(01-17-2015, 12:16 PM)Mae Wrote: Pretty much the last sentence Mae just said is part of my problem with it.(01-16-2015, 07:34 PM)Naunet Wrote: The backlash has been unnecessarily exacerbated by adults who refuse to accept that maybe the way they learned things was not the best and are determined to keep their kids in the dark. It's honestly rather disturbing to me that a lot of the argument against Common Core standards boils down to, "I didn't need to know this, so neither does my kid." What a stagnant view of education! Education is a science, and as such the techniques used to deliver it will change over time - just as our understanding of the world changes over time. Everyone would be much better off if they accepted that fact.I can't presume to be in the parent's mind, but I'd be willing to wager (based on my own reaction to seeing Common Core the first time) that it was less "stubbornness" "wanting to keep kids in the dark" and more "good parent wanting to help a struggling child with their math homework, but can't because overly-complicated new rules and superfluous steps to what is a simple math problem."Â
Honestly, the guy with a BS in Electronics Engineering who couldn't understand that rather simple homework problem was likely suffering from his own stubbornness and preconceived notions of how things should work. I'm a teacher, so I don't really like calling people "stupid" (at least when it comes to how they understand things), but he was rather blind.
Which seems to be the heart of MOST of the arguments being made against Common Core by parents: they cannot help their children who are already struggling with Common Core with their homework. The parent is sitting there, they can see the simple solution that really only requires a bag of beans to demonstrate the logic of it, but the child is telling them that they have to do it this other way or they'll get it wrong.
And Naunet, I doubt that's what parents are trying to say at all that "I didn't need to know this, so neither does my kid." I think a lot of it is how it's being presented and how it's a success for some and not so much for others. I had to learn different approaches to mathematics myself in order to understand it, and if I hadn't had a teacher early on that gave me the gift of following methods that went outside of what was *airquotes* 'required' to be taught in order to help me succeed, I wouldn't enjoy math as much as I've come to at this juncture in my life.
