our children.
BTW, I have interacted with MANY home school families and you would be surprised how many of them have PhDs and teach at the University. One of my home school and scouting friends has his MD and PhD from Johns Hopkins, teaches, working on research, and has several patents in the work. I wish I had a tenth of his brainpower. His children and all of the families we have interacted with at the local home school functions do not fit the ill-socialized stereotypes people have. Unfortunately, my 11 year old son (in her defense he is 5′5″) was hit on by one of the local college girls due to his “social skills”, intelligence, and maturity at the ice rink. She just didn’t know how young he was since he doesn’t “act” like the typical publicly educated 8th grader, or should I say 6th grader since that is where the schools would have insisted on keeping him.
Sure! Heres a sample problem: If Tommy goes to Billy’s Kwanzaa party, and Jane goes to Michelle’s Eid party, how many hours of diversity training will Bobby need to attend for not going to either party?
Miss Lady,
Sorry, did not mean to offend. To clarify this came from my days as an aviator, and the other part of the statement is those “that can’t teach evaluate.” I was also and Instructor Boom Operator and was responsible for the development, maintenance, and use of lesson plans. Never did make it to evaluator, kept moving around to other bases before I got my shot. Those of us with a Military background tend to make fun of ourselves on a regular basis. It keeps one from getting too cocky.
Oh, I forgot, the University of Texas offers a fantastic home schooling course. Its totally compete with online course work and you get a high school diploma from the UT High School, K – 16. It’s great and you kids will be miles ahead.
See here: LINK
I’m pretty satisfied with our “Great Expectations” school where fuzzy crap is considered not real education.
However, I recall as a kid, we had a set of 45s set to music that ran add/subtraction/multiplcation/divisions all the way up to 12. Does anyone know where I might download MP3/Wav for it or something similar? Thanks.
Actually, THIS is a more direct link. Hopefully Michelle can bring some attention to this. I was pretty intimidated to consider homeschooling but this helped significantly.
I taught second grade about 20 years ago. Every child, even the ones on the back end of the bell curve, knew his multiplication tables to 12 when he left for third grade.
Even our islamofascists enemies have sense enough to use basic arithmetic equations in their schoolbooks. Of course they use questions like: if one grenade will kill 20 innocent women and children, how many grenades will it take to kill 60 innocent women and children. I think their version of calculus must be something like, if you want to make your 40 virgins last for eternity, how long must you wait between times getting lucky?
That was too long of a post…
I have heard from other Homeschoolers about those who are a bit “off”. We all have different imperatives. I read of a case of homeschoolers whose parents taught the daughter to take over their jewelery making business (some free love hippie commune types…not that there is anything wrong with that). When she turned 18, she moved out and spent some time in community college learning all those things she didn’t get at home.
Still, I would prefer to be able to make my own decisions on what is right for my children. We need diversity of thought! People who think alike designed the Edsel (and public education)… If all you have is a hammer, the world is only filled with nails.
Patrick~
I haven’t checked into the graduation requirements in the state of Texas lately (I don’t have kids and am certified to teach early childhood through 4th grade), but back when I was in high school in El Paso before my dad was PCS’d to Germany, Texas had recently passed “House Bill 72″, which created two tracks for gradation – one “general”, one “college prep”. H. Ross Perot was a big advocate of that change in education policy here. I agree that not everyone needs (or should) go to college. Our educational system also needs to advocate for kids who aren’t “college material” to learn a vocation: we all need plumbers and electricians and mechanics.
I was the first of “the grandkids” (there are 21 of us on my mom’s side) to graduate college, and was the only one for about 10 years or so. My older brother did one semester then dropped out, and has never returned. My only aunt’s 4 boys (the “next” group of grandkids) never went, although one is now an electrician of some level, and another, after getting laid off from Motorola a few years ago went to mechanics school in Florida and is now a motorcycle mechanic. I have one cousin in med school, one graduated with a chemical engineering degree and works for BP, one will graduate this year with a chemical engineering degree. My younger sisters both have degrees (one “youth & community studies” – a victim of bad choices her freshman year that prevented her from getting into the program she really wanted; one sport management degree (new graduate) who wants to work in minor league baseball. There are cousins still in school (meaning not even out of high school yet). Within my extended family, there are those going nowhere, those who didn’t go to college but have successful lives, those who did go to college and are doing okay, and some uber-achievers like the chemical engineers and med students. As a nation, we need appropriate educational tracks for all these different groups so everyone can be a contributing member of society, not a drain on society…
All kids can be college material. Did you say you were a teacher?
