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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2017 21:31:47 GMT -5
Where chocolate milk comes from is something you'd pick up at home and/or from common sense, not at school.
Derail/
The trouble with defunding public schools to give parents "choice" is that a dismal percentage of parents are ignorant dumbasses who think the Earth is flat and chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Any "choice" they make for their kids is all too likely to perpetuate their ignorance. (Not to mention the dismal percentage of parents who are abusive or neglectful.)
Good public schools where kids are exposed to ideas that maybe they don't get at home, and exposure to adults and kids not like their family can be a very good thing.
What we should be working on, IMO, is making our public schools better, not gutting them.
/End derail
(If there's interest in continuing the school discussion, I'll start a separate thread tomorrow, or one of you can. I'm going to bed now.)
ETA:
An article I read not long ago noted that kids in the much-vaunted charter schools were actually doing worse overall than in the public schools. Will try to dig it up.
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Post by Christine on Jun 15, 2017 21:32:41 GMT -5
Christine , yo do realize your side note slaughtered your first four paragraphs, right? This has a lot more to do with logic and critical thinking than with chocolate milk, and I'd say a 93% "success" rate teaching those skills is deplorable, to say the least. Of course, that's based on the assumption that those who run the system are actually trying to produce logical, thinking individuals. All my sons were (are) in the public education system. All 12 years. My side note supports the notion that public education is encouraging critical thinking. I'd say, as a mother with a kid currently in that system, that it's BETTER than it was when my 26 year old was a student. Sorry to disappoint.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2017 21:35:17 GMT -5
I am also a public school grad, all 12 years.
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Post by Don on Jun 15, 2017 21:54:48 GMT -5
So those are all fine examples of the 93%.
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Post by Christine on Jun 15, 2017 22:01:13 GMT -5
People have been hating on the new math for a few years now. I've delved into it over the last few months with my youngest. There was no need for me to do so previously, because as far as I knew, he was doing all his homework and making good grades. He was, but wasn't doing enough extra-curricular work through this program called "i-ready" -- he was supposed to do 45 minutes a week and he was averaging 45 minutes a month, unbeknownst to me. (ETA: his scores on i-ready determine whether he can start pre-algebra in 6th grade as opposed to regular or "advanced" math--essentially repeating a lot of what he already knows)
I asked him why; he said it was boring. At first I thought, aha, it's too slow for my smart kid. But nah. Granted, it's a little bit boring when you know the material. We starting doing it at home together, and pretty soon, it wasn't boring for him anymore--they were teaching new concepts he hadn't covered in class. And they teach with critical thinking. I was gobsmacked at how they taught things like, e.g., "why" multiplying or dividing by negative numbers changes the sign/direction of an inequality. I was never taught that. I was taught "the rule." I was never taught "why" it was true. It's awesome.
Another really simple example of back in my day compared to now is with multiplication tables--I had them all memorized in second grade, but I was never taught that 2 x 3 = 6 *because* two three's (2x3 is the same as 3+3) equaled six. NO ONE EVER SAID THAT. I figured that out years later. My kid knows how multiplication, division, addition and subtraction interrelate, intuitively at this point. He was taught that way several years ago.
Also, he is a master at "estimating." They spent months on estimating this year. Brilliant. He's very fast. It's so practical. Back in my day, there was no "estimating." It was equations, problem solving, finding the absolute number, the end. I would do an entire equation (and sure, get the correct answer but) without being able to approximate what the answer would be using the estimation principles.
There are more examples. My kiddo recently was able to articulate what X and Y on a graph represent for a particular set of data -- something I didn't understand until high school.
School is getting WAY better, imo.
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Post by ben on Jun 15, 2017 23:12:22 GMT -5
I need to respond to Christine's last post on education (I learned so much of that, but mostly ON MY OWN...), but I wanted to send a quick drive-by posting:
If you put all those people on an ice floe, won't it tilt over and capsize like Guam?
