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The catch is: we engineers do that because we grok basic math so well that we can mentally juggle numbers fast. Yes, seems Common Core is trying to teach those

The catch is: we engineers do that because we grok basic math so well that we can mentally juggle numbers fast. Yes, seems Common Core is trying to teach those methods - but to children who barely grasp the subject, and thus must memorize rote processes to scribble down all the obligatory steps without understanding why they're doing it. Children need learn math by concrete manipulatives, handling the physical-world form until they (individually!) internalize the process, then growing comfortable enough with those internalized processes to develop more sophisticated AND casual ways to mentally tear numbers apart & rearrange them to perform calculations fast.

bsder 11y ago
> Yes, seems Common Core is trying to teach those methods - but to children who barely grasp the subject, and thus must memorize rote processes to scribble down all the obligatory steps without understanding why they're doing it. The rote processes Common Core teaches are closer to what you and I use. Why teach subtraction from least-significant to most significant manipulation and then make students throw that away and relearn the other direction? That is especially meaningless when tabular clerical calculation skills have no existence in the modern world. We don't teach children to read from right to left and then force them to relearn reading left to right to read fast. > Children need learn math by concrete manipulatives, handling the physical-world form until they (individually!) internalize the process, then growing comfortable enough with those internalized processes to develop more sophisticated AND casual ways to mentally tear numbers apart & rearrange them to perform calculations fast. And, yet, most significant to least significant is almost always how we manipulate things in the real world. I cut material down to rough size, and then I cut it to detailed length. Imperial recipes measure multiple cups and then fractional cups. A bolt looks like a 1/2 inch head, so I try the sockets around my estimate. etc.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Most from-fundamentals education involves learning small steps which are later discarded in favor of radically different processes not easily understood without having gone thru those prior steps. Better reading analogy [I read very fast]: we don't teach children to glance at a page, absorb random words, predict likely filler content, identify interesting sections, and repeat process on those sections - instead, we teach children to read left-to-right, word-for-word, until they can do so well enough & fast enough that they internally develop content prediction techniques leading to "page at a glance" reading.

bsder 11y ago

> Yes, seems Common Core is trying to teach those methods - but to children who barely grasp the subject, and thus must memorize rote processes to scribble down all the obligatory steps without understanding why they're doing it. The rote processes Common Core teaches are closer to what you and I use. Why teach subtraction from least-significant to most significant manipulation and then make students throw that away and relearn the other direction? That is especially meaningless when tabular clerical calculation skills have no existence in the modern world. We don't teach children to read from right to left and then force them to relearn reading left to right to read fast. > Children need learn math by concrete manipulatives, handling the physical-world form until they (individually!) internalize the process, then growing comfortable enough with those internalized processes to develop more sophisticated AND casual ways to mentally tear numbers apart & rearrange them to perform calculations fast. And, yet, most significant to least significant is almost always how we manipulate things in the real world. I cut material down to rough size, and then I cut it to detailed length. Imperial recipes measure multiple cups and then fractional cups. A bolt looks like a 1/2 inch head, so I try the sockets around my estimate. etc.

ctdonath 11y ago
Most from-fundamentals education involves learning small steps which are later discarded in favor of radically different processes not easily understood without having gone thru those prior steps. Better reading analogy [I read very fast]: we don't teach children to glance at a page, absorb random words, predict likely filler content, identify interesting sections, and repeat process on those sections - instead, we teach children to read left-to-right, word-for-word, until they can do so well enough & fast enough that they internally develop content prediction techniques leading to "page at a glance" reading.