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Education in this country is a complete joke. It reminds me of the standards on tv with reality tv sinking so far....kardashians, real housewives. Public education is about as low as that IMO.
-Subjects are rushed through at 80 mph. A key question....is the quality of the material learned important, or the speed at which you go through it? It seems like they are really obsessed with speed. You have to crank everyone out every 6 months or year to say they mastered the material. I don't think it works like that.
Subjects like math are a mess. They need to teach fundamentals and building blocks. They need to go into how people learn or why. I.e. some people are "Math phobic". Is that real? Assuming everyone processes information the same way is lunacy. About as crazy as thinking the earth will spin sideways.
-The obsession with putting everyone on a college and academic track is also lunacy. It's reaching it's limit. You see that in low wages after highschool, college dropout rates, etc.
Our policy towards Cuba was wrong for 50 years. Our public education policy is just as boneheaded. We've got to admit that something is wrong and change course.
That will never happen. NCLB is still in force, still stating 100% of students in the US will be proficient by 2014 Did that happen ? Why are we ignoring that and still tracking AYP ? Every single school in the US failed but we don't mention that do we ?
People b_t_h about education all over the Internet. But how many make suggestions for education without the nonsense controlled by the educational bureaucracy?
Education in this country is a complete joke. It reminds me of the standards on tv with reality tv sinking so far....kardashians, real housewives. Public education is about as low as that IMO.
-Subjects are rushed through at 80 mph. A key question....is the quality of the material learned important, or the speed at which you go through it? It seems like they are really obsessed with speed. You have to crank everyone out every 6 months or year to say they mastered the material. I don't think it works like that.
Subjects like math are a mess. They need to teach fundamentals and building blocks. They need to go into how people learn or why. I.e. some people are "Math phobic". Is that real? Assuming everyone processes information the same way is lunacy. About as crazy as thinking the earth will spin sideways.
-The obsession with putting everyone on a college and academic track is also lunacy. It's reaching it's limit. You see that in low wages after highschool, college dropout rates, etc.
Our policy towards Cuba was wrong for 50 years. Our public education policy is just as boneheaded. We've got to admit that something is wrong and change course.
We are teaching LESS material now than we were when I was in school. We have slowed down what we teach. It's not being taught at high speed compared to say the 1970's when I was in school. It's also not being retained. Students do not remember what they learned one year to use the next. We now spend a lot more time reviewing at the beginning of the year and before each unit. It only seems like we're moving fast because we've had to insert review material all over the place.
Before I can teach my students how to find the area of a regular polygon I have to review how to solve algebraic equations with a variable in the denominator because they think that when they see the expression Tan 36 = 5/a that a = tan(36)/5. And I teach in one of the best schools in the state. Take my problems and multiply by 100 for the worst schools. Trust me we are teaching less and less actual new material because the we have to review anything they need from previous years. The ability to look things up on their phone has trained them to think they do not need to retain anything because they can look it up. The problem with this is they don't know what to look up because they don't know what they actually need.
FTR I attended one of the worst districts in my area so I know I learned less than the kids who went to better schools. We aren't even close to teaching what we taught in the 70's. I'd have to increase the pace by 50% to get there in my chemistry classes and everyone would cry foul and tell me I'm expecting too much out of my students. When I was in school your chemistry teacher did not review how to solve a ratio. If you didn't know it it was on you to figure out what you'd forgotten. Today I have to review it first. That takes time away from teaching my real subject.
We are teaching LESS material now than we were when I was in school. We have slowed down what we teach. It's not being taught at high speed compared to say the 1970's when I was in school. It's also not being retained. Students do not remember what they learned one year to use the next. We now spend a lot more time reviewing at the beginning of the year and before each unit. It only seems like we're moving fast because we've had to insert review material all over the place.
Before I can teach my students how to find the area of a regular polygon I have to review how to solve algebraic equations with a variable in the denominator because they think that when they see the expression Tan 36 = 5/a that a = tan(36)/5. And I teach in one of the best schools in the state. Take my problems and multiply by 100 for the worst schools. Trust me we are teaching less and less actual new material because the we have to review anything they need from previous years. The ability to look things up on their phone has trained them to think they do not need to retain anything because they can look it up. The problem with this is they don't know what to look up because they don't know what they actually need.