Chemical engineers and doctors are uber-achievers?! I’m doing my super, special happy dance right now!
Excellent video. Every primary school teacher should be made to watch it.
I was screamed at by my son’s 5th grade math teacher for teaching him the ‘traditional’ way of doing large number multiplication. I was told that they had to ‘teach him all over again because I was using OLD math’. At which point I told them that he better know how to do it before he came home because all I knew is ‘old math’.
My son is LD in Math. So he has to work extra hard on it. Thankfully it comes easier to his younger siblings.
My question to the educators out there. My kids are using Heath math books. I did a check thru the multiplication and division sections and did not see the ‘fuzzy math’ that I saw in the video. But I must be missing something otherwise why would my son’s teacher have been so angry?
Who knows anything about Heath and should I be worried??
travis~
When I say “college material”, I mean kids with who can perform at a college level, and have the drive to pursue a college education. Not everyone is cut out for college. As un-PC as it may be to say, some students are not equipped, for whatever reason, to succeed in college. I’m sure we all know of people who made the choice to not apply themselves in school, hang with the wrong crowd, get involved with drugs and alcohol, whatever, who aren’t ever going to amount to much. My older brother isn’t stupid, but he never applied himself in school unless he liked the subject – in which cases he excelled – he only ever did enough to get by, otherwise. He went to college, as is “expected”, it seems, of any high school grad these days (or over the past 20 years) and only lasted a semester. My cousin the bike mechanic isn’t stupid, either, but higher education in college wasn’t, apparently, what he wanted to do. Same with his brother the electrician.
As for “uber-achievers” – I did well in math and science in school. I took 5 years worth of math in high school, taking Algebra II and Geometry my sophomore year (Algebra I wasn’t offered in 8th grade). I had to work at getting the good grades in trig and pre-calc. Engineering degrees require lots of math, so I tend to think those who get degrees in that field are “really smart” compared to me just being “smart”. As for doctors? Medical school isn’t a walk in the park. The cousin in med school has a brother who applied to med school but wasn’t accepted – his grades weren’t quite good enough. If I made a mistake in my previous career, or a mistake now in the classroom, no one’s life is at stake…
travis,
With today’s plethora of degrees, I will agree with you that everyone is college material. I just do not think that college is necessary for everyone or should be considered the measure of success. Can you tell I spend much of my time figuring out how to allocate scare resources?
My oldest brother holds the distinction of ascending the ranks of bank VP at the youngest age here in Texas. (awkward, youngest bank VP in history doesn’t hold anymore since there are those younger than him now, but none made VP as young as he did…) He had Zero College (though he does lecture now and then…) and has been on several National Boards. Definitely an exception. (not just because he is MY big brother!)
Do you need a college degree to be a bricklayer? a plumber? a roofer? These are necessary jobs that require skills. Having the disposition and desire for this type of job and lifestyle in no way necessitates higher indoctrination. Sorry, education. He can be more successful in his life by being there and making a difference in his child’s life and to his community, than pursuing academic accolades and becoming a talking head that everyone should listen too simply because of some letters before or after his name.
Sorry about the rant. I become incensed when some equate lack of education with lack of success. That being said, I fully acknowledge that many degrees require one to be an uber-achiever.
You can keep dancing travis…
Should be scarce resources… looking at how some people believe we should allocate our hard earned dollars is definitely scary. Must have been a Freudian slip instead of just fat-fingering it…
Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa…sorry about being so sloppy with my ‘merikan skills.
