<p>On the one example doesn’t prove anything…I have many examples. I have tried tutoring and gave up. Ok…so I still get calls and feel bad and do still tutor somethings. However, the same problems keep happening over and over again. The public schools spend all those years on calculators. So, when a child is asked to factor a simple polynomial, they actually will be completely puzzled when I try to ask them the factors of a number such as 6. I have found the US public school programs having children memorizing terms such as translations and translocations early on, but won’t bother with teaching them 4+5. Their excuse is that the kids have calculators and no longer need to learn math facts. The same school is STILL doing tessellations in high school geometry. Why does a 2nd grader need to waste their brain on vocabulary while not covering the basics? Fractions accounts for 2 weeks each semester at best through the general maths years. Fractions are actually a major part of upper level maths. If you cannot reduce a simple fraction quickly, you will not be able to do much at the algebra level. </p>
<p>Then it gets more disgusting. Get to high school level, and it is all calculator. These children cannot figure out a max and min without plugging in to the calculators. The teachers cannot explain it. They show the students how to plug it in to the calculators and that is the extent of the math being covered at the higher levels. My daughter has tried to ask how to figure some of the simpler problems in precal without the calculator. The teacher had no idea how. She then told my daughter that she does not need to know how to do any of this by hand these days, just plug it in to the calculator. Needless to say, my older children will not be taking any more of their math at the public school. I have 1 younger child in public school, but I am not going to sit back and assume they are teaching anything, because I already know they are not.</p>