Common core dumbing down the US? | INFJ Forum

Common core dumbing down the US?

muir

Banned
Oct 14, 2009
11,076
1,261
0
MBTI
INFJ
http://www.infowars.com/you-wont-be...-core-is-using-to-teach-our-kids-subtraction/

[h=1]You Won’t Believe The Method That Common Core Is Using To Teach Our Kids Subtraction[/h]Michael Snyder

Common-Core-Subtraction-225x300.jpg


The dumbing down of America is accelerating. A massive federal takeover of education known as “Common Core” is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country. Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools. Unfortunately, these “standards” are doing to public education what Obamacare is doing to our health care system — absolutely ruining it. Just look at how basic math instruction has changed. Posted below is a comparison between the “old method” of subtraction and the “new method” of subtraction being taught in many of our schools. When I first came across this on Facebook, I thought that it was a joke…

I thought that there was no possible way that this could be real. I really thought that this must have come from some sort of parody website.
But it is actually true.
Here is another example of this. The following is an incredibly bizarre Common Core math problem and the response by one very frustrated parent that has gone viral all over the Internet recently…

The frustration being experienced by that parent is quite understandable. When I first looked at that math question, I could almost feel myself getting dumber while I read it.
Is this kind of “math” really preparing our kids for the real world?
I think not.
But these are the kinds of questions that textbook writers come up with as they attempt to implement the standards of Common Core
The question appears to be aiming for several of the main Common Core math standards for second grade:
1) A requirement that students understand place value, for instance, that “100 can be thought of as a bundle of ten tens – called a ‘hundred.’”
2) That students be able to “add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value … and relate the strategy to a written method.” Also that they “understand that in adding or subtracting three-digit numbers, one adds or subtracts hundreds and hundreds, tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose or decompose tens or hundreds.”
3) That they can “explain why addition and subtraction strategies work, using place value and the properties of operations.”
4) And that they can “represent whole numbers as lengths from 0 on a number line diagram with equally spaced points corresponding to the numbers 0, 1, 2, …, and represent whole-number sums and differences within 100 on a number line diagram.”
Here is another example of some Common Core math…

What?
Are you kidding me?
Why make things so convoluted?
Are they actually trying to make our kids hate math more than they already do?
And old terms such as “add” and “subtract” are out. As you can see from the “Common Core — Parent Cheat Sheet” posted below, our kids are now learning how to “increase” and “decrease”…

And of course Common Core is not just messing with math.
Just check out the 4th grade homework assignment posted below…

If you cannot read what it says in the picture, here is a transcript of the text…
Ruby sat on the bed she shared with her husband holding a hairclip. There was something mysterious and powerful about the cheaply manufactured neon clip that she was fondling suspiciously. She didn’t recognize the hairclip. It was too big to be their daughter’s, and Ruby was sure that it wasn’t hers. She hadn’t had friends over in weeks, but here was this hairclip, little and green with a few long black hair strands caught in it. Ruby ran her fingers through her own blonde hair. She had just been vacuuming when she noticed this small, bright green object under the bed. Now their life would never be the same. She would wait here until Mike returned home.
Why is Ruby so affected by the hairclip?
How has the hairclip affected Ruby’s relationship?
From where did the hairclip most likely come?
Why in the world are 4th grade students being taught lessons about husbands cheating on their wives?
Is this appropriate?
Unfortunately, this kind of inappropriate material can be found throughout Common Core-based textbooks all over the country.
Those promoting Common Core have gone to great lengths to make it appear that teachers, parents and students are embracing these new standards, but as Alex Newman recently detailed, that is not the case at all. In fact, there has been a huge backlash against Common Core even in bastions of liberalism such as New York…
While the Big Business front group has been producing ads purporting to show that “teachers” support the standards, that lie is easily put to rest by witnessing the revolt among teachers in New York, where the Common Core roll-out has advanced faster than in other states. There, the board of the state teachers union voted unanimously against Common Core as it has been implemented so far. New York State Assemblyman Al Graf, a member of the Assembly Education Committee with a degree in education, even told The New American that the controversial standards represent “state-sponsored child abuse.” Even the governor in the establishment stronghold has been forced to retreat slightly on Common Core in the face of the public uprising. Opponents of the education takeover say this is just the start.
We live at a time when Americans have already become incredibly dumbed down.
Do we really want to sink even lower?
Posted below is stunning video of an Illinois Curriculum Director explaining that under Common Core, it is okay for children to say that “three times four equals eleven” as long as they can give the reasons for their answer…

[video=youtube;DW0VxxoCrNo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW0VxxoCrNo[/video]


What will our country look like if this insanity is allowed to continue?
At this point, only 43 percent of all Americans aged 18 to 24 can correctly point out the state of Ohio on a map of the United States.
How much dumber can we get and still survive as a nation?
 
