Common Core's Dirtiest Trick: Dividing Parents and Children

[bonnie]

Common Core's Dirtiest Trick: Dividing Parents and Children

By Bruce Deitrick Price

When you look back at New Math (ca. 1965) and Reform Math (ca. 1990), one of the most striking and persistent features was that parents could not understand the homework their children brought home.

Mystified parents were trying to advise mystified children. The parents, presumably the wise members of the society, were helpless to say anything useful when confronted by the weird complexities of “reform” math, which has now been rolled forward into Common Core.

Here is a commonplace horror story that can stand in for millions of others: “When Mike and Camille Chudzinski tried to help their son with his homework earlier this fall, they were bewildered. The fourth-grader brought home no spelling lists, few textbooks, and a whole new approach to solving math problems. When he tackled multi-digit addition, for instance, Patrick did not just line up the two numbers and then add the columns, as his parents had been taught to do. Instead, he sketched out a graph with a series of arrows and marks that appeared at first to his parents as indecipherable as hieroglyphics.”

When we hear these stories, we typically focus on the comical oddity of adults not being able to do homework intended for children. How is that even possible? But the ramifications are anything but funny. The real damage is that Reform Math opens up fractures throughout society. Parents are cut off from their children. Parents and schools are pitted against each other. Students are alienated from their teachers and schools.

Sociologist James Coleman said that the most important thing in successful education is what he called "social capital." Ideally, parents, kids, schools, and community are on the same page, working toward the same goals. In this way the children feel they are doing appropriate and necessary things. Energy is used to complete tasks, not to debate the merits of the tasks.

Imagine the situation in Reform Math when parents can’t do even elementary problems in arithmetic. Adults are angry; children are stressed. Parents have conferences with teachers, and they complain later in front of the children that the teachers couldn’t give them any satisfactory answers. Why would children be enthusiastic about mastering something that their own parents find impossible and reprehensible?

All of this tension and hostility adds up to the perfect excuse for the child to lose interest in math, and in school generally. We hear lots of stories about children who are miserable at school. We shouldn’t be surprised.

In short, Reform Math is bad not just because it doesn’t teach math; it’s bad because it’s a society-wrecker. This is Common Core’s dirtiest trick.

In an intelligently organized society, the schools would do everything possible to involve parents in their children’s education. Our Education Establishment is doing the reverse. Schools seem intent on making parents turn their backs on their children’s education.

Driving parents out of the equation means driving education out of the equation.

Today, whenever schools are not getting good results, the first excuse the Education Establishment offers is that parents don’t want to help. This is diabolical. The schools do everything possible to make parents give up on education, and then the schools blame the parents.

Professor Michael Toscano writes, “Educational success is also dependent upon closure between families and their schools. In the case of the CCSS, little real ‘social capital’ exists between parents and schools, because the standards were adopted out of the reach of parents and because they will remain out of their reach. This is a crucial mistake. Education must be a common good that emanates from the relations of families in a community.”

When New Math was first introduced 60 years ago and parents complained, the official propaganda was that the new methods were so sophisticated that parents simply weren’t ready for them. Many in the community accepted the claim that children would finally benefit from being pushed in this way. That was a mistake. New Math was, for all practical purposes, irrational. It soon self-destructed, and then we knew that it, not parents, had been flawed all along.

This pattern continues. The community should use a commonsense “smell test.” Schoolwork too complicated for parents is too complicated, period. It’s not appropriate for children.

Common Core has embraced and recycled all the worst ideas from “reform” math. One has to conclude that the people responsible are hopelessly incompetent or hopelessly ideological.

The more you reflect on the flood of horror stories, the more you feel that Common Core commissars must spend their time concocting ways to alienate children and defeat parents. The basic taunt seems to be: “Hey, you parents. You can gripe and complain and thereby look foolish in the eyes of your children, or you can cower in surrender as you learn to put up with the artificial nonsense that we have devised, thanks to millions in grants from the government (your taxes used against you). Haha, suckers. You can’t win. Obama promised a fundamental transformation, and the first thing we’re going to transform is your sense of importance as parents. You must learn that you are insignificant.”

The divide between parents and children is a far more critical issue than many imagined. The proper priority is that homework should be specifically designed to bring parents and children together. Common Core seems cunningly designed to do the opposite. That’s the main reason it must be defeated.

[CoAspen]

Yawn........another 'the sky is falling'...opinion writer....Bonnie, isn't there anything else you can find? Is it always cloudy over your neighborhood? Lands sakes alive, I never....as my old aunty used to say!!!