Great article! I have an M.Ed in Education Policy from UVA, and what you write is so true about Fuzzy Math and other “constructivist” techniques. These liberals don’t believe in any drills and believe that students “construct” their own knowledge and should “discover” on their own ways to do math problems. It is extremely inefficient. It is much better to be taught and drilled that 12 * 12 = 144 than for students to “discover” it on their own. They also don’t believe in any inherent right or wrong answers, just as they don’t believe there is any absolute moral truth. Therefore, if a student believes that 2 + 2 = 5, it is perfectly okay with liberals and socialists. So you get high school students that can’t multiply and divide without calculators.
Students in elementary school should have no need for calculators, and if your child is bringing one to school there is a good chance they are being taught “fuzzy math.”
Here is another byproduct of “fuzzy math”: Socialist and “multicultural” politics in math classrooms. From the New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/seven/03202007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/math_and_marxism_opedcolumnists_sol_stern.htm
3 steps:
I don’t know about Heath textbooks these days, but I graduated high school in 1997 and we almost always used Heath books for math. It worked pretty well for me back then (I was in calculus by my senior year and got just shy of 600 on the math section on my SAT’s — though I’m not sure how that translates to the newer SAT version out there)
3Steps~
In the school district I sub in (and student-taught in) uses the TERC/Investigations series, but they also use the McGraw-Hill “Math in My World” textbook, so I can’t offer any input on the Heath textbook. I didn’t like the “Investigations” for the 3rd graders I worked with last fall. Does your child bring textbooks home? Especially in elementary, it seems schools have gotten away from issuing textbooks for kids to take home. As your child’s teacher let you see the textbooks being used in the classroom. That goes for any subject, not just math…
I agree with Miss Ladybug…you have to know about everything going on at you children’s school. For example, I like the DARE program, but our old school gave them 1 hour every week. When you add this to all of the other noble programs they enrich school with, there is a reason why children bring home all this homework from such a young age. The schools focus on socialization and expect the parents to teach the kids the basics of math, grammar, writing, etc. If you are doing it already, why not take the plunge. I liked the old model, where the schools taught the material, and the family decided upon the moral values and what the greatest evils in the world were.
My wife volunteered at school for several years and we had many conferences before deciding to pull our kids out of public school. We were very involved and tried working for change within the system. Unfortunately, we eventually stopped tilting at windmills. We didn’t want to lose the battle (our children) by focusing on just fighting the war (school system). This is where I fall back on individual responsibility. I would love to change the world, but I will at least change my kids’ lives for the better. We can go back to the war later. Selfish, but we made the effort in the larger war first before focusing on our little battle.
No wonder the U.S. is dropping so far behind the rest of the world, requiring companies to import educated people from elsewhere to fill jobs. I recently stopped by a checkout counter at a drug store (national chain)just as the machine failed. The clerk couldn’t add up the items by paper (excuse me, it’s 4.26), so she called the manager who scratched his head (excuse me, it’s 4.26). Finally, they got someone there who could add 4 articles (excuse me, it’s 4.26) who finally figured out that it was 4.26. Amazing, the young people today…..
Patrick~
I can’t say you made a wrong choice to save your own kids from the system before trying to fix the system itself. Once your kids are finished, you can go back to that “tilting at windmills”…
Doesn’t one of these people have to be from Philadelphia?
Miss Ladybug,
I hear ya. Its just that I know a lot of capable kids who don’t believe in themselves, but are just as capable as anyone. I’ve always felt the “smartest” people work the hardest. Good luck with your work!
Patrick:
Agreed.
