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A parent whose child goes to a high school in the Wake County Public School System has been sued after criticizing the math curriculum used in the district.
Utah-based "Mathematics Vision Project" or "MVP," filed a lawsuit against Blain Dillard, whose son attends Green Hope High in Cary.
Dillard has been vocal about his opposition to the MVP curriculum, which is student-driven and focuses on group work, posting on his website, blog and social media.
The lawsuit obtained by ABC11 said, "In or around March 2019, Dillard commenced a crusade against MVP, claiming that MVP is ineffective and has harmed many students."
It alleges that some of Dillard's statements were false and defamatory and harmed the company financially.
https://abc11.com/education/wake-schools-parent-sued-after-criticizing-math-curriculum/5430840/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:49AM (8 children)
11
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:48AM
1 + 1 = 10
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Saturday August 10 2019, @05:24AM (6 children)
8÷2(2+2) = whatever you want it to be, as long as you feel good about it afterwards (MVP).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:28AM
There will BE no SNOW math on this site! NEVER! And not at all. Fucking does not amount to a proof of a theorem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:12PM (4 children)
It's somewhat discouraging to me how many people don't know the order of operations. The answer to that is definitely going to be 16. As the parentheses come first, then multiplication and division are left to right.
The notation on it is really weird though because if it was intended to be (8/(2(s+2)) it wouldn't be notated as given originally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:07PM (1 child)
√-1=?
(Score: 4, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday August 10 2019, @11:19PM
...I can't imagine.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:12AM (1 child)
Yeah, it was presented as "a test for X-th graders", can't remember that X but whatever level that is in the US, presumably to check whether they knew how to apply BODMAS. It's not that X-th graders are expected to be rocket scientists, it was to evaluate whether there were absorbing what they were being taught.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @02:45AM
Shout out to the Reverse Polish Notation Master Race! Infix can burn in its ambiguous Hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:29AM (1 child)
What a great idea! No way for this to backfire, no indeed. Calculate that biatches.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @05:04AM
Looks like they thought someone deserved a good SLAPP.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:30AM (60 children)
MVP is just another example of the SJW nonsense that explains why China is eating our lunch economically. In China, children are told that 2+2=4 and then go on to study calculus. In MVP America, children spend the session discussing what wonderful things 2 and 2 might create if they join together and then go on to major in gender studies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:50AM (28 children)
Aww, you skeered of the Chinese?
And you fabricated a connection between MVP and SJWs, too. What are those mean SJWs stopping you from doing? Bringing back segregated schools?
And you threw in a bash against LBGTQ, because, you know, that is so intimately not connected to math. You angling for an appointment in Trump's administration?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:16AM (5 children)
It's just a Russian trying to stir up a pissing contest between the SJW and the normal people.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:27AM (4 children)
"... and the normal people"". Thanks for that, comrade.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:05AM (1 child)
Tom Lehrer "New Math"
Well, anyway, wish there were some way to keep "educational supplies" companies from ripping off students with way over priced math textbooks, scantrons, and testing "services".
As well as holding all companies issuing "reports" on anyone fully culpable for defamation of character if their report is not true.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:31AM
He did say "SJW", which suggests a certain deficiency in logical thinking and scientific rigour. I say we schedule the pleb for recycling in the bio-pits. Best use, and all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @05:07AM (1 child)
Thank you for not using gendered language, comrade. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:12PM
Can we get a "scary" mod?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:54AM (18 children)
I can't say I know anything about the details of MVP but I do know about mathematics, and I do know about teaching, and I have seen teaching methods that abstract away from the core mathematics so much that no mathematics is taught at all, because it is too focussed on the feelings of the students, rather than the subject matter. If MVP's like that, then the association with the abstract concept of "SJW"s, and that's all it was, is valid, as there is an overlap. Apparently he should have included a trigger warning (another SJW concept that is pure bullshit (in that it achieves exactly the opposite of what it claims to)), as it's certainly got you in a (self-percieved, but believe me, nobody else views it that way) righteous rant.
You may now call me a nazi, I know you've been dying to do that to someone.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sulla on Saturday August 10 2019, @09:08AM (13 children)
There have been some pretty fun examples of parents taking pictures of their kids homework. Couple example scenarios, close but not the exact same thing as it's late and I'm drunk.
Jack ate more pizza than Jill. Jack ate 1/3 of his pizza and Jill ate 3/4 of hers. How is this possible?
The kid answers "Jack's pizza was bigger" and gets a "Wrong, 3/4 is bigger than 1/3"
Does 8+4=10?
