Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy More venting

Unfortunately I have no good advice...I just wanted to stand up and applaud Val's great post.

As in, please write something and publish this:

Possibly the widget is uniformity and/or uniformity is the widget.

I do think a large part of the problem is that not only did the younger teachers not get taught maths properly themselves but they were only taught to teach according to the script (that seems to be a US thing). The older teachers who may have been able to do maths and teach are worn out by being presented with one crazy fad after another. The only ones left are those who have learnt to play the game. I can see no other way otherwise reasonable people can can espouse one thing this year and the complete opposite the next.

Squishys - We're also in Australia and I asked DD8 and DD6 the apples question and they both said 10 x 3. To have that marked wrong is ridiculous. In fact, DD8's old teacher (I specifically got DD6 tested so she could have her too) is extremely encouraging of using creative "thinking skills" to solve maths questions.

She's an older, experienced and passionate teacher though.