Originally published at: Conservative Education Activists Have a New Target: Math Class - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This story was first published by Hechinger Report. It also appeared in Chalkbeat and South Dakota Searchlight. Susan Gilkerson, a math teacher and school bus driver, stood before a South Dakota education board and issued a warning. The proposed math standards the board was considering — just 36 pages, less than half the length of standards adopted in 2018…
american kids will be so far behind AISIAN kids and others…they will be first…this is an old saying in APPALACHIA,Think about it!
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What is “conservative” about a math curriculum?
Readin’ writin’ rithmatic?
In apprx 1901 goal was to teach enough 'rithmatic for a kid to work in a retail store.
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What do you expect from a state that elected Kristi Noem for governor.
I taught high school math for 12 years, and I can’t begin to describe the general sad level of ignorance from parents and non-math-teachers around the project of teaching kids both skills and concepts. It runs the whole range from “I never understood this, either, and I don’t care if my kid learns it!” all the way to “I learned it this way and that’s how you should teach it!”
Education is always going to be one of those subjects everyone has an opinion on, but in this culture – where the great majority of teachers are women, and women’s authority is automatically suspect – the people who do the work have to be taken seriously. A fight about how many words are in a curriculum standard misses the point so badly that it turns the whole question into farce.
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A fight about how many words are in a curriculum standard misses the point so badly that it turns the whole question into farce.
Reminds me of Salieri’s character in Amadeus dissing Mozart’s composition, saying it had “too many notes.”
And your point about women’s authority being devalued is all too true.
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The comparison between the Archimedes and Common Core versions of the fractions standard is instructive.
Archimedes: “Find equivalent fractions and reduce fractions to their simplest form.” OK, what do we mean by ‘equivalent’? The standard doesn’t define equivalency or explain what it is. (Or simplest form, for that matter: why isn’t 65/100 a simpler form than 13/20, given that we use a decimal system?) You can use fewer words if you don’t bother to define what your terms mean, but that isn’t exactly an improvement.
The Common Core standard, though, shows what equivalency means: “Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n x a)/(n x b).” It’s right there. And then it gives guidance on what points the teacher should make about equivalent fractions, and what the students should do. (Which goes beyond reducing to simplest form: “Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.” That can go in either direction, and it should. Sometimes you’ll want to go from 13/20 to 65/100 - that’s generating an equivalent fraction, and it’s moving away from lowest terms. And that should be part of the skill set being taught.
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Thank you!
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As a parent who had three kids go through middle school as Common Core was rolled out, I have to say it sucked. There was a lot of confusion for my kids that was super unnecessary. This really shouldn’t have turned into a left vs right thing, but I’m sure that it did in part b/c we as Dems seemed to mostly tell folks to get over it, b/c experts had created CC.
I don’t claim any expertise other than having worked in a math oriented field, and I don’t know how common core has adjusted. So, take all my comments with a grain of salt.
One issue is that people who teach math – at least in high school – are the people for whom learning it wasn’t a problem. There’s an initial tendency to think that the way MY teacher did it was the best way, because, hey, it worked for me.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that every kid is not you, and you’re going to have to be vigilant, determined, and creative if you’re serious about making sure they understand what they’re doing. This is where guidance from standards-writers might help.
Might. Honestly, I think that if a 4th grade teacher felt confused by the fractions explanation that they wanted to replace, there’s a fair chance that 4th grade teacher already felt wobbly about teaching fractions to nine-year-olds. There’s nothing confusing about it.
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My background is in science, so math and statistics are pretty fundamental. In my mind it isn’t the students’ math standards that need to be addressed - it’s the teachers’. Innumeracy and math phobia and the decline of critical thinking skills and the susceptibility of people to embrace psuedoscience are a direct result of unqualified math instructors. Out of necessity, people uncomfortable with math end up teaching it, resulting in them passing along their discomfort and anxiety. And most parents have zero skills in math or teaching, so they’re no help. If you want kids to do better, insist that teachers can do more than follow along in a text - they have to actually understand the material they’re supposed to be teaching.
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How many millions of ReichWing dollars have been spent to infest our nation with the refugees from intellect that are excreted by Hillsdale College?
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I thought it was the Austrian Emperor who said, “Too many notes, Mr. Mozart!”
Math educational standards should be written in language that is understood by math teachers, but school districts have to hire teachers who are proficient at math. Hiring people for whom “math is hard” as math teachers would be bad policy and shortchange students. The same standards may be clear to competent math teachers, but difficult for (some) parents to understand. That’s OK if there’s some trust that teachers who are prepared and can engage students will succeed in teaching students what they need to know. But reactionary groups promoting less education aim to undermine this trust.
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I disagree that “most parents” are uncomfortable with math, unless standards have declined quite a bit in the nearly 60 years since I was in school.
It’s been decades since I’ve seen the movie, but my (possibly unreliable) recollection is that Salieri fed the emperor that line.
Hillsdale is more of a propaganda shop than a college. They even had Christopher Rufo, whose main claim to fame is having kicked off the anti-trans fever we’ve had to deal with for the past five years or so, as a visiting scholar.
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God forbid the kids should understand why what they are doing works. They oughta take it on faith.
Almost:
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That reminds me of teaching marching percussion to college students in the late 1970’s. I introduced a number of concepts to them that were familiar to me but new to them. One was the idea that bass drums could be pitched differently and that each player could play a unique part. In aggregate they would be playing the equvalent of melodic lines. If you’ve ever heard a concert of bell-ringers, it’s the same idea.Two players didn’t like that and quit after a week. They were expecting to play unison quarter notes, basicly a single boom on every beat. There wouldn’t be any memorization involved, because every song they’d be playing the same thing.
When I asked them why they were quitting they said: “We’re playing too many notes”.
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