Warning: Soapbox. I keep seeing more and more anti-Common Core posts. Ironically, the poster usually - in the same sentence - declares that he or she doesnt understand the method being taught AND that its a stupid way to teach it. That because its not the way he or she learned it 10, 20, 30 years ago, its not a way thats worth learning. Or that its more evidence that Obama is a fascist or something. The latest one is a picture of a kids math test. He was marked down because, although he got the right answers to some subtraction problems, he didnt follow the assigned steps and convert the numbers to friendly numbers, which, admittedly, seems like a goofy name for a math concept. Let me tell a story. When I was in kindergarten, the teacher handed out a bunch of paper train cars with letters on them. Each student, she clearly explained, was to put the train cars in alphabetical order. Well, I missed that part of the directions and set about trying to use the train-car-letters to spell what few short words I knew: Cat, Dog, Me, See, etc. The teacher came over, raised an eyebrow, and made me start over. The point is, although I demonstrated a skill - arguably one slightly more impressive than the assigned task - I failed at following directions and at demonstrating mastery of the skill that I was actually instructed to demonstrate mastery of. Same with this student. Its wonderful that he or she can do the subtraction, but if you look closely at the assignment sheet, the instructions clearly state that a certain method should be used. That that skill is whats being tested. And the skill, while it might have a silly name, is really no different from finding a common denominator: A manipulation of numbers to make the equation simpler. The student didnt do this, and the teacher pointed it out. How something that straightforward becomes an internet meme, I cant imagine. The best part about my alphabet train car incident was that my parents DIDNT take a picture of it and then post it on the internet so that armchair education experts could shame the teacher and the curriculum.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:07:43 +0000
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