Kid Looks Like A Genius With 8 + 5 Doesn’t Add Up To 10

[Statistikhengst]

Funny thing is, I tried to communicate with her language arts teacher, who is also the *journalism* (ha I use that term VERY loosely) teacher...she can't communicate aside from grunts and whistles. She couldn't convey an idea if I hooked up jumper cables to her nipples.

I can imagine that as something you would try, yesiree.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9515 mit Tapatalk

 

[Rikurzhen]

More from Alberta's experience. Note the call for evidence of validation studies and the lack of response. This is professional misconduct, rolling out a pedagogy before validating it.

Here’s where the issue becomes deeply troubling. For several years now, University of Manitoba math professors Robert Craigen and Anna Stokke have repeatedly asked pro-discovery learning education bureaucrats and university professors across Western Canada for proof that this approach creates more proficiency or a deeper understanding of math.

So far, the discovery learning advocates have come up empty. They’ve failed to produce credible, scientifically valid research studies showing this method works as well in the classroom as does conventional teaching.

And, remember, it was conventional instruction — an intense focus on the teaching of knowledge — that drove Alberta schools to the top of the world educational rankings in the early 2000s.

So why discourage or abandon teaching methods that work so well?

All the more troubling is we’ve already seen this play out with Alberta Education’s roll out of discovery math in 2008-09. Veteran teachers were suddenly discouraged from teaching standard arithmetic such as times tables, vertical addition and subtraction, and long multiplication and division. Instead, they were required to teach a newly devised form of arithmetic characterized by multiple, convoluted strategies, with students trying to discover the best strategy for themselves.

The result? In 2008-09, the last group of Grade 6 to learn math the conventional way averaged 70 per cent on their provincial math exams.

In 2012-13, Grade 6 kids averaged 56 per cent when tested on the new discovery learning curriculum.

The number of math illiterate students has now doubled in Alberta, according to international testing. The failure rate shot up from just 7.4 per cent in 2003 to 15.1 per cent in 2012.​

 

[ricechickie]

Because instructional time is finite and there are opportunity costs for choices that we make.

I'm so glad that I teach the way I do.

While instructional time is still finite, it is much more efficiently used.

And what do you have to say about the Alberta results which arose from teaching your way?

Don't display your ignorance so proudly. You don't know "my way" of teaching.

 

[koshergrl]

Funny thing is, I tried to communicate with her language arts teacher, who is also the *journalism* (ha I use that term VERY loosely) teacher...she can't communicate aside from grunts and whistles. She couldn't convey an idea if I hooked up jumper cables to her nipples.

I can imagine that as something you would try, yesiree.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9515 mit Tapatalk

Don't bore me with your weird fantasies, statist. I'm not interested in kinky sex with you, I've told you repeatedly. I have ravtard for that.

 

[rightwinger]

I disagree

I think that estimating, using math to think on your feet and using the level of complexity a problem requires are essential math skills and more valuable to most people than learning Calculus

Forcing kids to think that 8+5=10 is not "thinking on your feet..blah blah blah". It's crap.

Without knowing the purpose of the exercise or the skills they are trying to teach, it is hard to draw a conclusion . I am sure that students learning common core do not come out believing that 8 + 5 = 10

That is the problem with rightwing hysteria. They give you one example, totally out of context and then use it as a justification to condemn all of common core

The problem is the teaching program is lousy and doesn't result in an effective education.

Given the short time it has been around, I doubt if that conclusion can be made

Common Core is the latest rightwing boogeyman and will get the blame for all the ills of our society

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

 

[ricechickie]

(raises hand from the back) What's common core?

Common core is a set of standards that are applied nationwide. It is NOT a curriculum. Now, if some schools and states are purchasing and forcing teachers to use a certain curriculum, that is the problems of the schools and/or states. Because common core is just about making the standards common to all American students.

 

[ricechickie]

One doen't MAKE 10 when adding 8 and 5. The result is 13, not 10+3.

*sigh* Place value knowledge is important. It's important to know that 13 is 10 + 3.

