is our children learning? Louis CK hates "common core" math BS

[Darren Dirt]

http://twitchy.com/2014/05/01/awesome-comedian-louis-c-k-hits-back-at-newsweeks-sneering-common-core-pusher/


If you saw the examples that Louis responded to -- for his THIRD GRADE kid -- it's ... eye-opening stuff.

http://jezebel.com/louis-c-k-thinks-his-kids-homework-is-total-bull@%&#-1569142800

And apparently those "in the know" say this "NEW new math" is really all focused on getting the "know enough to get good marks on the standardized tests" type of learning imposed on very young kids, not the "knowing how to actually figure out these type of problems on your own throughout your life" type of learning. :sigh:



http://www.vox.com/2014/4/20/5625086/the-common-core-makes-simple-math-more-complicated-heres-why
In theory, SOME kids will end up having an "a-ha" moment by taking a different approach to simple math problems and thus start recognizing recurring patterns in situations where they can break down complexities into bite-sized pieces. But in practice I suspect that MOST kids are going to waste a lot more time solving simple problems and get frustrated and hate math even more than a lot of them already do (nobody likes being made to feel stupid, and even more so nobody likes being FORCED to do something a certain way that makes them feel stupid).



BEST thing about this public discussion?


and thus Best Celeb Twitter Avatar Ever! (better when you know the above reasons behind it!)


(Louis is authentically posing as a Normal Person in front of things Normal People Might Actually Read ... in vivid contrast to artificial CC Pusher -- how many of those book have you actually read Mr. Newsweek?)

[Thorin]

Alright, so I'm actually looking at the stuff he's complaining about.

Exhibit 1 (from https://twitter.com/louisck/status/460895556647526400/photo/1):

Yeah, sideways.  The whole point of that question is for the kid to figure out that they need to find a common denominator (6) to solve the problem.  And instead of spoonfeeding the answer (find the common denominator), the kid is asked to actually engage their thinking muscle a little.

Exhibit 2 (from https://twitter.com/louisck/status/460896591583670272/photo/1):

Hmm, another problem where you have to find  common denominator.  Sounds to me like his kid was recently learning about common denominators in school, maybe the kid should apply what the teacher has been talking about all week to the problems the kid has to do for homework.

Exhibit 3 (from https://twitter.com/louisck/status/460898234266054656/photo/1):

Part A #4 is what he is complaining about.  It looks horrendous, until you realize that there's a typo and the second half of that line (starts with "5.") is a separate question that should've been on a new line.  Then it becomes a simple fill-in-the-blanks question: 7 x ( __ x __ ) = 21 x 7.  This is clearly asking for the student to simplify: remove the "7 x" from each side of the equation, and it becomes __ x __ = 21.

The whole point of these three questions is to get the kid to engage their critical thinking skills when trying to find a solution, rather than just regurgitating some numbers.  I happen to think it's very important to know your basic times tables, and also to be able to reason through a problem using critical thinking.

[Darren Dirt]

"The whole point..." yeah we can speculate that as mature adults who do a LOT of problem-solving and critical thinking and situation analysis in our jorbs.

But a lot of the TEACHERS are criticizing along the same lines as Louis CK (and others) in that the type of problems in tests like this = not put there by the teachers but by folks from a few levels above, without even considering whether or not the concepts being tested are being taught by the teachers. Kids are being told to provide proof of answers when the way those proves are to be worded and provided = not consistent with what they know and have experienced beforehand. (Something along those lines, from what I heard anyway.)

A lot of the complaints I have read about seem to be focused on the "show your work / prove your answer" new requirements, when the reality is sometimes people just don't think a certain way, and in fact can solve a simple problem SIMPLY without having to (or wanting to) do the extra "trick" steps to get to the answer... so this type of requirements amounts to just a different "kind" of memorization (which the CC is allegedly trying to reduce).



Cliffs: while I would LOVE to believe that changes are all about improving kids' critical thinking skills and giving them experience in reasoning things out when faced with ambiguous or open-ended situations (i.e. LIFE) it is looking to be like many other government-imposed "standards" which can be marketed as trying to achieve result "A" when the practical reality (and perhaps the real intention) is result "B" (in this case, "B" = higher test scores so school districts keep their funding, etc.)