[LifeHiscost]

Thanks for the update, Bonnie. Another indication of the plans by the enemy of souls, leading down a path to the disintegration of a worldwide society trying to live without the oversight of God as its' First Cause for mutually beneficial decorum.

http://www.commoncoresheets.com/Fractions.php

Quote:

Sociologist James Coleman said that the most important thing in successful education is what he called "social capital." Ideally, parents, kids, schools, and community are on the same page, working toward the same goals. In this way the children feel they are doing appropriate and necessary things. Energy is used to complete tasks, not to debate the merits of the tasks.

God cares! Jesus saves!

[Kevin H]

When you study what Mrs. White says about "Spiritualism" she does not mean séances and Ouija boards and the occult. She says that those things are just ONE way of spreading Spiritualism, not Spiritualism itself and that Satan has other ways of spreading Spiritualism that appeals to the more sophisticated.

Spiritualism itself is "Live as you please for heaven is your home" The idea that truth is within you and based on your experience, not an ultimate truth that exists out there that we should strive towards. Existentialism, and an extreme form of individualism that separates us from relating to others.

From what I read in that article, and I may be wrong, but it sounds like another way of Satan cutting off relationships and forming us to be just a pawn of the military-industrial complex.

[bonnie]

Yawn........another 'the sky is falling'...opinion writer....Bonnie, isn't there anything else you can find? Is it always cloudy over your neighborhood? Lands sakes alive, I never....as my old aunty used to say!!!

Actually most of my days are quite sunny. If you don't mind a suggestion,do what I do. When I see a topic title that doesn't interest me,I don't read and move on.Works every time.

But as for the "sky is falling" attention being brought to this mess in education is a day late and a dollar short.

Unfortunately even private schools are being sucked into this. My son and DIL have been dealing with this now and have made the decision to remove their kids from the public/private school system and home school.

They cannot do the required math or help their child in kindergarten.

Both parents highly intelligent,mother has a law degree and what the school sends home could just as well be written in gibberish.

Many others are doing or making the same decision. This along with so many issues in the public school system make sending your kids a risky business

[fccool]

I've actually took several Common Core math tests just to check it out, and these are not what's portrayed by the (conservative) media.

Here's one for you from 6th grade: http://www.policymic.com/articles/87477/could-you-ace-a-6th-grade-common-core-math-test

The purpose seems to move math into more pragmatic application that deal with real world scenarios and logic, rather than pure numbers. There are a lot of media hype about bad curriculum examples, but these are not universal, neither these are designed to split children and parents. That's just utterly ridiculous.

Most of the problems with Common Core that teachers have have to do with measuring the results and education politics... and the isolated stories are taken out of context to ridicule the entire system as though those isolated instances are representative of the entire and consistent curriculum.

[fccool]

Here's a common sense article that actually explains that:

1) Students are not required to use the new approach to math

2) The new approach is designed to give them better sense behind the mechanics of mathematics, just like assembly code for programmers would give better sense of what's happening in machine language before they move on to higher level languages:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/teaching-math-under-common-core-fact-and-fiction-part-v/

[bonnie]

I've actually took several Common Core math tests just to check it out, and these are not what's portrayed by the (conservative) media.

Here's one for you from 6th grade: http://www.policymic.com/articles/87477/could-you-ace-a-6th-grade-common-core-math-test

The purpose seems to move math into more pragmatic application that deal with real world scenarios and logic, rather than pure numbers. There are a lot of media hype about bad curriculum examples, but these are not universal, neither these are designed to split children and parents. That's just utterly ridiculous.

Most of the problems with Common Core that teachers have have to do with measuring the results and education politics... and the isolated stories are taken out of context to ridicule the entire system as though those isolated instances are representative of the entire and consistent curriculum.

The conservative media is not the one that provided the math questions for my granddaughter in kindergarten.

She was asked to explain why 2 + 2= 4.This was not to be explained by having 2 apples and adding 2 more so how many will you have.

[CoAspen]

>From what I read in that article, and I may be wrong, but it sounds like another way of Satan cutting off relationships and forming us to be just a pawn of the military-industrial complex.<

> Another indication of the plans by the enemy of souls, leading down a path to the disintegration of a worldwide society trying to live without the oversight of God as its' First Cause for mutually beneficial decorum.<

Come now, lets reason together! Learning a new or different way to do math is a plot of the devil? Seriously? A plot to seperate parents and children? Parents can't learn anymore? What was good for Ma and Pa Kettle should be good enough for my Kids?

When religion latches on to such ideas, it only reinforces the idea that we belong to a 'cult'...and not in a positive sense! Why do some so readily latch on to opinions as truth rather than looking for real data and stats? Have people becomne afraid of their own shadows?