I already know that 8 + 5 = 13. And I know how to carry the 1. It is not necessary to MAKE 10 to add the two numbers.

You're not "carrying the 1." You're carrying over 1 TEN.

 

[boedicca]

Forcing kids to think that 8+5=10 is not "thinking on your feet..blah blah blah". It's crap.

Without knowing the purpose of the exercise or the skills they are trying to teach, it is hard to draw a conclusion . I am sure that students learning common core do not come out believing that 8 + 5 = 10

That is the problem with rightwing hysteria. They give you one example, totally out of context and then use it as a justification to condemn all of common core

The problem is the teaching program is lousy and doesn't result in an effective education.

Given the short time it has been around, I doubt if that conclusion can be made

Common Core is the latest rightwing boogeyman and will get the blame for all the ills of our society

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

Link?

 

[rightwinger]

Without knowing the purpose of the exercise or the skills they are trying to teach, it is hard to draw a conclusion . I am sure that students learning common core do not come out believing that 8 + 5 = 10

That is the problem with rightwing hysteria. They give you one example, totally out of context and then use it as a justification to condemn all of common core

The problem is the teaching program is lousy and doesn't result in an effective education.

Given the short time it has been around, I doubt if that conclusion can be made

Common Core is the latest rightwing boogeyman and will get the blame for all the ills of our society

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

Link?

rightwinger US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

 

[boedicca]

The problem is the teaching program is lousy and doesn't result in an effective education.

Given the short time it has been around, I doubt if that conclusion can be made

Common Core is the latest rightwing boogeyman and will get the blame for all the ills of our society

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

Link?

rightwinger US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

That has nothing to do with Modern Math causing anyone to go into a Tizzy in the 60s.

Again, link?

 

[Rikurzhen]

As much as I appreciate being able to figure out what I can afford based on the money in my wallet, that is a life skill that should be taught by parents (and perhaps in school). But it's not the same as rigorous math needed for engineering etc.

I disagree

I think that estimating, using math to think on your feet and using the level of complexity a problem requires are essential math skills and more valuable to most people than learning Calculus

Forcing kids to think that 8+5=10 is not "thinking on your feet..blah blah blah". It's crap.

Without knowing the purpose of the exercise or the skills they are trying to teach, it is hard to draw a conclusion . I am sure that students learning common core do not come out believing that 8 + 5 = 10

That is the problem with rightwing hysteria. They give you one example, totally out of context and then use it as a justification to condemn all of common core

The problem is the teaching program is lousy and doesn't result in an effective education.

Exactly right. A pedagogy needs to be validated against results. Does is perform better? I posted upthread on Alberta's roll-out of this form of math instruction. The plummeted down the international math rankings as a result.

I don't know WHY Alberta implemented this nonsense but I can guess - they saw that it was popular here and so they too wanted to be "progressive." What they failed to understand is that Missions #1 for the education system in Canada is different from the US. In Canada the prime mission is to educate their children as best they can while Mission #1 in the US is to close the racial achievement gap. This math pedagogy was designed to fulfill the American mission so it;'s utterly useless in Canada.

This math nonsense goes back a long way. Here is a report from 14 years ago:

Last fall the U.S. Department of Education (DoEd) endorsed a Top 10 list of elementary and secondary mathematics programs favored by its own Mathematics and Science Expert Panel. Five programs received “exemplary” status, and five others were named “promising.”

In write-ups of the programs on the government Web site, the panelists said this about the “promising” Everyday Mathematics for K-6:

“This enriched curriculum includes such features as problem-solving about everyday situations; linking past experiences to new concepts; sharing ideas through discussion; developing concept readiness through hands-on activities and explorations; cooperative learning through partner and small-group activities; and enhancing home-school partnerships.”

To which San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders responded: “Sounds more like marriage counseling than math class.”

Indeed, virtually all of the DoEd-blessed curricula extol the merits of “real world” or “real life” applications of math, with lots of group work, partner quizzes, student role-playing, journals with children’s entries on how they feel about math, copious use of calculators, and group estimating. That’s according to the official descriptions.