Kid answer "no it's 12" and gets marked "wrong, 8+2 is 10, then +2 is 12"
Real wtf shit
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 10 2019, @09:56AM (10 children)
I'd really want to see the originals. I strongly suspect that your examples are not really close to the real ones (or rather, about as close as "8+4=10" is to "8+4=12" — close if you only look at the expression, far away if you look at the meaning).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:19PM (9 children)
I tried a weak ass search for that, didn't find it, but found this which is similar: http://www.tnparents.com/our-voicesblog/major-problems-with-common-core [tnparents.com]
Weird.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:16PM (1 child)
Those aren't the result of common core curriculum standards, they're the result of incompetent people being allowed to produce materials.
The answer would be 10+4=14, but this is a really bad example to use and the article is right in indicating that developmentally the kids aren't ready for that. This is something that you would do if you're dealing with larger numbers and wanting to add or multiply them quickly in your head.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:13PM
I'm not an expert in primary education, but I disagree that this is necessarily developmentally inappropriate. I agree it's a poorly written question, though context could matter. Grouping into 10s, to my knowledge, is commonly taught around 1st grade age as a prelude to concepts that will be necessary to learn addition and "carrying" as well as some subtraction algorithms (where you need to regroup into 10s when you need to "borrow" from the next higher digit), stuff that commonly comes up in 2nd or 3rd grade. Kids who are educated well in preschool math often encounter grouping concepts of 10s and 100s even that early, and any kindergarten of 1st grade teacher who isn't at least hinting at the concept of the importance of grouping into 10s is not helping kids with basic concepts they will need.
I'm not defending the Common Core entirely (which does have some weirdness), nor am I defending a teacher who would mark this problem "wrong" for the wrong reasoning (e.g., you choose D because it's the one with the correct final sum). But I've found a lot of people who object to Common Core exercises don't realize that some exercises are setting up an important pedagogical point to create the steps that will make later learning easier because kids have practice with an underlying concept. Maybe kids don't NEED the underlying concept to solve that particular problem, but they might benefit from it in another circumstance, as here.
Well, that and other complaints about Common Core come from incompetent teachers or poorly written materials who miss the point. A teacher who marks a child wrong in this problem because the child has simply memorized an addition fact is missing the point of math education (and many primary school teachers are afraid of math and don't understand it). You want kids to get the right answer to a question. If you want to assess whether a child understands grouping into 10s, you could write a better question to assess that.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:45PM
I would like to get a common core textbook so I can see for myself what all the hullabaloo is about, but from prior history with New Math I would be very reserved in accommodating parents' positions. They are not teachers, their training may have been suboptimal and they are driven by religious zeal in combination with virtue signaling when you put them together with other parents.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:32PM (5 children)
I explained the context a bit more in another posted reply, but you have to think about the reasoning of basic elementary arithmetic algorithms to understand why this problem is structured the way it is. (Again, as I said in my other post, I'm NOT defending a teacher who would mark this "wrong" for memorizing the addition fact. If they explicitly want to test grouping, they could have written a better question.)
If you've spent a little bit of time around preschool and primary math classrooms, you'll notice that grouping by 10s is a really important early concept. It's not uncommon when doing a problem like 8+6 with literal physical objects to teach kids to separate 2 off of the pile of 6, group together the 8 and 2 to make a "10" and then place the 4 in a separate group. This is how you explain place value to young children.
The problem you linked to is trying to test that concept. It's not testing it in a very clear way, but that's what it's trying to do. It's a common exercise kids have been doing probably ever since base 10 was invented, but the way it is presented and discussed here, it sounds like a really abstract idea. It is not, if you expect kids to understand place value.
Once you see how that grouping works, you can move on to a problem like 28+36. Kids at that point will need to know that the last digits will add to 14, but they can separate off that 10 (which they learned to group together before) in order to "carry" it to the next digit. If they don't understand it's a "10" rather than a "tick mark" they magically add to the next digit, they don't actually understand what they are doing and could make errors. Furthermore, this type of grouping teaches patterns that will later become useful for faster math computation, like recognizing that in 28+36, you could take 2 away from the 36 and turn the problem into 30+34. That may seem "advanced" or even "developmentally inappropriate" until you realize that preschool kids and kindergarten kids are frequently shown groups of objects and asked to put them into 10s. The can extend that knowledge of physical objects to start working with written numbers.
Again, I don't necessarily agree with the Common Core approaches entirely, and this question is clearly written (and especially graded) poorly. But this type of thing is trying to build off of basic intuition of 10s groupings that little kids should be taught for all sorts of reasons.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Saturday August 10 2019, @06:11PM (4 children)
My problem is not with grouping, as I use that method to teach my four year olds multiples and to break down numbers easier. My primary problem is the teacher marking it wrong for not writing It correctly.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:20PM (3 children)
Yep. And as I said, I agree with that criticism. But that isn't a problem with the Common Core curriculum necessarily -- it's a problem with bad teachers who don't understand math and don't understand the reasons why we do certain things the way we do them.
