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Math education in the US is pitiful. The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts. Like anybody doesn't have multiple

Math education in the US is pitiful. The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts. Like anybody doesn't have multiple calculators in their pockets. I'm all for teaching arithmetic, but emphasizing the algorithms and how to prove them correct should be paramount. Teaching arithmetic in various bases is important, as should be the basics of numeric analysis. Formal logic should also be a core math subject. But no, the USA has to teach subjects as were common in the 1920-1950 time frame, in the same manner as back then. This is a consequence of "home rule".

vkou 4y ago
> Math education in the US is pitiful. No arguments there. > The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts Did it? My understanding is that it uses a few different approaches to build basic intuition about numbers, and that parents hate it because many of those approaches don't make sense to them, because that's not how they learnt math. Which makes it an incredibly convenient punching bag.
- btilly 4y ago
  You're describing what it was in theory. In PRACTICE it was kids being present with a confusing array of things all at once when they hadn't sorted out the basics, and as a result learning none of them. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34634210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34634210 for my rant about what my son actually went through. There is an old saying about writing. "Writing is easy, just open a vein and bleed." That particular rant I'm pretty sure that I hit an artery.
  - vkou 4y ago
    Your problems mostly stem from the fact that your son's teacher doesn't know his elbow from his ass, mathematically. Which, given the current climate, is unsurprising, as anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics will run[1], not walk away from a teaching job. Unfortunately, it's a valid criticism. More unfortunately, switching to another standard for teaching math isn't going to solve this. [1] Why be society's punching bag, on the front-lines of an insane litigation and culture war, have your heavily-backloaded pay be contingent on putting up with decades of this kind of bullshit, all while trying to do a mixture of teaching and social work?
    - btilly 4y ago
      You're right about where the problems come from, and that the criticism is valid. However I stand by my point that Common Core should be described in terms of what it did do, and not what its supporters hoped it would do.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    >given how many teachers in practice can't tell you whether 3/5 is larger than 2/3 Teaching requirements are NOT standardized at the federal level, and lots of states have decided to just lower standards instead of paying professionals more. If you only hire baby-sitters, don't be surprised when they can't teach simple stuff. In my state, we have high standards for teachers, and every single one, from kindergarten right through high school, from french teacher to cooking to history, could teach a middle school math course. Your state or municipality cheaping out on your child's education is not the fault of federal regulation, or of a federal curriculum. You'd be whining about the same thing no matter what the national curriculum was, because the problem is that your local governments don't care about education.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Common Core was also the target of a full on QAnon/Covid style conspiracy push by republicans. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/rnc-embraces-common-core-conspiracy-theory-flna1c9388203 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/rnc-embraces-common-core-... > If you're familiar with Glenn Beck's broadcasts, you've no doubt heard about his unhinged crusade against Common Core, including his declaration last week that he will no longer send his kids to college -- Common Core will only indoctrinate them and make them part of "the system that is coming." > Republicans are taking this all very seriously, with lawmakers in 18 states considering legislation to block Common Core, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) denouncing it on Beck's radio show. As mentioned in the article there are some actual experts with criticisms to make but many of the people getting unusually upset about it had got sucked into a conspiracy theory.
brigadier132 4y ago
> The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts. Memorizing facts is the foundation of all learning. When you add 7+7 in your head do you instantly know the answer is 14 because of "understanding" or because you memorized over all the years. Also the current US education system strictly deemphasizes memorization. Instead it pushes for "understanding" (conveniently a concept that is not measurable). > Like anybody doesn't have multiple calculators in their pockets. Ok and? China and India are producing the smartest people in the world and their education systems strongly emphasize memorization. Understanding comes when you've memorized enough information that you can connect the dots. Once you get to advanced math it's basically impossible to understand from the start and you can only rely on memorization until you've memorized enough and experienced enough that it finally clicks.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  People really underestimate the importance of creativity to advanced technical problem solving. That has been the key human ingredient pushing the frontiers of STEM forward, especially in the most recent decades with better computational tools. The best mathematicians aren't the ones just proving theorems anymore, they're discovering interesting conjectures through exploration and then handing the grunt work off to a computer. Engineers aren't calculating anything remotely complex by hand anymore, nor should they. The best scientists also tend not to be people who were problem set whizzes in school.
  - anon291 4y ago
    > The best mathematicians aren't the ones just proving theorems anymore, they're discovering interesting conjectures through exploration and then handing the grunt work off to a computer. I'm sorry no. This is simply wrong. Computer proofs are not there yet, and plus, a lot of the interesting theorems (including many of the well-known ones) are non-constructive which are difficult to prove on a computer. In fact, many theorem provers cannot prove 'basic' facts about math due to how constructive proof theory works. Indeed it is not clear what truth means at that level, but considering we regularly use non-constructive proofs to build things, I'm not sure that matters. I think what is most undervalued is the utility of sheer competence and technical skill to creativity. Without the former, there is no latter. If someone who never studied piano told you they had a beautiful piano solo in their head, would you believe them? More importantly, would you trust them to execute on the creative impulse?
waboremo 4y ago
Common core standards are pretty good, if you have the chance read into them you'll find you agree with most if not all of it. It's failing stem entirely from implementation and execution (on every level), leaving a lot of people wondering if general standards top-down are even the solution here, seeing how No Child Left Behind was handled.
- guyzero 4y ago
  Common Core was as much about the "common" as it was about the "core." It's not the previous standards were bad (or even different from current standards) but that there were 50 of them instead of one nationwide.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Which is fine and all, and the national standard was fine, but for some reason, very big houses of teaching material put their dumbest interns on the job and there was A LOT of teaching material that was downright incompetent, and taught nothing. You could see exactly what it was trying to get at but it was obvious the person who wrote that material never understood the underlying concept themselves.
yardie 4y ago
> Math education in the US is pitiful. Yeah, no disagreement there. > The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts. In fact, just the opposite. The old math system was rote memorization. Then common core came along and made all those parents and their limited math skills obsolete. It didn't help that teachers who also learned the old math couldn't or didn't understand common core methodology. BTW, I'm a parent of one those school kids who was trying to learn common core. I got it right away and don't consider myself particularly brilliant. But the grumbling from so many parents who just thought they knew more than the educators was deafening. In the end, the state dropped common core and they are still complaining about it years later. The right made it into a boogeyman and now that and trans kids are all they can fixate on.
- EFreethought 4y ago
  It seemed like a lot of the hate for common core started (or at least got louder) when Obama said he thought it was a good idea.