In general, the federal government’s Top 10 are from what is called the ‘Whole Math’ genre — a kissing cousin of Whole Language — where basic skills and teacher-directed instruction are played down in favor of pupil-led discovery, or constructivism.
​

The Dept. Of Education's expert panel didn't have any mathematician sitting on it, just lefty ideologues. This is a top-down invention and has been pushed from the Feds down tot he States.

The constructivist approach to mathematics has its fans, notably the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). This is the group that spurred the Whole Math movement with its 1989 standards, to which DoEd’s Top 10 adhere. . . .

But DoEd’s unqualified embrace of the constructivist approach–sometimes called the “New-New Math” — prompted a counterattack by the heaviest artillery yet in the Math Wars. On November 18, 1999, Secretary Richard Riley and staff spilled their morning coffee over a full-page Washington Post advertisement signed by 200 mathematicians, scientists, and other experts calling on Riley to withdraw the federal endorsement of the 10 math programs. Among the signers were four Nobel laureates in physics and two winners of the Fields Medal, the highest honor for mathematicians.

The high-powered group protested the absence of active research mathematicians from DoEd’s Expert Panel. They also objected that DoEd’s Top-10 programs omitted basic skills, such as multiplying multi-digit numbers and dividing fractions.

“These programs [the Top 10] are among the worst in existence,” said Cal State/Northridge math professor David Klein, who helped draft the letter. “It would be a joke except for the damaging effect it has on children.”
​

And notice the Leftest whiny quality of the response:

Some of the panelists fought back. For example, Steven Leinwand accused the 200 scholars of being interested in “math for the elite” alone. Leinwand, math consultant for Connecticut’s education department, said the NCTM and DoEd believe “math needs to empower all students.” However, it was Leinwand who in 1994 wrote in Education Week that continuing to teach children multi-digit computational algorithms was “downright dangerous.”

Although a statutory prohibition prevents DoEd from dictating curricula, Congress provided a way around that restriction in 1994 when it passed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Title IX called on DoEd’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement to set up Expert Panels to endorse top programs in gender equity, safe and drug-free schools, technology, and math and science. Title IX, like Goals 2000 itself, stressed the idea of equalizing academic outcomes for all sub-groups in the student population.

Secretary Riley commented that NCTM has published “the prevailing standards in the country, so we thought that would make sense.” But critics see a deliberate integration of ideological agendas. The architects of NCTM’s 1989 standards declared that social injustices had given white males an advantage over women and minorities in math, and they promised NCTM’s reinvented math would equalize scores. Equality would be achieved by eliminating the “computational gate.”

Klein argues this Whole Math approach “hurts the students with the least resources the most” by depriving them of the computational basics they need as a foundation for higher math. “If kids get a good, solid program in arithmetic, they have a good chance of learning algebra,” he explained, “and algebra’s one of the main gates into colleges.” The Whole Math programs are based on the assumption that “minorities and women are too dumb to learn real mathematics,” he said.​

One of the chief ideologues pushing this nonsense is mentioned in the above excerpt, his name is Steven Leinwand. He passes himself off as an expert but I can find no evidence of where he went to school and what he earned his degrees in, his biography seems to start when he was hired as a math consultant in Connecticut. Some other people have been following this guy too:

So why does Leinwand’s name pop up everywhere? Looking through GE’s College Bound Program web site and JCPS’s web site on the GE Foundation grant led to my discovering this amazing set of non-accidental coincidences or congruences (which are graphically presented in the chart at the top of this diary):

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is funded by GE to measure the progress resulting from JCPS math curriculum changes.

Steve Leinwand as a consultant to JCPS recommended Investigations 2 (TERC), Scott Foresman publisher as the best choice for JCPS. (See portions of his memo above.)

Steve Leinwand is an author of another Scott Foresman math series. (As listed in his biography)

Steve Leinwand works for AIR.

AIR is a donor to TERC.