My experience in reviewing Common Core math materials is that many of them are trying to create more possible strategies for students to do problems effectively. Instead, what you sometimes see are teachers trying to force all students to use a SPECIFIC strategy even if that one makes less sense to that student in that particular problem. (Or, they force a particular approach when the question is ambiguous or poorly written as is true in this case.) That's completely antithetical to good math education, which should teach a pluralistic approach to problem-solving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:15AM (2 children)
As an actual pedagogy professional, I'd like to point out a few things related to your points. 1. Most complaints people have of the "Common Core" are not actually problems with the Common Core or its Standards, but actually with the adopted curriculum. 2. Most people would not recognize the Standards if they even saw them. 3. There is no "Common Core Curriculum" as every person can (and should) implement their own while still following said Standards. 4. Bad materials existed before, and will exist after, the creation of the Common Core. 5. There have been at least two decades of research in learning since most people have been the grades in question, and just because you learned something a particular way, does not make it the best way. 6. Children and adults learn differently; a 6-year-old child is not capable of abstract reason from first principles nor from exemplars, they need to use a process called "gradual release" for new concepts from concrete examples. 7. You may disagree with the methods, but children are learning most math concepts concepts at least 1 grade level earlier than they did 30 years ago; for example, you have kindergartners subtracting and 3rd graders multi-digit multiplying. 8. The reason for that is because other fundamental concepts are introduced as they come into play in an age-appropriate fashion, such as: grouping, base theory, identity functions, inverse functions, even set theory, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, and number dimensionality. 9. Just because you've internalized an idea to the point it is second nature or ignore it because the calculator does it for you, doesn't mean it isn't important to know or practice when you are learning.
Ultimately, it is the concepts that are important. For example, too many people my age cannot do division because they were "drilled and killed" with math facts or used rote memorization or assisted calculation of answers instead of integration of concepts. Everyone learns differently, everybody takes a unique approach to things. What stays the same is the concepts. If you master those, you can do anything; if you don't you cannot handle new situations. Now that I think of it, many of the complaints with "Common Core" are a failure of the parents. If they really did learn what they claim, they could adapt to the new material and that they can't shows they didn't, but rather their own particular method. So yes, sometimes (many times, TBH, for some of the older, untested CC curricula) the curriculum in question is bad. However, sometimes (many times, TBH) the problem is the parent's own inflexibility in applying the underlying concepts in a new manner.
Boy, that sort of turned into a rant, but that is because teaching is probably the most criticized profession because everyone thinks it is so easy. Yes, knowing the material, being prepared to teach a concept, teaching in an appropriate manner for your student, being flexible to necessary changes, keeping your classroom safe and under control, maintaining a growth mindset in your student, having and implementing appropriate expectations, making sure your students are properly socializing, keeping your students in an engaging environment, maintaining necessary real life connections, keeping yourself sane, dealing with material availability and budgets, dealing with less-than-ideal (if not outright sabotaging) home situations, dealing with parental expectations, and keeping up with the latest pedagogical research are all simple on their own. But try doing it in a classroom of 30+ students where all the situations feed off of each other in an escalating fashion while working 10 hour days with only one thirty minute break, plus some extra time on the weekends, and only making enough money to be eligible for public assistance with a 3-month hole where most kids not only stop learning but actively forget what they just spent the last 9 learning.
(Score: 1) by metallurge on Monday August 12 2019, @02:47AM (1 child)
Mathematics has been being successfully taught for a very very long time now. Like thousands of years, no joke. My public-school mathematics textbooks from my schooling in the late '70s and early '80s were at best printed in two colors, were ancient, had been rebound at least once, and were perfectly suitable for the task in the hands of the excellent teachers I had. I was taught well enough to a) skip first semester calculus at Carnegie Mellon on the basis of demonstrated proficiency and b) twenty years later teach high school algebra and precalculus from memory using what I myself learned back in the day, with no refresher.
More generally, we (our society) built suitable-for-purpose propeller and jet aircraft, reasonably efficient internal combustion engines and cars and dams and the entire industrialized world with slide rules and log tables and competent mathematical education. We put men on the moon with freaking slide rules and log tables and competent mathematical education. We built atomic bombs and atomic reactors with slide rules and log tables and competent mathematical education. I'm sorry, but "two decades of recent research" has a very very very high hurdle of actual practical experience to overcome. People in their essence haven't changed in the last two decades. The subject matter at the grade levels in play hasn't changed in the last two decades (except for statistics, which are taught earlier [I very much approve] but are still not taught well). The bar for new mathematics curriculum is very high, or ought to be. I'll take the curriculum and teaching methods I had over most anything I have seen in the last twenty years (RIP John Saxon). I have taught and tutored some of the casualties of today's curriculum and methods. It's, to me, shocking. We, as a society, are going to be paying a price for our math-ed hubris for many years to come. And the freaking curriculum companies will keep on making their millions.