The is the first time I have seen this. I think I know the answer. I believe its because they want to see that the person understands a "process" for getting to a number rather than "Just doing it in their head."

Make no mistake, I am not saying I agree with this. Our school systems sucked when I went. Algebra teacher should not have been allowed in the class room. Idiots.
 
[MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION] this stuff is real.

One of my uncles was a teacher, he just recently retired but before that they started making him do this "new method" that you described here. It is for real.

This is stupid because math is becoming more important by the day and the old way of doing it is actually better because it carries over to other bases, such as binary.

It was bad enough that they managed to convince people that binary is different but it is not! Aside from carrying the place at 1 instead of 9 it is miltiplied, divided, added and subtracted the same way as the old math. Conversion is a little more involved but still very basic and easy to learn. With this new "core" method, understanding binary or any other base has been pretty much thrown out the window because it takes away how digits relate to each other as a whole.
 
The is the first time I have seen this. I think I know the answer. I believe its because they want to see that the person understands a "process" for getting to a number rather than "Just doing it in their head."

Make no mistake, I am not saying I agree with this. Our school systems sucked when I went. Algebra teacher should not have been allowed in the class room. Idiots.

There already was a process if you wanted to write out long subtraction. Because it was so simple it is often easier in your head.

This crap is the opposite. It used to be you could write it out if you want to but adding up random numbers in order to subtract doesn't help anybody understand the problem. It more likely helps to NOT understand it.
 
Actually now that I think about it more, they might be trying to have a point but it is a bit misguided.

I figured out the Jack number line problem and it's really not that hard. The idea is trying to teach how to do subtraction in chunks and find out how Jack did it wrong. Jack skipped subtracting a 10 on his number line.

The problem here is that the paradigm is trying to take the abstract and make it concrete.

I picked a random problem and did it in my head: 1000 - 983 which was quite easy to solve using chunking. The way I do it in my head is not entirely different from the number line method they tried there. The issue is that my internal visualization of it was vastly different - the visual picture of arcs bouncing over a number line is nothing like the mental picture I have. In my brain I pop the stack of numbers 'head on' so it doesn't look like a number line, it feels more like a rolling odometer. Trying to switch to this new forced visualization was quite difficult.

I can get the idea with the number line they're trying to show how to really solve the problem and not just do it by rote. It ends up confusing because understanding something itself is an abstract visualization so forcing a number line approach is not necessarily any different than any other approach.

Line arcs are obviously not numbers and cannot be numbers unless one is mentally prepared to abstractly accept them as representation of numbers. Bringing back the abacus or something would probably be more relatable, at least to transition with the understanding and not just force everybody to jump straight into it.
 
I'm kind of of the opinion that if something ain't broke then don't fix it
 
I'm kind of of the opinion that if something ain't broke then don't fix it

I agree.

I also think that while this stuff is not necessarily difficult to relate if you know abstract math principles, I still don't think it helps one to learn them.

I believe if you can't intuit why 5-3 = 2 then adding more symbols is not going to help you intuit it. They're trying to standardize the intuition which I find absurd - they're claiming to want to teach how to solve the problem in an understanding way but are forbidding from doing such by standardizing the intuition. i.e. saying you can't count on your fingers.

You should be able to count on your fingers if you have that much trouble. If you don't have fingers then use eye blinks or count steps in your head or something, make tick marks on scrap paper, whatever. Forcing this business is no better than the other way IMO but can be more complicated.

The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriach Huineng, “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana sutra for many years, yet there are many areas i do not quite understand. Please enlighten me.”
The patriach responded, “I am illiterate. Please read out the characters to me and perhaps I will be able to explain the meaning.”

