“So who’s right? The educators who insist on making the fundamentals of mathematics as complex as a Rubik’s cube, or the kid who probably has secret access to his mom’s old flashcards and sees this as a foolish waste of time?”
My mom’s flashcards taught me the answer was 13. Period. The kid gets it – and the teacher is leading him/her astray. Or, given that most teachers were nearer the bottom of the SAT scores than the top than other college students (I’ve posted about the hour of my life trying to teach a School of Ed student that was in my EC 101 class what Y=MX + B meant for graphing homework), this teacher hasn’t grasped the error of this way. I’ve put up examples like this before – what our kids are now being taught, a curriculum / testing regime that has NEVER even been beta tested. I have followed some of the money – and it leads to folks that are quite happy to keep upending what used to be the best educational system in the world (and if not THE best, certainly one of them).
We keep getting “teaching critical thinking” rammed down our throats by those that purport to be our betters. The Smart People. I’m not a math person as I only got through multi-variate calculus. But this example, even I know is about as stupid as it gets.
Critical thinking can only happen when a wide and deep knowledgebase is established and when the interconnections between those data facets are constructed in ways that can present different views upon varying situations in as quick a time frame as possible. Pull relevant facts together, overlay a logical “network” on top of those nodes, and start examining the results.
Yet, this example is what is being given to our kids as “good”. Again, follow the money – up and back down that chain.
Hint: it doesn’t matter about the kids
(H/T: Independent Journal Review)