vkou 4y ago

> Math education in the US is pitiful. No arguments there. > The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts Did it? My understanding is that it uses a few different approaches to build basic intuition about numbers, and that parents hate it because many of those approaches don't make sense to them, because that's not how they learnt math. Which makes it an incredibly convenient punching bag.

btilly 4y ago
You're describing what it was in theory. In PRACTICE it was kids being present with a confusing array of things all at once when they hadn't sorted out the basics, and as a result learning none of them. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34634210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34634210 for my rant about what my son actually went through. There is an old saying about writing. "Writing is easy, just open a vein and bleed." That particular rant I'm pretty sure that I hit an artery.
- vkou 4y ago
  Your problems mostly stem from the fact that your son's teacher doesn't know his elbow from his ass, mathematically. Which, given the current climate, is unsurprising, as anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics will run[1], not walk away from a teaching job. Unfortunately, it's a valid criticism. More unfortunately, switching to another standard for teaching math isn't going to solve this. [1] Why be society's punching bag, on the front-lines of an insane litigation and culture war, have your heavily-backloaded pay be contingent on putting up with decades of this kind of bullshit, all while trying to do a mixture of teaching and social work?
  - btilly 4y ago
    You're right about where the problems come from, and that the criticism is valid. However I stand by my point that Common Core should be described in terms of what it did do, and not what its supporters hoped it would do.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  >given how many teachers in practice can't tell you whether 3/5 is larger than 2/3 Teaching requirements are NOT standardized at the federal level, and lots of states have decided to just lower standards instead of paying professionals more. If you only hire baby-sitters, don't be surprised when they can't teach simple stuff. In my state, we have high standards for teachers, and every single one, from kindergarten right through high school, from french teacher to cooking to history, could teach a middle school math course. Your state or municipality cheaping out on your child's education is not the fault of federal regulation, or of a federal curriculum. You'd be whining about the same thing no matter what the national curriculum was, because the problem is that your local governments don't care about education.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Common Core was also the target of a full on QAnon/Covid style conspiracy push by republicans. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/rnc-embraces-common-core-conspiracy-theory-flna1c9388203 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/rnc-embraces-common-core-... > If you're familiar with Glenn Beck's broadcasts, you've no doubt heard about his unhinged crusade against Common Core, including his declaration last week that he will no longer send his kids to college -- Common Core will only indoctrinate them and make them part of "the system that is coming." > Republicans are taking this all very seriously, with lawmakers in 18 states considering legislation to block Common Core, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) denouncing it on Beck's radio show. As mentioned in the article there are some actual experts with criticisms to make but many of the people getting unusually upset about it had got sucked into a conspiracy theory.