As a disclaimer, I know that I am not typical. That said, I had no leg up in my mathematical education besides innate ability. My parents were language teachers but neither of them were particularly mathematically fluent. One of them, to the day they died, could not grasp negative numbers. I grew up in a rural midwestern school district, and went to an ordinary midwestern public school system that was big enough but not too big.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @09:46PM
I wrote a long post that was eaten by the snapshot restore. Suffice to say, it was basically explaining that I didn't mean to insinuate all the new methods are the best either. Sometimes the old works, sometimes the new works, what matters is what the research shows. The two biggest biases in education are the survivorship bias and confirmation bias. But, there are plenty of RCT, longitudinal, and pre-registered studies about what works best in the aggregate, as well as the same on proper differentiation and interventions. Basically, don't throw out the old if it isn't broken, but also remember that sometimes the old is broken.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:44PM
One lesson taught in school is: school teachers are underpaid, underappreciated, and not always our best and brightest, though they do have a limited authority over their students which must be respected - even when they are just wrong, wrong, WRONG!
More important than learning that 8+4=12 and why, is learning how to deal with people who insist that 8+2 is 10 +2 is 12 - even though that's completely outside anything anybody else has ever told you. Work with them while you must, and recognize that batshit crazy old Irene the math fixture in 4th grade is just that - when you're not dealing with Irene anymore you can forget whatever she said and get back with the real world, but you will meet other Irenes in your life, I guarantee it, and knowing how to handle them gracefully will serve you well.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Aighearach on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:03AM
Uhm... it seems obvious, but the child is expected to understand that the problem is a math problem and use the numbers.
Substituting the names of the people in the word problem isn't the same as talking about the numbers.
You're failing to notice the existence of the exact mental task that the children are being taught.
It isn't an algebra problem, and "Jack's pizza" was a given description, not a variable name.
These are just examples of why having ignorant parents reduces a student's test scores.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:37PM (3 children)
The man isn't being sued for criticizing, the man is being sued for libel and slander - alleged falsehoods told about the company and its products which have caused them financial harm. Company lawyers would never sue for criticism.
The defense is characterizing the defendants actions as protected speech, criticism, and appealing to the persistent popular outrage against "new math", which is all neither here nor there in the decision of libel or slander.
Were falsehoods spread? Did the falsehoods, not any valid and true criticisms, result in financial damages?
Pop some corn and see how it all shakes out, and wave at all the outraged people venting their pent up frustration with complimentary subtraction by adding 9 on their kids' homework.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday August 10 2019, @06:33PM (2 children)
If the math is being used by a public school, as I assume, then they have a really, really, really high bar to clear in showing that he was malicious.
Hopefully this shitty company is driven bankrupt.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:42AM (1 child)
You don't have to show malice in most states for defamation against a private entity like this and I doubt selling curriculum to a school district would make you an LPPF. However, even if they did, N.C. has said, “A defendant acts with malice when he wantonly does that which a man of reasonable intelligence would know to be contrary to his duty and which he intends to be prejudicial or injurious to another.” Considering the whole purpose of the father's statement was to cause the school to stop using the curriculum, and thereby economically injury the publisher, I think the malice threshold is easy to reach in this case.
I think it is actually the other elements that come more into play: False statement of fact; Cause of injury to the plaintiff’s reputation; Of and concerning the plaintiff; Published to a third person. Obviously this was published to a third party and is concerning to the plaintiff. But, if the court doesn't consider this defamation per se, under the "Statements which tend to impeach a person in their trade or profession" standard, then there is question as to whether his actions (and not their reaction) that caused the damage to their reputation. In addition, they'd have to get that first element. Now, I've not seen their complaint, but most of what I could think of a parent saying would obviously be true ("they work in groups") or a lay opinion understood as a lay opinion ("based on what I've seen, I don't think my kid isn't learning").
(Score: 1) by metallurge on Monday August 12 2019, @03:01AM
With that definition of economic injury, any criticism is silenced. That cannot be the standard.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:11PM (2 children)
Interestingly, one of the papers inspiring MVP is entitled: "Mathematics Education Through the Lens of Social Justice: Acknowledgment, Actions, and Accountability" https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.todos-math.org%2Fassets%2Fdocs2016%2F2016Enews%2F3.pospaper16_wtodos_8pp.pdf&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHUpT3p47iYJOItnh15kJkp9azDMg [google.com]
Some excerpts (note the term "equity" frequently appears (think Harrison Bergeron and equity of outcome, rather than equality)) from a paper on why advanced math course should be eliminated:
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:46PM
Well, seems that MVP is conscious of Social Justice. Is it that they're paying lip service? The impression I have is that this big company is part of the for-profit education industry, and they are most unjustly trying one of that industry's usual tactics to silence criticism. Charter schools and their allies have earned a bad reputation.