FTR I attended one of the worst districts in my area so I know I learned less than the kids who went to better schools. We aren't even close to teaching what we taught in the 70's. I'd have to increase the pace by 50% to get there in my chemistry classes and everyone would cry foul and tell me I'm expecting too much out of my students. When I was in school your chemistry teacher did not review how to solve a ratio. If you didn't know it it was on you to figure out what you'd forgotten. Today I have to review it first. That takes time away from teaching my real subject.
But are they able to "explain" why they think Tan 36 = 5/a <=> a = tan(36)/5 for them?!?
But are they able to "explain" why they think Tan 36 = 5/a <=> a = tan(36)/5 for them?!?
The "why" came for me late in high school in pre-calc class.
At that point we had the foundation to both ask and understand the 'why'.
Today it seems the curriculum wants the "why" being taught extremely early.
And sometimes need to to teach the "why" ends up dragging more higher level content down to lower grades.
It was hard enough teaching 6th graders the first quadrant in Math. Our new curriculum stresses the understanding of negative numbers so now all 4 quadrants are being taught. And many more of the 6th graders seemed more lost this year than past years. Instead of incremental teaching that builds up the foundation we seem to be doing a brain dump on them.
The "why" came for me late in high school in pre-calc class.
At that point we had the foundation to both ask and understand the 'why'.
Today it seems the curriculum wants the "why" being taught extremely early.
And sometimes need to to teach the "why" ends up dragging more higher level content down to lower grades.
It was hard enough teaching 6th graders the first quadrant in Math. Our new curriculum stresses the understanding of negative numbers so now all 4 quadrants are being taught. And many more of the 6th graders seemed more lost this year than past years. Instead of incremental teaching that builds up the foundation we seem to be doing a brain dump on them.
In terms of number sense, I don't see that negative numbers should be so difficult. Use football yardage or temperature.
But are they able to "explain" why they think Tan 36 = 5/a <=> a = tan(36)/5 for them?!?
Um, I have dual majors in chemistry and math with a minor in physics. Why are you asking if I can explain how to solve a simple algebraic equation? I could explain that when I was in the 8th grade. Of course I can explain it. It doesn't matter though. They don't listen to the explanation (which I repeat over and over and over). I have now stooped to their level (if you can't beat them, join them). They want to be told the steps to do and just follow them. So I tell them if you see a variable in the denominator your first task is get it out of there. Unfortunately, there are multiple ways they can show up in the denominator. The more we cater to this kind of thinking the worse it gets. I WISH my students actually wanted to understand the math instead of just follow an algorithm to get an answer. I wish learning was important to parents and not just grades. I had one student the other day I was trying to get to solve this equation: 160 = (n-2)*180/n using algebra. She looked at it and said "Oh this is where you guess and check".
I'm convinced that was once done to give kids an advantage becomes necessary in short order. We started reviewing math concepts before using them in math and science classes to increase ability but all that happened in the long run is kids now EXPECT to have anything they need from past classes reviewed before they use it. Even parents buy into this and cry foul if I EXPECT my geometry kids to be able to do algebra without reviewing it so now they remember even less. We started letting kids use calculators in math so we could teach more math, now they can't do math without one and half the time not with one. I have to explain over and over to put expressions that are in the denominator in parentheses because the calculator does EXACTLY what you tell it to. Do you know what my student's say? "Someone should fix this so we don't have to do that". They don't think. They are led by the nose by technology. They'll believe anything they read on the internet. When I have to correct things they find on the internet half of them are amazed that I can actually discern bad information from good and the other half think I'm stupid because I don't agree with the internet. There is no shortage of bad information on the internet but they think "on the internet" = Correct.
Now we're adding test retakes to the mix. They're not doing well enough on the tests so we reteach and retest. Guess what is becoming necessary? We've been doing this for two years now and I'm lucky if I see a 60% average on the first take of the test anymore. It's not unusual to see averages below 50%. They don't take the first test seriously. Of course they and their parents think we must not have taught the material because the WHOLE class didn't get it. No, they just don't bother trying to learn it the first time. They treat the first test like a pre test and the second test like the real test. Since the questions are virtually identical on the second test (they and their parents will cry foul if we were to change them), they do ok on that one. Not surprisingly we give out LOTS of A's now what we do retests but we actually fail more students. The only good thing that has come out of this is parents have stopped yelling at teachers because Suzy got a B or Johnny failed. However, grades don't mean much.