brigadier132 4y ago

> The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts. Memorizing facts is the foundation of all learning. When you add 7+7 in your head do you instantly know the answer is 14 because of "understanding" or because you memorized over all the years. Also the current US education system strictly deemphasizes memorization. Instead it pushes for "understanding" (conveniently a concept that is not measurable). > Like anybody doesn't have multiple calculators in their pockets. Ok and? China and India are producing the smartest people in the world and their education systems strongly emphasize memorization. Understanding comes when you've memorized enough information that you can connect the dots. Once you get to advanced math it's basically impossible to understand from the start and you can only rely on memorization until you've memorized enough and experienced enough that it finally clicks.

yummypaint 4y ago
People really underestimate the importance of creativity to advanced technical problem solving. That has been the key human ingredient pushing the frontiers of STEM forward, especially in the most recent decades with better computational tools. The best mathematicians aren't the ones just proving theorems anymore, they're discovering interesting conjectures through exploration and then handing the grunt work off to a computer. Engineers aren't calculating anything remotely complex by hand anymore, nor should they. The best scientists also tend not to be people who were problem set whizzes in school.
- anon291 4y ago
  > The best mathematicians aren't the ones just proving theorems anymore, they're discovering interesting conjectures through exploration and then handing the grunt work off to a computer. I'm sorry no. This is simply wrong. Computer proofs are not there yet, and plus, a lot of the interesting theorems (including many of the well-known ones) are non-constructive which are difficult to prove on a computer. In fact, many theorem provers cannot prove 'basic' facts about math due to how constructive proof theory works. Indeed it is not clear what truth means at that level, but considering we regularly use non-constructive proofs to build things, I'm not sure that matters. I think what is most undervalued is the utility of sheer competence and technical skill to creativity. Without the former, there is no latter. If someone who never studied piano told you they had a beautiful piano solo in their head, would you believe them? More importantly, would you trust them to execute on the creative impulse?

waboremo 4y ago

Common core standards are pretty good, if you have the chance read into them you'll find you agree with most if not all of it. It's failing stem entirely from implementation and execution (on every level), leaving a lot of people wondering if general standards top-down are even the solution here, seeing how No Child Left Behind was handled.

guyzero 4y ago
Common Core was as much about the "common" as it was about the "core." It's not the previous standards were bad (or even different from current standards) but that there were 50 of them instead of one nationwide.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Which is fine and all, and the national standard was fine, but for some reason, very big houses of teaching material put their dumbest interns on the job and there was A LOT of teaching material that was downright incompetent, and taught nothing. You could see exactly what it was trying to get at but it was obvious the person who wrote that material never understood the underlying concept themselves.

yardie 4y ago

> Math education in the US is pitiful. Yeah, no disagreement there. > The last attempt to fix it (common core) mostly emphasized memorizing arithmetic facts. In fact, just the opposite. The old math system was rote memorization. Then common core came along and made all those parents and their limited math skills obsolete. It didn't help that teachers who also learned the old math couldn't or didn't understand common core methodology. BTW, I'm a parent of one those school kids who was trying to learn common core. I got it right away and don't consider myself particularly brilliant. But the grumbling from so many parents who just thought they knew more than the educators was deafening. In the end, the state dropped common core and they are still complaining about it years later. The right made it into a boogeyman and now that and trans kids are all they can fixate on.

EFreethought 4y ago
It seemed like a lot of the hate for common core started (or at least got louder) when Obama said he thought it was a good idea.