Scott Foresman (Pearson Achievement Solutions) and Steve Leinwand helped develop the new world class standards for JCPS. {From the JCPS world class mathematics standards working document.}

TERC recommends the purchase of the Steve Leinwand’s book “Sensible Math: A Guide for School Leaders.” The book provides advice on how school administrators can get their preferred math program adopted into their school.​

Every inquiry made about this program that I’m aware has made some reference to Steve Leinwand of AIR. (as described above.)​

 

[RKMBrown]

More from Alberta's experience. Note the call for evidence of validation studies and the lack of response. This is professional misconduct, rolling out a pedagogy before validating it.

Here’s where the issue becomes deeply troubling. For several years now, University of Manitoba math professors Robert Craigen and Anna Stokke have repeatedly asked pro-discovery learning education bureaucrats and university professors across Western Canada for proof that this approach creates more proficiency or a deeper understanding of math.

So far, the discovery learning advocates have come up empty. They’ve failed to produce credible, scientifically valid research studies showing this method works as well in the classroom as does conventional teaching.

And, remember, it was conventional instruction — an intense focus on the teaching of knowledge — that drove Alberta schools to the top of the world educational rankings in the early 2000s.

So why discourage or abandon teaching methods that work so well?

All the more troubling is we’ve already seen this play out with Alberta Education’s roll out of discovery math in 2008-09. Veteran teachers were suddenly discouraged from teaching standard arithmetic such as times tables, vertical addition and subtraction, and long multiplication and division. Instead, they were required to teach a newly devised form of arithmetic characterized by multiple, convoluted strategies, with students trying to discover the best strategy for themselves.

The result? In 2008-09, the last group of Grade 6 to learn math the conventional way averaged 70 per cent on their provincial math exams.

In 2012-13, Grade 6 kids averaged 56 per cent when tested on the new discovery learning curriculum.

The number of math illiterate students has now doubled in Alberta, according to international testing. The failure rate shot up from just 7.4 per cent in 2003 to 15.1 per cent in 2012.​

There have been other changes too. Don't assume causality from just one change. You'd have to look much deeper into immigration issues, no child left behind programs, etc.

 

[Rikurzhen]

More from Alberta's experience. Note the call for evidence of validation studies and the lack of response. This is professional misconduct, rolling out a pedagogy before validating it.

Here’s where the issue becomes deeply troubling. For several years now, University of Manitoba math professors Robert Craigen and Anna Stokke have repeatedly asked pro-discovery learning education bureaucrats and university professors across Western Canada for proof that this approach creates more proficiency or a deeper understanding of math.

So far, the discovery learning advocates have come up empty. They’ve failed to produce credible, scientifically valid research studies showing this method works as well in the classroom as does conventional teaching.

And, remember, it was conventional instruction — an intense focus on the teaching of knowledge — that drove Alberta schools to the top of the world educational rankings in the early 2000s.

So why discourage or abandon teaching methods that work so well?

All the more troubling is we’ve already seen this play out with Alberta Education’s roll out of discovery math in 2008-09. Veteran teachers were suddenly discouraged from teaching standard arithmetic such as times tables, vertical addition and subtraction, and long multiplication and division. Instead, they were required to teach a newly devised form of arithmetic characterized by multiple, convoluted strategies, with students trying to discover the best strategy for themselves.

The result? In 2008-09, the last group of Grade 6 to learn math the conventional way averaged 70 per cent on their provincial math exams.

In 2012-13, Grade 6 kids averaged 56 per cent when tested on the new discovery learning curriculum.

The number of math illiterate students has now doubled in Alberta, according to international testing. The failure rate shot up from just 7.4 per cent in 2003 to 15.1 per cent in 2012.​

There have been other changes too. Don't assume causality from just one change. You'd have to look much deeper into immigration issues, no child left behind programs, etc.

I'm pretty sure that immigrants have been heading to Alberta for over a century now, not just suddenly discovering the province in 2008.