I wish I could see what happens in the next 50 years. I do not expect it to be pretty. Those who can think and generate new information will be able to write their own ticket. The rest will be slaves to the information they provide and EASILY replaceable.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 05-09-2015 at 07:52 PM..
The "why" came for me late in high school in pre-calc class.
At that point we had the foundation to both ask and understand the 'why'.
Today it seems the curriculum wants the "why" being taught extremely early.
And sometimes need to to teach the "why" ends up dragging more higher level content down to lower grades.
It was hard enough teaching 6th graders the first quadrant in Math. Our new curriculum stresses the understanding of negative numbers so now all 4 quadrants are being taught. And many more of the 6th graders seemed more lost this year than past years. Instead of incremental teaching that builds up the foundation we seem to be doing a brain dump on them.
It blows my mind that they think teaching things earlier and earlier will work. It does no good to teach kids things before they are ready. Later teachers just have to repeat the material when it's needed so no time is gained this way. In fact, it results in less being taught at the higher levels. The first 6 weeks of my chemistry class is spent reviewing material I should be able to assume my students know from previous classes. That means two entire units must be cut out of my curriculum. To add insult to injury, I lose another 3 weeks and another unit to all the prepping and taking of the state tests. 1/4th of my curriculum is not taught because kids never learned the prerequisite material and because of testing. IMO this is a HUGE problem because chemistry is like a strip mine. You have to go wide before you can do deep because you will need to put multiple concepts together to go deep. It's the depth we're losing in both my math classes and my science classes and we're losing it to the need to review/reteach and in many cases teach for the first time concepts our students should have had in previous grades.
What we need is vertical alignment and the right to hold students accountable for what they learned in past classes without review. In math this would play out in teaching fewer topics per year but staying on topic longer to both go deeper and help retention. Unfortunately, they are not asking those in the trenches what should be done. People who know nothing about k-12 education are making these decisions.
It's the introduction of abstract vs the concrete math they've had for the previous 5 years.
They don't fully understand the 4 quadrants of graphing.
It's right up there with 5+x = 7. Solve for x.
They are lost when they see that x, yet they've been doing 5 + "what" = 7 with no problem.
There's a lot of abstract being taught in 6th grade now that got moved down from 7th and 8th.
Yup. I'm seeing 8th graders in geometry who simply cannot visualize a polyhedron to save their souls. They just don't have the ability. They really struggle and their parents scream because these are supposed to be the G&T kids so there MUST be something wrong with me that they aren't getting it. There is absolutely no sense in teaching kids anything before they are ready.
My dd's went to a school that used Singapore math so they saw 5 + ____ = 7 and then learned a visual form of algebra LONG BEFORE that x got put into the equation. Younger kids can understand algebra if you leave the variables out. One issue is they learn to graph equations with variables so they think X and Y can be any number. They're stumped when they see 5 + x = 7 because they think they should be able to put in any number for x and plot a graph. Can we just replace x with a box? or a blank? And save the X's and Y's for equations of graphs? I see where they get confused.
I remember algebra tiles. Those things confused the daylights out of me because they had both depth and width. My mind could not handle the concept of multiplying two rectangles to get another rectangle and I shouldn't have had to. Later I figured out you had to treat them like one dimensional objects so you got a two dimensional object as the answer but I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how two rectangles multiply to give you another rectangle. I wonder if the person who made these things even understood how kids think. I use crayons of different length with the wrappers off and have my students line them up along the top and side and then drag them down and across the page and look for the overlapping areas. They have a much easier time seeing the crayons as lines than the rectangular algebra tiles.
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Did that happen ? Why are we ignoring that and still tracking AYP ? Every single school in the US failed but we don't mention that do we ?
Trust me we are teaching less and less actual new material because the we have to review anything they need from previous years. The ability to look things up on their phone has trained them to think they do not need to retain anything because they can look it up. The problem with this is they don't know what to look up because they don't know what they actually need.
Yup. I'm seeing 8th graders in geometry who simply cannot visualize a polyhedron to save their souls. They just don't have the ability. They really struggle and their parents scream because these are supposed to be the G&T kids so there MUST be something wrong with me that they aren't getting it. 