travis~
Although I don’t have my own classroom yet, I plan to encourage learning in all my students. I’ll be working with the younger students, before while before some of them turn into little twerps and get attitudes, but I’ll do my best to tap into their individual interests to get them to want to learn and to enjoy learning. I subbed a 1/2 day in a 5th grade class yesterday morning. I didn’t have to do any teaching (they took the district-mandated mid-year social studies benchmark test, there was an assembly for the 5th graders about one of their options for middle school (one of the district magnet schools), and then the teacher left a couple of social studies related readings with an accompanying worksheet of some sort. One young man turned in the first sheet (a “grid” to list up to 7 each “important facts”, “questions” the reading raised for the reader, and “responses” [or reaction] to what was read) with only 3 of the seven filled out. I didn’t accept it, saying I felt he could do better than that… And, he did (although it wasn’t something I “graded”). It’s amazing how, when you expect more from students, they tend to perform better. The second reading, a “Time for Kids” with a cover story about the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, on the handout for that I got back from one of the students, he wondered if the President’s wife had died. I don’t know if that’s something they have covered yet (or will, I’m not sure about the 5th grade social studies curriculum), but it sort of surprised me that they knew so little about that event – it’s not like presidential assassinations are common in this country’s history…
My wife and I were at a pharmacy sponsored dinner. The young rep was handed the bill and sat there just staring at it trying to figure the tip. She was trying to figure a 10% tip. I glanced at the bill and said $17 dollars. She scratched her head then dug around in her purse to find a calculator. After some fumbling she finally came to the conclusion that $17 dollars was the correct amount. And this person HAS a college degree.
When I’m not working in Clinic at one place or another I teach at a community college and a Private Christian University. The Community College at one point was going to remove the requirement of algebra, chemistry, pathophysiology , nutrition and one other course from the Nursing program. I’ve sense stopped teaching there as you can’t explain how drugs work in the body or how to understand blood gasses if you can’t tell an acid from a base or a white blood cell from red or what a left shift is because you don’t know which cells are which.
When I compare the students at the community college to the students at the University there is no apt comparison. The University students seem to have a thirst for knowledge. The Community College students seem to want the instructor to hand them everything without putting any effort into it. Educrats in America have achieved what they wanted, a dumbing down of the population.
One of the problems with schools in general is the teaching “profession”. It used to be that teaching was a job like everything else. You just had to know the stuff you were expected to teach the kids. Some people had a talent for teaching, others didn’t. Read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, they will open your eyes.
In one book, the students (including Laura herself) gave presentations and disquisitions that would be mind boggling by todays standards. Not only demonstrations of proper mathematics and from memory recitations of poetry and our founding documents, but also explanions of their meaning, in context. It was because of her performance at the pageant that she was recruited by the “board” of nearby school to be a teacher! Of course, the school board were just the busy farmer parents of a handful of students, nevertheless, at 15 she was considered able to teach children, at least one nearly her own age. My own grandmother sorely regretted not finishing high school because that was the academic requirement for school teachers when she was young.
Today, teachers advance their pay and promotion prospects via useless post graduate degrees. An Education phd nets you an increase in pay without netting any imrovement in education. An phd is supposed to be given for those who do original research and advance the state of the art. (note: they don’t give phds in things like plumbing because the state of the art is more or less mature and has been for years) How can you *improve* the state of the art of teaching kids the three Rs? By throwing out the three Rs and replacing them with your thesis. Also note, the University of Chicago Education department came up with the Everyday Math book.
In general, they know their degress and ‘expertise’ are worthless and are hysterically fragile about it. My mother-in-law, a mucky muck educrat in her district, upon hearing that we were homeschooling our son, declared, without irony, “you might as well stab him in the chest”.
Do you want to improve math and science education in your state? Lobby to have the teaching certificate requirement eliminated, so people who actually *know* math and science can become teachers, instead of people with “education” degrees.
Try buying a burger at Burger King when their computer is not telling them how much change to give back. Because of these type of events I started teaching my kids math at 2. Not formal sitting down and doing math problems. Just spending the time when they ask a question that could be solved with math. I wonder if I can get that wonderful lady in the video to move to my girls school district. It would be a two-fer for us here in Knoxville. Our meteorologist suck.
Here in Washington State they have been using this Math methods for a few years and none of my math teaching friends can stand it. They are told it comes from the state so students are geared to pass state tests. As stated above middle and highschool students are unable to do long division, multiply or know their mulitple tables. They have to resort to use calculators in order to do the simpliest problems. Does anyone know if Europe, Canada uses this insane circullum?
