Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Losing Ground for Gifted Advocacy.

DAD22, I'm going to put it to you that if your kids aren't in school yet, you probably aren't aware of the full horror of US math "education." It's a disaster from start to finish. To summarize, there are two basic paths to teaching math in this country:

1. Memorize and Regurgitate. See most big-publisher textbooks (e.g. Sadlier-Oxford). These programs teach nothing about concepts in mathematics. They present algorithms to be memorized and provide worksheets with 35+ identical problems. 35+64= 48+89= Again and again and again. And more of the same tomorrow night!


2. Reform math. See Everyday Mathematics or EnVision math (there are many options on this menu, however). Reform systems use gimmicks, faddish approaches, and calculators in a largely botched attempt to teach concepts. The people who made them were right about students not learning concepts, but their solution is as bad as the problem it purports to solve. In these systems, standard algorithms are b-a-d and we need to teach several different approaches to [insert operation], no matter how kooky or mathematically incorrect. Look up partial products as one egregious example. Partial quotients is another. Guess-and-check assumes that you have all day to solve a single division problem.


A huge problem in math education in this country is that there are way, way, WAY too many approaches to teaching an idea. Most of them are created (and taught) by people who don't understand mathematics. You, as an intelligent engineer, may be able to see different correct ways to teach the slope of a line, but what you probably don't understand (YET) is that the vast majority of current curricula botch it completely.


IMO, his points about the slope of a line show the beauty of mathematics. Look kids! This stuff is part of algebra! And it's part of geometry! It all fits together.


There is no slope in the former case. And you can't calculate it in the second one. You could still use right triangles, though, if you really wanted to.



On the contrary. Being able to explain something is critical, if for no other reason than because it teaches you how to explain something in a logical way. This skill is critical in the workplace and elsewhere. But explaining it also proves that you understand it. Richard Feynman used to say that if physicists couldn't explain an idea to freshmen physics students, they didn't really understand it to begin with. This was taken as a sign to keep trying to figure it out.

Again, if your kids aren't in school yet, you probably haven't plumbed the depths of how bad our math education system truly is. It's kind of hard to believe it when you haven't witnessed it. I have a 13-year-old, and I'm still discovering new layers of horror below the ones I've already found. Just when you think they've hit rock bottom, someone comes along with something insane and you discover a whole new system of caverns of badness.

If your kids are lucky, the CC may save them. But it's more likely that they'll come home with 35 examples of the same problem to do, or will be using boxes or lattices or calendar-like-constructions to do basic arithmetic. And with each passing year, you will try many different reasonable approaches at advocacy, and all or nearly all of them will fail. You will tear more of your hair out until, like KADmom (and me, and HowlerKarma, and most others here), you will begin to feel that gut-wrenching desperation-resignation that results when you finally realize that how bad the schools truly are, public or private, with very few exceptions.


No, I am not making this up.

In that case they'd be degenerate triangles. Aha! Proof that Common Core will undermine the moral fabric of this country!

No, you DON'T need trained teachers. Just people to sit as "monitors" and make sure that the students are safe while they are plugged into electronic "delivery systems" which are perfect at content delivery.

This is the entire idea.

It's literally the sole conclusion that I can come to regarding my attempts to get a look inside the "machine" at the Pearson division that we're within...

Let those rabble-rousers leave. They cause trouble, and slow down production.



No, I'm really-- REALLY-- not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm deeply disturbed by Pearson's move away from print textbooks. They are taking over instructional delivery-- period. That IS their long-range plan.

YES.




I know that plenty of members here thought it was crazy that my DD (a high school senior and prospective math major) was NOT going to take AP Calculus prior to leaving high school.

However-- many of those same people have not yet seen the how-low-can-you-go Limbo game that has become math instruction in K-12.

No teacher, because that would "interfere" with Pearson's
"optimized" delivery of "content."

Teaching not for understanding, but to the AP test.

Yeah, no thanks. Most of my friends still in STEM in higher ed support our decision and applaud it, in fact-- because they see too many kids who "aced" calculus in high school AP classes, but who don't really understand the math.

I want my daughter to learn calculus from someone with a firm grip on advanced mathematics, and from a person who isn't relying on a SCRIPT to deliver instruction. She'll wait and take it as a college freshman. You only learn calculus the first time once. Why not do it RIGHT rather than doing it "right now?"

My opinion? E-books are profitable, pure and simple.

You license them instead of buying them, so when the license expires, they POOF! out of existence. And you can't buy a used e-book. Oh, no. That would not do. And you get to pay whatever price they decide to set, every time.

There are much fairer e-delivery content options out.

I was referring specifically to companies like Pearson. I suspect HK was, too.

Can I ask a slightly off topic question. Pearson do some materials for the NZ curriculum (my kid's teachers don't use textbooks at this point (y2/g1) but I want to know what it is they are supposed to be learning. The etexts are a lot cheaper for just a look but I was wondering would they work on windows XP or on a windows phone? That is all I have right now.

There are.

But those don't come with marketing teams that visit large school districts, and they don't come bundled on iPad (TM) devices, either.

I seriously object to the idea that education is reducible in the ways implicit in the messages of those who are now using CCSS to market themselves.

Makes me ask where we're going... and why we're in this handbasket.

Only if you purchase access-- or if you work through a web-portal that is a subscriber.

They are major data hogs, too-- so do be aware of that if you're working on a plan with a cap on your data. They're pretty clunky in terms of navigation, but sure-- for just a look-see, as long as you don't mind paying...

They are so-so in terms of user friendliness, and also so-so in terms of writing and content. They certainly aren't better QUALITY than the standard print editions, and I suspect that they'll get worse with time, as textbook manufacturers (Pearson chief among them) figure out "why try harder" as they have so much market share and entrenchment into exclusive partnerships that quality is really not even a consideration.

I give it five years before the EIC (educational-industrial complex) makes the MIC (military industrial complex) look like child's play for mind-boggling waste and incompetence. Unfortunately, CCSS isn't really to blame for this chain of events, but that certainly seems to be how it's playing out.

As Val hinted, many school districts, feeling so cash-strapped that they simply COULD not (er-- or "would not" anyway) invest in CCSS until they became MANDATORY... were left with few alternatives but to turn to a high-cost, turnkey approach when the time eventually came, as all days of reckoning seem to...

Enter Pearson (and a few other really big players) who were gambling on just that attribute (inertia) in the educational establishment.