You sure found an example of messed up math education, in which just doing addition (of 8+6) was the "wrong" approach. Pearson, huh? Yet another for-profit educational publisher that must be feeling desperate in the face of Open textbooks.
The article does not give anything specific about the math. Without that, can't judge the validity of the parent's complaints. Regardless of all else, the lawsuit alone strikes me as a very bad idea. Seeing that MVP was stupid enough to try that, strongly suggests their math education program likely has a similar lack of intelligence. Suing is a desperation move. Their whole business model might be nothing more than scamming schools out of money, in exchange for suspect math curriculum material that at best relies upon long debunked education methods. New Math comes to mind.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:43PM
any parent who send their kids to public "schools", and can afford not to, is a fucking idiot.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:51AM (28 children)
In China, reliance on rote memorization is even worse than it is here, and it's already bad in the US. Seriously, our 'education' system is a disaster, and you want to make it even worse? MVP isn't a solution, but neither is raising another generation of Jeopardy! geniuses who can only memorize facts and never truly understand how or why anything works.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:59AM (8 children)
Rote memorization is not a bad thing. It trains you to remember things so that you can go on to do logic and produce informed opinions on the subject. Also, it gives you a base of knowledge on which to build and grow.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:36AM (7 children)
Not in and of itself, no. But over-reliance on memorization is a bad thing.
One student can tell you the year, month, day, even hour a given event occurred. What were the main reasons this event occurred? What were the main consequences? You get a blank look, or a clearly in appropriate answer.
The other one can only put it in the right year, or decade at least; but can give you a credible answer to the follow up questions.
Which one is better prepared?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @05:03AM (1 child)
"The *other* sort of Marxist."
Nazi, socialist, fascist or communist? Perhaps you can enlighten us on the history of all four and how they have failed over and over? I can.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Saturday August 10 2019, @06:25AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:21AM (2 children)
Exactly. You won't get revolutionary breakthroughs or even just creative solutions to more ordinary problems through rote memorization alone; you need to hone your critical thinking abilities for that. No one is opposed to memorizing information, because if you never memorized anything for even a short duration of time, you wouldn't have anything to work with. The problem is when rote memorization comes at the expense of teaching the hows and whys, which it so often does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:19PM (1 child)
You'd be surprised how many educators are opposed to memorization strategies. I regularly get people arguing when I point out how much of math is memorization and pattern matching.
Yes, there's other pieces there, but unless you're doing something truly novel or that has excessively weird terms in it, chances are that pattern matching back to something similar you've seen will feature prominently in the process. The large the number of patterns you've got memorized, the quicker and more efficiently the process goes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:20PM
You're right; I would be surprised. Almost our entire schooling system in the US is based around rote memorization and teaching to the test, from the homework assignments to the useless standardized tests, and to the almost complete exclusion of encouraging actual critical thinking skills. So, if there is a movement of teachers who oppose all forms of memorization (and not just to the exclusion of understanding and critical thinking skills), their presence must be insignificant.
That's true. because right now we only teach people to memorize facts about math, and not to understand how and why the underlying rules work. Proofs? Just memorize them; you don't need to understand them on a deep level. This is exactly the problem.
There are big pieces there. We should be teaching people to think like mathematicians, not monkeys. We should want people to do truly novel things, or at least be capable of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:38PM (1 child)
All learning is memorization. Whether you're learning methods, theory, or simply to regurgitate data, it's all just memorization. Focusing on the methods and theories, while giving useful data /and/ teaching how to properly create, find, and validate data is obviously ideal though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:11PM
I disagree. When you have a kid, or a group of kids, to whom you have taught some fundamentals - and they go above and beyond what they've been shown, you can't attribute that to memorization. Kids solving complex problems, all on their own, is awe inspiring to watch. If you don't believe it, you should try a couple years in Scouting. When you're doing your job properly, you spend more time staying out of the way than you do teaching. You're only there to make sure they don't hurt themselves, and maybe provide an idea if they've gone wrong.
"That stream is flooded, we can't cross it like that. But, it's miles to the bridge, either upstream or downstream. What do we do now?" Given a group of ten moderately intelligent boys aged ten to fifteen, you'll probably be across the stream quicker than the same number of adults can decide that the flood is a disaster. HINT: There are multiple solutions, some safer than others. It's YOUR JOB to decide how safe is safe enough.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:28AM (18 children)
Certain things are best learned by rote, like times tables. If I am in a shop and offered a crate of beer for $9, or six crates for $50, I instantly know what I would be saving by buying the six. If I had not leaned my times tables by rote I would have had to add up six nines or get a calculator out.
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:24PM (6 children)
You don't already have your phone in your hand before you were told the prices? There should be a calculator 'app' on that phone you can quickly use.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:11PM
I know phones have calculator apps. I was refering to the need to pull out a device to do the calculation without listing every possible device that could do it; my point stands. And no, I don't hold a phone continuously in my clammy hand.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:16PM (2 children)
Why would I pull out my phone? I was taught to do mental arithmetic. I didn't forget it just because someone invented a mobile phone.