Said the nun, “You cannot even recognize the characters. How are you able then to understand the meaning?”

“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”
 
Ok so they've made a dog's dinner out of education despite spending millions on it...so to the million dollar question...the one i love to ask: WHY?
 
Last edited:
Ok so they've made a dig's dinner out of education despite spending millions on it...so to the million dollar question...the one i love to ask: WHY?

I dunno but I'm sure it involves money and/or bacon.
 
[MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION]

[video=youtube;1x2ZyXWHeMw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x2ZyXWHeMw[/video]
 
More likely for the teachers than the kids.
 
@muir

[video=youtube;1x2ZyXWHeMw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x2ZyXWHeMw[/video]

This math technique is going to make my wait in the mcdonalds line much longer once these kids come to working age.

but seriously something in the way this presenter speaks makes me feel like I'm watching a sales pitch and makes red flags go off. I'd like to hear the other side of the story.
 
Here's an article explaining how the 'new math' is not a Common Core mandate. The school curriculum is still decided by the school districts.

http://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...-homework-don-t-blame-the-common-core/360064/

I think that's a really weird way to teach math and it probably causes more confusion for the kids than help them become math whizzes. I also believe there are positives and real negatives to the ideas such as the Common Core. I just thought it was important to understand that they are two different problems. People tend to put two and two together (no pun intended) without checking the truth behind it.
 
It's probably because my(our) generation sucks at algebra so much so that they figured out they need to implement a system for kids where they absolutely have to show their work before they have their teenage rebellion. I know in adding and subtracting we didn't have to show work, and I personally carried that will me to multiplication and division and by the time algebra came along I still didn't want to show my work, but had to -or should have- because I was getting the problems wrong. It's a way to teach the kids to obey at a younger age, and if you ask me the kids need to learn how to obey. Our generation aren't entitled little shits because it costs too much to live, its because we all think we don't need to obey, we don't need a boss and we somehow can't understand how that hurts us in the long run.
 
[video=youtube;LetJHQ_V05o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LetJHQ_V05o&feature=kp[/video]
 
  • Like
Reactions: the
It's probably because my(our) generation sucks at algebra so much so that they figured out they need to implement a system for kids where they absolutely have to show their work before they have their teenage rebellion. I know in adding and subtracting we didn't have to show work, and I personally carried that will me to multiplication and division and by the time algebra came along I still didn't want to show my work, but had to -or should have- because I was getting the problems wrong. It's a way to teach the kids to obey at a younger age, and if you ask me the kids need to learn how to obey. Our generation aren't entitled little shits because it costs too much to live, its because we all think we don't need to obey, we don't need a boss and we somehow can't understand how that hurts us in the long run.

Thats true, i dont need to obey because I am not a dog. However offering proofs for the work I have done, being open to criticism, and using that to improve myself is something im open to. I guess im just an entitled shit.

Also which generation is making this? If it is the generation that suvks at algebra then why are we hiringthem to make an algebra curriculum?
 
Last edited:
My kids have been taught math in the way kinda described by the OP but certainly in line with the idea of having a deep understanding of place value and number sense. My 9th grader will be in Calculus in the tenth grade, my 7th grader is on the same track.

My issue with the politicians who rail against the Common Core approach is that they really don't seem to give a shit about the fact that schools in poor tax districts simply suck.

We require our kids to attend school but we do not require our tax payers to actually pay for it (wtf?)
 
This is actually how I've always done math in my head! ....what does that say? hahahaha
 
Oh it's fuckin' crazy man!

Even 10 -15 years ago when we would try to help our Son with grade school level math homework, it was an exercise in frustration because the way they taught math was beyond all comprehension to both his Mother and myself.

When I would show him how find an answer, he would say "That's not how we do it!"
It didn't matter if the answer was correct, what mattered more to the school was how they reached the answer. So if he showed a division equation in the traditional, simple, common sense way I and generations before me were taught, he would get it marked as wrong.

These poor kids.
 
Thats true, i dont need to obey because I am not a dog. However offering proofs for the work I have done, being open to criticism, and using that to improve myself is something im open to. I guess im just an entitled shit.

Also which generation is making this? If it is the generation that suvks at algebra then why are we hiringthem to make an algebra curriculum?

The generation that sucks at algebra isn't working, that's the point.