 

[rightwinger]

Given the short time it has been around, I doubt if that conclusion can be made

Common Core is the latest rightwing boogeyman and will get the blame for all the ills of our society

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

Link?

rightwinger US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

That has nothing to do with Modern Math causing anyone to go into a Tizzy in the 60s.

Again, link?

I provided the link.....I lived it

Cnservatives of the day were outraged that their trusted math by rote methodology was being challenged

 

[RKMBrown]

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

Link?

rightwinger US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

That has nothing to do with Modern Math causing anyone to go into a Tizzy in the 60s.

Again, link?

I provided the link.....I lived it

Cnservatives of the day were outraged that their trusted math by rote methodology was being challenged

Math wasn't all by rote way back when... I've got my dad's old math books from the 50s... it's not all rote. I think your giving too much credit to the adjective modern.

 

[boedicca]

This nonsense has been around since the late 80s.

I remember "modern math" in the early 60s

That sent the conservatives into a tizzy also

Link?

rightwinger US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

That has nothing to do with Modern Math causing anyone to go into a Tizzy in the 60s.

Again, link?

I provided the link.....I lived it

Cnservatives of the day were outraged that their trusted math by rote methodology was being challenged

Please post the link again, Thanks!

 

[Rikurzhen]

More from Canuck-land:

Over the next two years, Alberta is preparing what may well be the most dramatic overhaul of Canadian school curricula in modern times.

Alberta students may rank among Canada’s top tier for performance, but by 2016, officials have nevertheless vowed that the “traditional” teaching methods of textbooks-and-chalkboards will be dead, replaced instead by a unstructured system design to craft “engaged thinkers,” “ethical citizens” and “entrepreneurial spirits.”

“We’re changing everything,” says a perky voice in a two-minute Government of Alberta video outlining the new program.

“We’re preparing [students] for a future we can’t imagine, and giving them the tools to succeed in work that doesn’t yet exist.”

While Alberta is the most prominent example, it is only one of many recent converts to the concept of “discovery learning,” a system in which students would be left to learn on their own, with minimal teacher guidance. But as planners enthusiastically advocated to take the fire-axe to more than a century of classroom norms, a cadre of opponents are warning that, without sufficient evidence, these schools may be making a terrible mistake.
​

This is a deadly combination. Take education specialists, usually arising from the dumbest students on college campuses and taught by the dumbest of faculty, park them in government bureaucracies where they're insulated from the consequences of failure, give them authority because they're "specialists" (who don't seem to need to assess evidence of the efficacy of reforms if they like the ideology behind the reform) and you get what is happening all over Canada and the US:

“It’s sort of the latest thing; there was hula-hooping, skateboarding and roller skating, and now there’s ‘21st century education,’” said University of Manitoba math professor Robert Craigen, a prominent critic of discovery learning. . . . .

While Ontario soon introduced its own similar math program, Quebec, in typical contrarian fashion, specifically mandated that its teachers ignore the Canadian trend in math education.

For critics of discovery learning, the results of the OECD’s latest comparison of worldwide student performance speaks for itself: While Canada’s math performance has been slipping since 2006, Quebec’s has held steady.

As of 2013, overall Canadian mathematic talent ranked alongside the like of Poland, Estonia and Belgium, while La Belle Province held court with math giants like Macao and Japan.

In Manitoba, it was Mr. Craigen, as well as University of Winnipeg math professor Anna Stokke, who recently led the charge to have the WNCP system overturned, and a “back to basics” program installed in its place.
​

The Quebec situation provides a classic of experimental design - change one factor in some groups and compare to a control group which didn't institute the same change. Performance slips in Ontario with the change but not in Quebec which didn't institute reform. Do you think idiot "education specialists" in the bureaucracies are influenced by what happened? Not at all, look at Alberta still charging ahead with their reforms even though there is no evidence that they work and the evidence of failure is accumulating:

The persistent argument of Mr. Craigen and his supporters is that while discovery learning sounds nice, it has no scientific backing. That, just like Coca Cola’s 1985 decision to throw out its century-old recipe in favour of New Coke, the likes of Alberta are betting their entire education system on an unproven concept.