Na, its not a military-industrial-satanic plot, but fear mongering, plain and simple. The math methodoly is not being discussed as to its rate of success or failure, like or dislike, but simply an opinion that rings of 'this is bad and I will find any way to trash it'!

Think people, don't blindly follow!!

[LifeHiscost]

Quote:

Think people, don't blindly follow!!

Hopefully you'll remember this when it is asked of all to choose between the mark of the beast and the sign of loyalty to the Creator.

Your eternal destiny depends on it.

God cares! Jesus saves!

[CoAspen]

...aaaahhhhh, wahtr does thaat comment have todo with learning math!

[LifeHiscost]

...aaaahhhhh, wahtr does thaat comment have todo with learning math!

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Quote:

The proper priority is that homework should be specifically designed to bring parents and children together.

That's got to be one of the most ludicrous statements I've read this week.

[LifeHiscost]

Quote:

The proper priority is that homework should be specifically designed to bring parents and children together.

That's got to be one of the most ludicrous statements I've read this week.

Much more helpful for disintegration of society if the upcoming generation is totally beyond the comprehension of the previous, and society seems to be right on track according to the prophetic Word.

God/Jesus care!

[Igakusei]

The conservative media is not the one that provided the math questions for my granddaughter in kindergarten.

She was asked to explain why 2 + 2= 4.This was not to be explained by having 2 apples and adding 2 more so how many will you have.

What was the answer that they were looking for, then?

[CoAspen]

Insanity abounds....must be dragon time!!

[LifeHiscost]

http://news.yahoo.com/stupid-war-common-core-094500588--politics.html

...the always understated Glenn Beck says, “This is a progressive bonanza, and if it’s allowed to be in our schools in any form and become the Common Core of America’s next generation, it will destroy America and the system of freedom as we know it… This is evil stuff.” (That’s actually one of the tamer Beck quotes.)

God cares! Jesus saves!

[fccool]

...aaaahhhhh, wahtr does thaat comment have todo with learning math!

Lifehost is merely playing a game called 6 degrees of Adventist Prophecy.

Basically, you give any topic, and then one has to link that topic or name to the end times and Mark of the Beast somehow, along with a Biblical quote in the end.

For example: Panda Bears

Panda Bears > Endangered Animals > Noah's Flood > Jesus Comparing it to the ... End Times

Matt. 24:37-38: “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. “For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,”

Another Example: Common Core Math

Math > Calculation > Calculating the Mark of the Beast > ... End Times

Here's another one more general: Education

Education > Knowledge > Will Increase > ... in the End times

I think more of us should play the game and recognize the end times in anything that we see. It's only for the best.

[Bravus]

Progressives hate Common Core too... but for completely different reasons. Will see if I can dig up a credible link.

The premise of the OP seems to be that no child should be taught anything at school that cannot already be completely and easily comprehended, without putting forth effort, by the dumbest and least educated parent of any child in the nation. At least, that's the reductio ad absurdem of the point made.

(and it does amuse me that, to Glenn Beck, 'progressive' is an epithet...)

[Bravus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/nyregi...itics.html?_r=0

[Bravus]

In brief, it's just another agenda for standardised testing, just with the content of the tests tweaked. But standardised testing is a way of reinforcing and extending advantage and disadvantage in society rather than overcoming them.

[bonnie]

Progressives hate Common Core too... but for completely different reasons. Will see if I can dig up a credible link.

The premise of the OP seems to be that no child should be taught anything at school that cannot already be completely and easily comprehended, without putting forth effort, by the dumbest and least educated parent of any child in the nation. At least, that's the reductio ad absurdem of the point made.

(and it does amuse me that, to Glenn Beck, 'progressive' is an epithet...)

My son and DIL hardly fit the description of the "dumbest and least educated",yet they are not able to help their daughter in kindergarten, as well as their son in second grade.

The answer as to why 2+2= 4 still has not been answered.Yet this little girl in kindergarten and her "dumb,uneducated" parents are expected to. Nor are they afraid to pt in the effort.They spend a great deal of time seeing to their homework and education

[Igakusei]

The answer as to why 2+2= 4 still has not been answered.

Do you know what explanation this teacher was looking for? Because I'm pretty sure that requiring a deeper explanation than common-sense addition with real-world objects or using a number line is reserved for advanced college students majoring in math.

[LifeHiscost]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/nyregi...itics.html?_r=0

[bonnie]

Do you know what explanation this teacher was looking for? Because I'm pretty sure that requiring a deeper explanation than common-sense addition with real-world objects or using a number line is reserved for advanced college students majoring in math.

Regardless of what you are sure of my granddaughter is in kindergarten.

The last I talked about this with my DIL, they still were lacking a explanation that made sense.