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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/


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  • (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.