But then I am skeptical that a political machine like the USA would be so two-faced as to be trying to improve adults-to-be recognize stuff for what is in, and yet that same political machine is all about stirring up emotions and shouting down those who object and scrutinize the irrational claims of the politicians etc. Why empower the minds of your young people if the result will be minds of adults that don't put up with your bull@%&# anymore? #seemsSelfContradictory

[Thorin]

The "show your work / prove your answer" movement has come about because everyone and their dog simply types the question into their phone and receives the answer.  In other words, if there is no requirement for showing work, then no critical thinking happens and the student learns nothing.

If the real intention is to improve test scores to keep funding, why wouldn't you just dumb down the tests?  Unless the tests are administered across a large area, say, state-wide, and are, say, standardized?  At which point, why shouldn't the teachers be expected to teach what is necessary to pass those tests?

Seriously, imagine a world where teachers don't have to teach you enough to pass your provincial diploma exam (because it's too difficult to learn that stuff WAAH) but you can still demand that the school give you a passing grade so you can receive your provincial diploma?

By the way, I had these same types of questions in elementary.  I was good at answering them and I was bad at writing.  Guess which classes I liked and hated?  Yup, liked math and hated language arts.  For kids who are good at writing but bad at these problems, it's the opposite.  And yet, I was expected to work hard at getting better so that I could get a passing grade in language arts, rather than having my parents whine and bitch about how language arts was "too difficult for Johnny".

Oh, and these questions that Louis CK is whining about aren't test questions, they're homework questions.  I'm sure the teacher is the one who chose to assign those questions for homework, and I'm sure they decided to do so because it covered the material they've been teaching this week.  Unfortunately too many kids don't bother to pay attention anymore and too many parents blame the teacher instead of the child and themselves.  But hey, it's always someone else's fault that little Johnny isn't even trying, right?  (true medical conditions exempted)

[Tom]

All of my math teachers (afaicr) have always made us show our work. It was a pain in the ass when I could do it a shorter way, but they made us do it the full/taught way.

[Darren Dirt]

All of my math teachers (afaicr) have always made us show our work. It was a pain in the ass when I could do it a shorter way, but they made us do it the full/taught way.

Some of the work to "show" for these current US kids = "tricks" that aren't the "proper" way that we were taught. How do you figure out "365-111"? You usually subtract the hundreds then the tens then the ones, but apparently the "new" way uses some "shortcuts/tricks" that in a lot of cases are actually more complex and more time consuming and certainly aren't very applicable to more complex situations (one of the claimed reasons for this kind of stuff). Drawing some visualizations of this new way also seems to be something required in this new way.


Anyway, not sure why but now I feel like this thread isn't actually about what the issue actually happens to be, but instead is just each of our respective impressions of it (since none of us are American teachers or parents) so I'll just leave it for now unless more stuff comes from Louis CK or the Newsweek guy (which is what pushed me into the "gotta share it to get your guys' thoughts" zone).

[Mr. Analog]

The purpose here is to increase critical thinking, this has been done before by the American school system when they found themselves lagging behind the rest of the world, the late 50s in fact when they realized there was a significant gap between home grown astrophysicists and German imports, right around when this thing happened:



"New Math" began that focused more on problem solving than learning by rote, ten years later you had a generation that were good at critical thinking, problem solving, walking on the moon, building home computers out of wooden boxes, etc.

In Canada we were a bit ahead of the US curve and if you enjoyed grade school mathematics in the 80s you have been exposed to a variety of systems for problem solving some of which worked for you, some of which were harder but you learnt one key thing: there are many ways to solve problems AND you had to think about the problem before you start throwing canned equations at them. This is something most American students have been lacking, and so they need to be instructed to use specific formulas to solve specific problems rather than come to the conclusion on their own. There are a variety of reasons that math in particular has been beaten down into an almost rote-like state again in the USA but the result was feeding students structures and keywords and told them that these things go together but never actually test whether the student understands why or even how. You will find plenty of people from the US who can't even do basic math or even know what to look up (seriously I see some math questions on stack exchange from time to time that make me wonder). This isn't to say that all people from the US have poor critical thinking skills but when you consider that the majority of their testing centres around multiple choice questions that repeat the same structures and problems and reward choosing the right answer without knowing how you got there... well I'm not sure how you can argue that dummin' it down is a good thing (well, maybe if your full time job is as a comedian of questionable quality)

In the real world you don't sit down and solve spoon fed problems, you actually have to assess the problem and use the basic tools you've already learnt to solve it, and to be honest I'm not surprised in the least that the current generation of parents don't understand this because they never actually learnt critical thinking skills or applied mathematics at any level of education.