That is one of the problems today - if you can't go shopping without a phone to use as your calculator, then someone should have taught maths to you more effectively than they apparently did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:26PM (1 child)
It's becoming increasingly unnecessary, anyway, because many stores write the price-per-ounce right on the price tags.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:47PM
Yeah. If it's like the supermarket here, one comparable product will have price per hundredcount and the other one price per liter.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:20AM
:) I'm assuming the sarcasm tag...
But then I'd have to do some mental arithmetic to do an order of magnitude check on the calculator, and for such a simple problem why not just skip to a full calculation - in which case why bother with the phone in the first place?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Sunday August 11 2019, @03:02AM
Even if you're going to use a calculator, it's still a good to have a feel for what the answer should be. I've seen too many people who will do something like fat-finger the X button, and come up with something like 9 X 6 = 15, and have no idea they make a mistake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:41PM (5 children)
I never learned times tables, and I can do the same thing. All that time you spent memorizing could have been spent doing math (and in the process you would have encountered variations on 50/9 often enough to memorize it anyway).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:59PM
*50/6
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:17PM (2 children)
So how would you do it other than doing 9+9+9+9+9+9 in your head or on fingers which would be much slower than my 6x9 ? I'm interested. Even doing 9+9 = 18 is something I know by rote rater than incrementing from 9 by 9 units, one at a time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:17PM
6 shl 1 = 60 sub 6 = 54.
Two basic operations, one very fast, one possibly slower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @11:03PM
For some reason I don't understand, the 7, 8, or 9 being multiplied by one of the other (but not by itself) has always been difficult for me to feel confident I've memorized. I mean, I know we're talking about 56, 63, and 72, but invariably, I question if it is correct, and then visualize a number line to confirm it. So if it is 8*9 (or vice versa), I go up to 80, then drop back an 8 length block, and then I think, yep, 72. For 7*8 (or vice versa), I'll go to the easy 8*8=64, then drop back an 8 length block. And 9*7 is just a variation of 8*9, but I drop back a 7 length block from 70.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:23PM
The time it takes to memorize that 10x10 times tables is not that much. There are a total of 100 squares in that and if you take advantage of the commutative property of multiplication, you wind up with something like 45 of them to actually memorize. And that includes the 1s and 10s which are more or less trivial for most people. If you do 1 per day, you'd be done in less than a month.
The 12x12 times table takes slightly longer, but again, doing even one a day, you'd be done in short order. If you do 4 a day, you'd be done within a couple weeks.
What's more, it's not like there's a better way of doing it. Multiplication is about stretching, and trying to understand how that works without first knowing how to multiply is a bit of a challenge.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:21PM
You can get analogue watches with slide rule bezels for exactly this scenario - ten times faster than an app. But, in the dark, and faced with making the decision in front of a queue, I would go with tables every time.
If you can't multiply without a phone, you WILL be ripped off. (But are probably to ignorant to notice).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:47PM (2 children)
That's a matter of perspective, and to an extent neuroscience. If you can learn to visualize your times tables, or otherwise "get a feel" for the operation rather than just rote memorizing, it is even more powerful than being able to instantly parrot up to 12x12, but have no f-ing clue how to handle 13x7 without a calculator, or ability to estimate the difference between 2x14 and 7x7.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Saturday August 10 2019, @09:25PM (1 child)
I don't understand your point. It is only necessary to rote learn tables up to 10x10 (school did up to 12x12 because so many things come in 12's like inches to a foot). You don't need a 13 times table for 13x7 because it breaks into 10x7 + 3x7. I can use the tables I memorised up to 10x10 to multiply any two numbers together, in principle up to infinity, although it gets unwieldy if the numbers are big and I would then start needing pencil and paper - at that point I will use a calculator. I remain understanding of the principles though, contrary to the anti-rote people's accusations.
As I said earlier, even simple addition is done by rote among educated people, for example I know by rote that 5+3 is 8, and 4+6 is 10, it is a reflex in me. The non-rote way would be to count on fingers or do dots on paper - as uneducated people would. The only reliable non-rote way to multiply say AxB would be to make A dots on a sheet paper B times (best arranged in a square) and then count them all up, which is how I taught my son the principle of multiplication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @08:15AM
What people are opposed to is rote memorization at the expense of everything else, like critical thinking skills and creativity. I don't think multiplication tables are a big deal, but it becomes a real problem when nearly all math is taught as nothing more than a series of facts and patterns to be memorized and then regurgitated back onto assignments and tests, where there's no underlying principles to understand and no creativity involved. Math classes are not teaching students to think like mathematicians, and that is a real problem. Same with so many other subjects.
