Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the death-by-litigation dept.

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/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:59AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:59AM (#878103)

    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.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:36AM (7 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:36AM (#878113) Journal
    "Rote memorization is not a bad thing."

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @05:03AM (#878118)

      "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

        by Arik (4543) on Saturday August 10 2019, @06:25AM (#878134) Journal
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0Gwe5gKgjo
        --
        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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @07:21AM (#878139)

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:19PM (#878247)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:20PM (#878442)

          You'd be surprised how many educators are opposed to memorization strategies.

          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.

          I regularly get people arguing when I point out how much of math is memorization and pattern matching.

          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.

          Yes, there's other pieces there, but unless you're doing something truly novel or that has excessively weird terms in it,

          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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:38PM (#878199)

      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

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:11PM (#878269) Journal

        All learning is memorization.

        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.