Mr. Craigen is far from the first academic to say as much. In 2006, a team of three educational researchers — hailing from California, Australia and the Netherlands — combed through more than 100 “empirical studies” on discovery learning to see if it worked. Their verdict, published in the journal Educational Psychologist, was unequivocal.

“After a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique,” they wrote.

A particularly “distressing” finding, according to the researchers, was that students appeared to love discovery learning, “even though they learn less from it.”

More recently, a study led by the City University of New York conducted a meta-analysis of 164 studies on discovery learning, and concluded that “unassisted discovery does not benefit learners.”
​

Imagine if the FDA approved drugs in this fashion. No clinical trials needed at all, no evidence that the drug will work as promised. Just a promise that it will work is all that is needed to release the drug and then wait and see how many patients are harmed after they use the drug. Remember, education specialists are drawn from the bottom of the intellectual barrel:

Teachers, instead of being instructors, would be an “architect of learning — one who plans, designs and oversees learning activities.

The report even opened with a detailed illustration of what this future would look like: Chipo, a new student from Zimbabwe, enrolls in an Alberta public school. After introducing herself, she uses a wrist-mounted digital projector to give the class a real-time tour of her home village.


Following along, classmates become immediately intrigued by the sight of an “mbira” (thumb piano).


After happily dancing to its captivating strains, they get to work drafting a 3D model of their own mbira and ultimately creating “a performance piece that they share with other classes at the next school assembly,” it reads.

“Our packed curriculum stifles creativity in the classroom,” Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson told Postmedia this week. He added “there’s too much stuff to try to get through and it doesn’t allow enough flexibility to individualize learning, which is going to be really key in the future.”
​

Leftists are such fucking idiots I can't believe that they mastered breathing on their own.

On Thursday, Alberta Premier Alison Redford promised that the reforms would be “exciting” and “transformative.”​

 

[HenryBHough]

Today's children don't need math.

The only jobs available in post-Obama America are at McDonald's and they have cash registers with pictures on them and that compute totals and even provide pictures of the change required.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Background on reforms. Back in the days before Brown vs. the Board of Education, this is what America's schools taught:

Until the 1950's, students studied Euclidian geometry in high school. Starting with a small number of axioms, they proved and watched the teacher prove many theorems. In this way they were provided with extensive training in deductive reasoning.Students learned that a statement in plane geometry was true because they had seen a proof of its validity.Since then, 100 theorems have been renamed axioms and their proofs (now being redundant) have disappeared from the textbooks.Now a statement is true in plane geometry because the book/teacher says it is so (It is an axiom.). Deductive proofs have been exiled to the last quarter of the textbook; not enough for students to learn this topic. The teaching of deductive proofs in plane geometry is banned in the Montgomery County school system.Students now arrive in college with little or no training in deductive reasoning, a serious educational handicap.

Prof. Barry Simon,Chairman of the Mathematics Department at California Institute of Technology in, "A Plea in Defense of Euclidian Geometry "[11] , "mourned this loss of what was a core part of education forcenturies."as he noted "what is really important is the exposure to clear and rigorous arguments. ... "They can more readily see through the faulty reasoning so often presented in the media and by politicians". Also, they would have less difficulty adjusting to and understanding college courses. . . . .

The Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) concluded that the major reasons for the low achievement in mathematics in U.S. schools, are that the mathematics curriculum is underachieving, very repetitive,ineffective and inefficient.[13]My children (in the fast academic track) were taught one third less mathematics in high school than I was (in the standard academic track) in the 1950s.[14]Serious training in deductive proofs and word problems have disappeared.Prof. Barry Simon noted: "The dumbing down of high school education in the United States, especially in mathematics and science, is a crime that must be laid at the doorstep of the educational establishment".
​

Keep in mind the mission of American Education - the mission is focused on closing the racial achievement gap. Lowering standards is a well understood tactic if one aims to decrease proficiency gaps. The gap closes by sacrificing the performance of the top students.