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Post by ben on Jun 16, 2017 0:21:12 GMT -5
I've got as many opinions on education in general as anyone else, but I've also got experiences People have been hating on the new math for a few years now. I've delved into it over the last few months with my youngest. There was no need for me to do so previously, because as far as I knew, he was doing all his homework and making good grades. He was, but wasn't doing enough extra-curricular work through this program called "i-ready" -- he was supposed to do 45 minutes a week and he was averaging 45 minutes a month, unbeknownst to me. (ETA: his scores on i-ready determine whether he can start pre-algebra in 6th grade as opposed to regular or "advanced" math--essentially repeating a lot of what he already knows) Is this the "core curriculum" stuff I've heard about in the last, i dunno, five years or so? I saw quite a bit about it, like to do 12+14 you do 12+3, then +3, then +3, then +3, then +2 to get to 26. I learned in maybe 2nd or 3rd grade, add the 1s, add the 10s and add the carry if necessary. I don't know if I was taught how it works, but picked up on it. I don't think I learned inequalities until the 8th or 9th grade, but I could "see" where multiplying or dividing both sides by a negative number would change an inequality into its complement. I've blogged about this somewhere many years ago. In first grade (Atlanta Public Schools, this would have been 1963 or so) the teacher brought in this woman to speak for an hour or two, she might have been another teacher or something. She told us all about her trip to Mexico. One thing she said that stuck with me was that things were cheaper in Mexico, specifically something that cost twelve dollars in the US would be only four dollars in Mexico. It brought several questions to mind - one was 'why don't we just buy everything from Mexico?' The other was that I was thinking about the numbers in my head, and wondering, would that mean that something that cost three dollars in the US would only cost one dollar in Mexico? If so, then why did she use the example of 12 and 4? She did ask for questions at the end, but of course I was just shy enough (something that caused me myriads of problems for many decades, but that's for the rest of my memoir) that I didn't ask. Yes, years or decades later I did see that I was doing division and proportions in first grade. Another first-grade memory was some of the arithmetic problems was count-the-dots, with each problem being a different number of dots. One of them was 12 dots, and they happened to be in an array of 3 by 4 dots. The teacher said that one was actually multiplication, that three times four is 12. I didn't believe it - if this was what multiplication was, it was a lot simpler than I imagined! My brother was two year older, in third grade, and he had said how hard multiplication was, that you had to memorize this table with all the numbers. But it seemed so simple to me, if you forgot the answer you could just literally count the dots. That's kind of how I did multiplication for many years (by the third grade I got put into an Emotionally Disturbed class, and multiplication tables and cursive writing were the two big 3rd-grade things I didn't get exposed to in that class) - I'd memorized multiples and counted the, 7x6 is 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42. Or 6x6 is 36 plus another 6 is 42. Maybe that is a little like I've read about "core curriculum" but I didn't have that and three other odd/unrelated methods pushed on me, with the idea that I would eventually learn one of them, or however that goes. I learned the interrelations mostly on my own, because I was that interested in numbers/arithmetic/mathematics. Another thing, somewhere around the sixth or seventh grade (I had been in the Emotionally Disturbed class since third grade, but they were putting me in the 'regular' sixth grade classroom for an hour or two every day - I was in the regular 7th grade class the next year - it seems I heard the ED class was cancelled) I realized I didn't know how to do long division, but everyone else in the class did. I was wanting to learn it, so I looked in the World Book encyclopedia which had some odd method instead of the usual long division, so it wasn't much help. I did eventually learn long division that year, and it was pretty much on my own, but I don't know quite how I learned it. That's some interesting and useful stuff! I learned how to use a slide rule at age 12 (this was a few years before TI came out with the Datamath, a four-function calculator for $150 or so. I also saw the HP-35 advertised in my father's Scientific American magazine, it did sines, cosines and logs, but was priced at a stratospheric $395). With a slide rule and a good eye you can calculate to about three decimal places, but you had to keep track of the power of 10 yourself, and you'd need to be able to approximate if, for some strange reason, you wanted check your answer. 47 * 2.5 would be a little more than twice 47, so it should be around 100. This has always been useful, especially with calculators where you might have dropped a digit in a long calculation and the answer ends up way wrong from what you know it should be. Long memoir short, despite everything, I took and passed the GED test at 18 and did three years of Electrical Engineering classes in college, and have had sort-of an electronics and programming career. That's good stuff.
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Post by ben on Jun 16, 2017 1:44:32 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on Jun 16, 2017 7:44:19 GMT -5
Another really simple example of back in my day compared to now is with multiplication tables--I had them all memorized in second grade, but I was never taught that 2 x 3 = 6 *because* two three's (2x3 is the same as 3+3) equaled six. NO ONE EVER SAID THAT. That is seriously effed up, imo. I was taught that from the get go. I don't have a clue how a teacher could even define/explain multiplication (or division) without using addition. And btw, 2x3 is the same as 2+2+2... Sure, I learned to memorize tables, but I was taught what multiplication was, without question. Are you sure you're remembering correctly here? MAybe you weren't paying attention. Because I seriously can't imagine how a teacher says "memorize 2x3=6 without explaining "times." Again, not so for me. And not so for my older kids, prior to these curriculum changes. I learned to estimate, they learned to estimate. Is it getting way better than it ever was, or is it finally getting back to what it used to be like?