Our schooling system is fundamentally broken. However, so many of the victims who suffer through it do not know what an actual education looks like, so they think the system is either fine or just in need of minor tweaks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:22PM
In the US, just about everything is learned by rote, which is way too extreme. We should be encouraging critical thinking skills, but the assignments and standardized tests largely do not value that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:50PM (1 child)
Apparently some of you have been learning this math for millennials. Most definitions for millennials put their birth year in the early 80s to around 2000. The most accepted dates defined by the pew research center are 1981-1996. Some quick math with that definition tells me even the youngest of them are something like 5th year seniors - in college. In fact, it is very likely that this Blain Dillard being sued is actually... a millennial. Find a new term to start using for your angst about kids these days. Now I'll get off your lawn.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:16PM
No, that's alright, you can stay. The wife says she likes that pointy headed blue gnome I put beside the mailbox. Tell you what, you stay right there, and I'll bring you a couple sixpacks every week.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:07AM
Clearly I'm outraged. It's now clear in this moment that all people are terrible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hwertz on Saturday August 10 2019, @06:41AM (11 children)
They tried this doing math problems in groups off and on when I was in grade school about 30 years ago. It's crap. We were supposed to like "collectively" come up with an answer to problems. I was quite good at math, so I would blow through the problems, try to show others in my group how I got to them, but I was no teacher so they'd either get it or not. In some cases, people got it and it probably worked as intended, people who picked it up quicker showing the rest. In many cases, people in the group just agreed on some answer with no reason why. The absolute worst was having the right answer, knowing you've got the right answer, but you're wrong anyway because the others in the group inexplicably agreed on some wrong answer, so that's your groups answer.
No comment on the actual content of whoevers curriculum, especially if they are lawsuit-happy.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:41AM
Progress!!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:38AM (5 children)
Indeed, at best in groups the brighter kids are just acting as the teacher and gain nothing themsleves, while the teacher surfs porn or something, or the group degenerates to the level of the lowest member.
Group teaching comes from the socialist idea that all people have exactly the same natural intelligence and if you rub them together they will all learn to exactly the same high level. Or, failing that, the brighter ones should be dragged down and the dimmer ones pulled up to some sort of intermediate common level. That's why socialists think that exams and their marks are unimportant, because we should all score the same anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:03PM
Teaching others can be very rewarding for the comprehension of even gifted students. Not everyone is cut out for it though, and forming groups to force smarter kids into doing the work for others is pretty stupid.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:17PM (1 child)
I got a pretty good education in a public school. I don't think you understand socialism at all.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:23PM
Your age would be an important bit of information, regarding that statement. In the 60's & 70's there were a lot of bad schools, but there were still a lot of good schools in the public education system. Only part of that equation involved cash availability. Times since have seen a lot of changes.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 10 2019, @11:01PM
Oh god, this. My college CS program (run by Chinese) was huge on groupwork. So you had your leech foreign students that get good grades for doing no work whatsoever, and many situations where a single person was literally doing all the fucking work. I can also say with certainty that younger Chinese foreign students who manage to make it here are totally fucking rotten. Horseplay, don't pay attention, etc. Probably because they know they won't get beat down here like they would in China for being little assholes.
They say that groupwork is about diversity and the exchange of ideas and learning life-lessons working with a multitude of people. Yeah, no. It's so you can collect lucrative foreign tuition and hand lazy Chinks and Arab scum accredited degrees for doing nothing at all. Shit, I remember when the lazy had to actually cheat to get better grades, now everything is handed to them at the expense of the brightest and hardest workers. And don't assume that getting into a nicer school will solve that problem, because my sister described the same thing studying for her master's degree at CMU.
Back when I was a kid, we worked in groups in school, but people were grouped according to their grades and behavior. If you were in the group of idiots, fuckups, and retards; the whole class knew it. But if you wanted to improve, there was always also a way into a better group. And teachers had latitude to really discipline students back then, so if the group of fuckups wanted to try and drag the rest of the class down with them, they would get moved out or detentions until they behaved.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:33AM
Actually group teaching comes from the idea that it's the cheapest way (in terms of resources such as classrooms and teachers, which are ulimately viewed by our bean counter overlords as money). If the group is small and all the members have similar abilities some wonderful education happens; not so much if the group is large and abilities differ greatly.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:13PM
" The absolute worst was having the right answer, knowing you've got the right answer, but you're wrong anyway because the others in the group inexplicably agreed on some wrong answer, so that's your groups answer."
That's like being the only sober person in the car and no one will let you drive.
Yeah, this working on a subject matter as a group sounds like it would work pretty well in foreign language class, but for math, not so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:26PM
Group work isn't the problem, the way in which the group work is being assigned is the issue. I remember when I was a kid, the group work was more or less like that, you'd have a group doing the same problem and then comparing answers later on. It's deeply problematic and really just served to get the teacher out of having to do any work that day.