There is a great simpsons episode tackling this subject entitled “Girls Just Want to Have Sums.” The boys do old math, while Lisa and the girls have to do fuzzy math. Lisa disguises herself as a boy and of course hilarity ensues. It’s a good one, and surprisingly is right on the mark.
darn~
Teachers’ educational backgrounds will vary based on their area of certification. I earned a BBA in Accounting after graduating high school. When I decided to go into teaching, I decided to apply to the graduate program at a local university. I opted to earn my M.Ed. in elementary education. First, I want to try to get to the students in their more formative years. Then, I didn’t want to have to pick a specific content area – I’ve always been a reader, I’ve always been good at (and enjoyed, for the most part) math, I’ve always been interested in science and history. With elementary education, I can teach all subject areas. My raw scores on both my certification exams (one “content area”, one “pedagogy & professional responsibilities) were 90+ percent (don’t recall exactly – I took the computer based exams, so I was able to see a raw score immediately – the lady running the testing center seemed impressed). For some teaching secondary content areas, so long as they are not pursuing “alternative certification”, would be required to have a set number of credit hours within that subject area in order to first test for, and then earn certification.
The thing is, when taking the elementary education classes on “how to teach” math, science, social studies, whatever, you aren’t learning the actual content you will be teaching. From a certain standpoint, I can understand that – depending on what grade level you end up teaching, which you can not know while in a program, the specific knowledge you’ll need will vary. I’ll just say I think I had a much more well-rounded knowledge base than a lot of my classmates…
One of the cashiers at the convenience store in the building where I work purposely hits the cash button without typing in an amount on the register, then counts back the customer’s change to them. Of course, she’s one of those “OLD” people.
Like Ladybug, I was mostly a product of DoD schools. When we learned our multiplication tables, we had a big chart hung up in the back of the room and we got a star when we memorized a table and the first person to memorize all twelve got a special prize. The first person to memorize finished in six days (me, and it only took that long because we were only allowed to test on two tables a day). When I was finished, I was sent to the corner and given more work to do independently while the teacher worked with those who were struggling (a few people were still stuck on the 3s and 4s at this point).
By the time I was in fifth grade, I was doing algebra and was doing junior high/high school level school work in all my classes. Then we moved to a location where we had to move off-post due to lack of housing and I ended up in public school for the first time. The school system didn’t know what to do with me because I was so far ahead. All of a sudden, it was bad that I was so far ahead of others my age and I was eing held back because the others weren’t as fast as me.
When I’d been given IQ tests in the third grade, I tested out with a college-level vocabulary. I’ve seen *college* students these days that don’t have a college-level vocabulary.
My sister and brother were nowhere near as smart, although my brother could have gotten good grades if he’d applied himself. My sister made it through school the old fashioned way – she worked her butt off for it. No sliding through just because teachers felt they had to pass everyone. The girl who’d repeated the second grade graduated high school with a solid B average and went on to graduate college.
I think this will become reason #1458 why I will homeschool if I ever am fortunately enough to have kids.
I consider the parents who “home school” their children the unsung hero’s of our society. They are the people in the shadows.
I consider the parents who “home school” their children the unsung hero’s of our society. They are the people in the shadows.
Our only child, a second-grade boy, is in a public charter school for gifted children that began the EM curriculum last year. Now, a year later, he is frustrated, falling behind in classroom work, “hates math,” and isn’t even close to knowing his multiplication tables in any orderly fashion (yet they’re having quizzes every week). We’re having to use flash cards to reinforce some sense of order to how it’s being applied. This from a boy who was doing multiple-part addition and subtraction on his own in kindergarten. EM has dampened his enthusiasm for math, and I’m worried it isn’t coming back.
Does anyone know of the story of the new elementary school teacher who teaches her class very advanced stuff for several months. An administrator, trying to figure out why the kids were doing so well, asked her what she was doing to get all the kids to excell. She responds that since all the kids had such high IQ they would be able to handle it. That’s when she is informed that the number next to each kids name (which she mistook for their IQ) was their locker number.
I don’t know if the story is real (Snopes doesn’t have anything on it), but it reveals the belief that when we expect more from our kids they will rise to the challenge.
Aim high, hit high. Aim low, vote Democrat.