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Post by Christine on Jun 16, 2017 8:44:25 GMT -5
I don't claim perfect recall as to what I was taught in 2nd grade. What I specifically remember: being the first student to have memorized all 12 times tables, and the "experience" of realizing 2 x 3 is the same as two threes (or three twos), which happened maybe three years later; I don't remember exactly when, I just remember the feeling (it was kind of shocking). I would think that I would have already had some sense of that if it were a focus of the teaching. I remember the focus being on memorization and speed - there were a lot of timed tests consisting of a sheet of paper with various multiplication problems and it was a race. But it could be that that was just the way my brain worked at the time, I guess. I always paid attention in class. I always got A's. (Although, I would get notes sent home to the effect of, "Chrissy is a very bright student, but she needs to work on her attitude. Can you even imagine? ) Although one more thing I forgot to consider (apologies): I went to Christian schools for most of my education (Coral Reef Elementary for K-1, then Florida Christian School for 2-4, then another Christian school when we moved from Miami. So probably I'm not the best person to compare then to now in public education.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 16, 2017 8:57:28 GMT -5
My youngest goes to Coral Reef Elementary. Both of my older ones went there, too.
I have heard some not good things about Florida Christian School, but that was some time ago.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 8:59:46 GMT -5
Another really simple example of back in my day compared to now is with multiplication tables--I had them all memorized in second grade, but I was never taught that 2 x 3 = 6 *because* two three's (2x3 is the same as 3+3) equaled six. NO ONE EVER SAID THAT. That is seriously effed up, imo. I was taught that from the get go. I don't have a clue how a teacher could even define/explain multiplication (or division) without using addition. And btw, 2x3 is the same as 2+2+2... Sure, I learned to memorize tables, but I was taught what multiplication was, without question. Are you sure you're remembering correctly here? MAybe you weren't paying attention. Because I seriously can't imagine how a teacher says "memorize 2x3=6 without explaining "times." Again, not so for me. And not so for my older kids, prior to these curriculum changes. I learned to estimate, they learned to estimate. Is it getting way better than it ever was, or is it finally getting back to what it used to be like? re: Rob's last question -- I think perhaps overall it is the latter. I'm basing that partly on anecdotal evidence. Thanks to running club events, I often find myself fraternizing with adults ranging from their early 20s up to their 60s. Most are professionals or students -- no dunces among them -- yet there is a large cohort who cannot calculate a tip in their head. They tend to be under 40. The oldsters can all do basic math in their heads, but it seems like a big bunch never learned. Certainly they changed something. My dad was a secondary school math teacher. I recall him getting very frustrated at the way the school system was switching the curriculum around -- he did not think whatever they were doing was working. When he tutored on the side, he generally used his his older methods, and the kids learned just fine (all of the kids he tutored improved dramatically). It's also possible different school systems taught differently. Like Rob, I learned to think of math pretty much the way Christine describes. Then again, my dad was a math teacher.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 16, 2017 9:09:17 GMT -5
Well, there have been phases by my recollection. One of the absolute worst was the "nobody fails" period, which was (is) indeterminate to be sure and even continues in some places today. But I think it started in the 80's and was mostly confined to primary schools. It's done real damage to the system imo, even if it had (has) good intentions.
ETA: Also, there is a truth that few people want to hear, much less do anything about: some teachers suck royally. They really do. And getting such a teacher in primary school can cost a classroom of kids a great deal, with regard to progress and placement. T
This has always been the case. The only thing that has changed is that it has become progressively more difficult to do anything about such situations.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 10:21:26 GMT -5
To be fair, it is also the case that it became difficult for teachers to do anything about problem students -- huge classes plus inability to discipline plus pressure to pass them no matter what.
My dad, who started teaching in the late 60s, loved it until sometime in the mid to late 80s. He got increasingly frustrated after that.
eta:
I'm a certified secondary school english teacher. That was my original career plan. My dad's increasing discontent was a key reason I changed course after college.
Depending on where you are teaching, it can be a pretty good gig or an ill-paid nightmare (e.g., NYC). If you want good teachers in the places where it is an il-paid nightmare, you need to do something about either the working conditions or the pay or both.
Otherwise, why would someone like me (who had plenty of choices) go into it?
I'm not saying there aren't some problems with the tenure system. But knowing plenty of teachers (several of my running club acquaintances are current NYC public school teachers), I can say people are quick to pin all the blame on teachers without looking at the many issues teachers are faced with. Burnout is high, even among the most talented and idealistic.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 16, 2017 10:38:17 GMT -5
Yes, I agree with that as well. It was (is) a part of the "nobody fails" mindset. And these things feed off of each other, as well: more bad students leads to more bad teachers (or more frustrated teachers) which leads to more bad students and so on.
You know, I think every kid should have the opportunity to learn, to go to school, but there should come a point where they have to lose that opportunity until they can prove again that they deserve it, which falls on their parents, as well.
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