However, when done properly, group work really helps students to see the work from different perspectives and to take ownership of it. Really, group work in math should be more like group projects where each student has a role in the process and they come together to negotiate a solution to the problem. And no, it shouldn't be every day. There are other things like think pair and share that can be used more regularly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:53PM (1 child)
Like all things, "group work" exercises succeed or fail based on how well they are guided and implemented.
I would suspect that the curriculum was more interested in teaching interpersonal communication, mentoring, peer learning, personality conflict resolution/suppression, resource referencing, division of labor, etc. than anything about math.
I tutored geometry in high school a little bit, just enough to learn how incredibly dis-interested some people can be in actually understanding the topic being taught - the ones I taught only cared about avoiding the pain of a failing grade by whatever method required the least time and effort on their part, and they actively sought solutions more difficult than understanding how to construct a proof - but they didn't seem difficult to them because those same solutions were more or less universally applicable to all subjects, so why learn something special just for this one class?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 10 2019, @11:12PM
Geometry is a fucking awesome and intuitive branch of math, at least at the undergrad levels, but goddamn did those proofs piss me the fuck off and set the stage for me really beginning to hate math.
And just when I thought I was never going to have to put up with that shit again, along came discrete math, where you must show a whole page of work just to prove that 0 * 0 = 0. And then you're magically expected to know which proving technique to use on unfamiliar problems.
I'm totally gonna sound like a bitchy spoiled brat here, but I think for the sake of keeping students interested they should hold off on all proofs until freshmen year of college when they dedicate a semester or two of it as a requirement for math majors and optional for others interested, with possibly as an AP class or in private schools before then for those who want a head-start. Some foreign (maybe also domestic) colleges have entire proof-based curriculum. Poor bastards. Learning math doesn't have to suck, but some seem determined to make it suck as much as possible. Oh well, better for them, having a higher barrier of entry makes them more valuable.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:18AM (4 children)
"criticizing the math curriculum" - that would have been a good opportunity to link to his criticisms
"filed a lawsuit" - ditto up 2
"has been vocal" - ditto up 2
"website" - ditto
"blog" - ditto
"social media" - ditto
"alleges" - ditto up 5
"Dillard's statements" - ditto up 2
If only someone had invented a way of linking remote information together - that could revolutionise my computer!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @09:21AM
I know! Should should invent something that does just that.
Quick! To the PATENT OFFICE to see if anyone has this locked out yet!
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:41PM
This article has an ebedded PDF viewer with the complaint: http://www.tnparents.com/our-voicesblog/major-problems-with-common-core [tnparents.com]
It lists a facebook page, which I can't view because I have FB in /etc/hosts.
- There's a blog: https://wakemvp.blogspot.com/2019/07/ [blogspot.com]
- wakemvp.com resolves to: https://sites.google.com/view/wakemvp/wake-mvp-home?authuser=1 [google.com]
Anyway, that should be enough to rabbit hole a couple hours.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:55PM (1 child)
This article isn't meant to inform, it's meant to inflame. Judging by the number of discussion comments, it seems to be working.
Fed the trolls again, we have. Flames they thrive upon. (In the intonation of Frank Oz's Yoda, of course.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:38PM
It's worse than you think, they're teaching the children Arabic Numerals.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Coward, Anonymous on Saturday August 10 2019, @09:34AM (2 children)
Can't say whether the curriculum at MVP [mathematicsvisionproject.org] is good or bad, but at least the materials are open-access. Too bad this has devolved into a lawsuit
The parent seems to be unhappy because his son's grades went from A/B to D/F [gofundme.com], and there is also mention of learning disabilities [google.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:02PM
Maybe not so open.
The first thing in their downloads is a student homework assignment.
It seems pretty random/useless without the teacher's material to prepare the student for the homework.
Didn't find that, but did find an offer to sell it.
Without that, and also an idea of the expected state of the kid starting the program, there's not much to judge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:50PM
Their web page reads like something from Dilbert.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday August 12 2019, @03:18PM
There is a long standing argument among math educators. The traditionalists want to focus on knowledge. Here is how you add. Here is how you multiply. Here is how you subtract. Here is how you divide. The progressives want to focus on problem solving skills. Here is how you figure things out. Here is how you work together in a group. Here is how you estimate the answer. The problem with students of the former is they tend to freeze up when faced with unfamiliar problems. The concept of banging around in the unknown is foreign to them. The problem with the latter is that some people get through without some foundational skills.
I personally feel that there are valid points on both sides of the argument, but like most pendulums it has swung too far. I have taught several mechanical skills (prime factorization, polynomial long division) to my daughter that she was having trouble discovering on her own, and last year I noticed her math teacher linking to the appropriate Khan academy materials in case they got stuck.