Meet the New Common Core

koshkas
Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:08:30 +0000

Oh, I would love it if teachers were adding mental math methods or deep meaning lectures to the basics! That would be a dream school.

Unfortunately, what I am seeing in the Common Core implementation (at least here) is exactly replacing the teaching of basic background knowledge with extras. Of course, they need word problems (they use way too many blunt numeric exercises anyway) and not just in middle school but from the start in K but should those problems be the length of a good novel? I doubt it. Of course, they need to explain their thinking in solutions but in mathematically precise way, not to write an essay on each problem (the recent Common Core requirement). And I am not surprised that somewhere teachers are replacing the carrying over methods with “mental math on paper” (btw my kids just love those methods - they play “mental math battles” almost every time during the longer car rides)
Also, it looks like all these one-sided approach issues somewhat dissolve once kids hit HS and they definitely don’t exist in AP courses like Calc or Physics (teachers’ competence rises?). Or maybe Common Core just didn’t reach our HS yet or we got lucky with the teachers

As for the polynomial factoring - that’s my personal favourite: the last time I (and my husband too, actually) factored a polynomial was in middle school. Decades later, after my EE degree, CS education and work, my H’s PhD in physics and all his subsequent work (both in physics and CS) never once did any of us get to factor a polynomial. Who would have thought! ;))