The Reform movement was largely organized by professors of mathematics education. It advocates much use of hand calculators, no drill, emphasizes on concepts, group learning, students discovering mathematics for themselves which includes much conjecturing, students inventing their own algorithms for arithmetic, equity, mathematics education for all. . . .

While there is variety in reform, we can still talk about the Reform movement as the movement exemplified by the NCTM standards and some of its spokesmen and textbooks. This broad brush approach will misrepresent some of its participants.

Steven Leinwand is the co-chairman of the U. S. Dept. of Education's Expert Panel (on textbooks) and the top mathematics adviser at Connecticut's Department of Education.In his article "It's Finally Time to Abandon Computational Algorithms"[15], he began:

"It's time to confront those nagging doubts about continuing to teach our students computational algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division [like 23 x 37]. It's time to acknowledge that teaching these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous! And it's time to proclaim that, for many students, real mathematical power, on the one hand, and facility with multi-digit pencil and paper computational algorithms, on the other hand, may be mutually exclusive.​

"Today, real people in real situations regularly put finger to button and make critical decisions about which buttons to press, not where and how to carry threes into hundreds columns."

"No longer simply perpetuators of the bell curve, where only some survive and even fewer truly thrive, schools and their mathematics programs must instill understanding and confidence in all". ...
​

Most compelling to Leinwand is the "sense of failure and the pain unnecessarily imposed on hundreds of thousand of students in the name of mastering these obsolete procedures".​

There's Leinwand again, like a bad penny. He speaks like an evangelist, not as a scientific assessor of facts. He's preaching the gospel. Notice the bolded "may be" - he's advocating a reform and it's all based on supposition, he doesn't even KNOW whether mathematical power and computation algorithms ARE mutually exclusive, he hedges and states that they may be. Then, finally, we get to the goal, every student must have understanding and confidence. It's about feelings and self-esteem. The surest way of achieving this is to dumb everything down so that all can pass.

The Reform movement also advocates an "integrated curriculum" which mixes algebra and geometry. This makes as much sense as the teaching of European history and American History in alternate months.

Dr. Jerome Epstein gave the following (pre-algebra) problem to such a second-year "integrated" algebra and geometry class.It was solved by none of the (mostly Grade 10) students.

Problem 3. Solve x/2 = (3/4)x +1.

The reform movement professors of mathematics education largely organized and wrote The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Standards in the late 1980s. The NCTM is the professional society of school mathematics teachers. Their standards and the AAAS criteria are for all students; there is no separate higher standards for students going on to college. When adopted by a school system, Reform methods and textbooks are used for all students even though this is a dumbing down for college bound students.

The NCTM response, to the low level of students skill at using fractions, has been to prescribe decreased attention to fractions in algebra. . . .

In Oct. 1998, the NCTM released its Proposed Principles and Standards (for the next decade).This revision is less revolutionary then its earlier Standards.It has invited much feedback from a wide variety of organizations and individuals.The final version will be released at the NCTM convention this spring.

The verbose, 700 page NCTM proposed standards do not even consider the question of raising the content of the mathematics curriculum back to the levels of the 1950s. . . .

The proposed NCTM Principles are very verbose about emphasizing the importance of equity. During the last 3 decades much equity has been achieved in mathematics education as good consequences of the civil rights and feminist movements.In addition, much equity has been achieved by the easy, cheap method of dumbing down the mathematics curriculum. If the proposed NCTM standards are implemented, more equity will be achieved by simply dumbing down the mathematics curriculum. Programs like Pat Campbells should be the rule, the reality is that they are the exception. . . .

"They really don't know anything about mathematics," said David Klein, a mathematics professor at California State University, North Ridge, and co-author of the letter to Riley, as he noted that the number of freshmen needing remedial help in the California state university system has doubled over the past 10 years. Two years ago, California stepped back from the reforms, mandating more pencil-and-paper calculating and traditional drill and practice mathematics.​

 

[n0spam4me]

Big Brother sez 2+2=5 ....... all hail BIG BROTHER!

Do we think for ourselves, or?

BTW: Big Brother is a Voyeur!