I'd much rather little Timmy fail mathematics because he doesn't know how to apply what he's learnt than scrape by through a barrage of scantron questions by pure luck.

[Mr. Analog]

I should also say that a couple of us work with the education industry at the assessment level and may have a fuller view of the philosophy of test taking

(word of the day: Psychometrics)

[Darren Dirt]

The purpose here is to increase critical thinking

"New Math" began that focused more on problem solving than learning by rote, ten years later you had a generation that were good at critical thinking, problem solving, walking on the moon, building home computers out of wooden boxes, etc.

Good idea, for sure. But wth has happened in the time that has now passed? #seriouslyWondering #dumbing*DownIsDumb

In the real world you don't sit down and solve spoon fed problems, you actually have to assess the problem

*

[Mr. Analog]

I work with ass-essments all day ha ha

[Thorin]

The purpose here is to increase critical thinking, this has been done before by the American school system when they found themselves lagging behind the rest of the world, the late 50s in fact when they realized there was a significant gap between home grown astrophysicists and German imports, right around when this thing happened:

So because the Braves beat the Yanks, kids had to get better at math?



Just kidding, I know what you were pointing out.

One thing that appears to be missing from today's math curriculum is rote memorization of simple tables.  This is probably because calculators and devices that can calculate (like phones) are ubiquitous now.  However, I've found that because I know that 12 x 11 = 132 intimately I'm able to focus on trying to find the solution to the problem rather than focusing on what 12 x 11 is.

Some of the work to "show" for these current US kids = "tricks" that aren't the "proper" way that we were taught. How do you figure out "365-111"? You usually subtract the hundreds then the tens then the ones, but apparently the "new" way uses some "shortcuts/tricks" that in a lot of cases are actually more complex and more time consuming and certainly aren't very applicable to more complex situations (one of the claimed reasons for this kind of stuff). Drawing some visualizations of this new way also seems to be something required in this new way.

Anyway, not sure why but now I feel like this thread isn't actually about what the issue actually happens to be, but instead is just each of our respective impressions of it (since none of us are American teachers or parents) so I'll just leave it for now unless more stuff comes from Louis CK or the Newsweek guy (which is what pushed me into the "gotta share it to get your guys' thoughts" zone).

Okay, rather than just spout some hyperbole, can you give some actual examples?  Your original post essentially said to look at the Louis C.K. examples, so I did, and I didn't see any problems with them (other than that one typo).

It would be helpful for further discourse, too, if you said what the issue actually is, since you're saying we're not talking about the actual issue anymore.  I mean, reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading the original post along with its title and your second post, all I see is you complaining that the new way math is tested in American schools by their government is making math hard for kids, forcing them to learn critical thinking skills rather than just memorizing some numbers and guessing their way through their tests.

[Tom]

I was never able to learn the full multiplication table. or all of the handwriting letters... I still managed, but i did take longer. Often I had to write out the column I needed like do the table by hand. I got rather good at doing the math in my head for certain columns and numbers though.


If you ever wondered why I take so long to do math in D&D, that is why. I have to manually do the math, and i have to concentrate, and concentrating is /very/ hard for me in the best case, let alone a fun night out with the guys who are telling me to HURRY THE HELL UP!

[Darren Dirt]

Clarification: much of my nonsensical ramblings were based on very quick skims of the COMMENTS in various internet articles that covered the "first part" of this issue, i.e. before Mr. Newsweek responded to Mr. CK.


But I ain't able nor interested in sifting through web history so let's just write off all my spewage as ... well, nonsensical ramblings.

Of a grumpy old man.


Young folks, let me tell ya, back in my day...

( actually on that note: i strongly suspect the following is me -- and some of YOU -- in another 20 years: http://www.pokerheadrush.com/2013/12/09/whiskey-tango-foxtrot/ )

[Mr. Analog]

I'm always grumpy so that helps

But I've seen this conversation come up a number of times since the Louis CK bit and I've seen a wide range of opinions on it, again, there's no inflection sometimes in posts so it can sound angrier than meant. One of the most interesting comments I read was from a REAL old timer who remembered parents going through the same thing in the 60s with the "New Math", he drew a lot of parallels with the reactions of today which I found fascinating.

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-bravest-or-riskiest-high-school-graduation-speech-by-a-student-What-made-it-so/answer/Hannah-L-Cho

^ or maybe just screw the very idea of structured, one-size-fits-most, Formal Education...