At least “Burning Man” has an art component to it, “burning dolls”, not so much.
This is so stupid, so inane, so grade B movie “Plan 9 from Outer Space” level that all you can do is laugh at it. It is the latest effort from Al Gore’s “Climate Reality Project”. I suppose after this exercise in child brainwashing, anything goes. Watch:
From the YouTube Description:
The science girl takes a comedic look at the differences of climate vs weather. Created for the live broadcast of 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report.
Even more bizarre are the comments from the faithful on YouTube.
It reminds me of a Sunday school lesson in an impoverished rural church, the sort that is visited by a circuit preacher once a month. The Sunday school teacher had no props but the preaching set forth similar scenes. Notice that the final “pestilence” is Hell. Al Gore has finally found his personal “center” and his true calling.
Pamela, I took you up on your challenge. I found the Pennsylvania Academic Standards, the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts were adopted on July 10,2010 and are to be fully implemented by July 10,2013. They have the links to those standards (pdf) there. I’m working through the Mathematics one.
Your “deep learning” is quite evident. Kindergarten: “Work with numbers 11–19 to gain foundations for place value.” I’ve read up to 5th grade, where it’s “Understand the place value system.”
Dear Lord. Six years to understand Left Side: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands and Right Side: tenths, hundredths, thousandths?
It takes to 5th grade to do division with a two-digit divisor? 12 inches to 1 foot, an inch is 1/12 of a foot, congratulations you’re doing division with a two-digit divisor.
Developing understanding of volume? It takes to 5th grade to understand which makes sense, a cup of milk or an inch of milk?
What 1x1x1 unit cube makes up a quart?
Come on. The major problem with the American education system is the three-month summer break. It’s gone from obsolete to detrimental. If there are farming families that still need the cheap help, let them switch to cyber-schooling or home schooling for the summer.
As summer is used now, it’s a three month stopping of learning. Dead stop. That wrecks the lives of families with two working parents, without any appropriate form of “day care” available, with older kids doing “whatever” during the day when the parents aren’t around. When school starts up again, the kids not only have to relearn up to where they were before, they have to relearn how to learn. Learning needs to be a continuous process, year long. Which then becomes learning throughout life.
We already know what works. Rote and repetition works. When I was cranking out those square roots on paper, I surprised myself by how quickly I did the math. A large part of that was getting those multiplication tables burned into my skull in the third grade.
Linking to real-world examples works. “Understanding” is overrated. Do I have to understand why there are 16 tablespoons to a cup to measure out ingredients for a recipe? I just have to know that fact, and if I also know it’s three teaspoons to a tablespoon then I should be able to calculate it’s 48 teaspoons to a cup, and how many teaspoons to a quarter cup. First establish competency, that the kids can do the work. “Understanding” can come later. First show it does work, that they too can make it work, then get into why it works.
When I was laid off and went to a technical college, I was helping some guys with their math. One day they came to me with an algebra word problem, and I couldn’t help them. Because I automatically did as I was trained, recognized it and set it up as a two-variable two-equation problem, easily solvable. And they were only at one-variable equations. I couldn’t even see it as a single variable except by substituting in the one equation, so I couldn’t give them the answer with the steps that they needed. I had a talk with their instructor, checked if it was okay to show them “advanced” techniques ahead of schedule.
We already know what’s true. With basic skills, “why” doesn’t matter. “How” does matter. Years later, being able to do something will be far more important than knowing why you are doing it. I can do math without knowing why I’m doing it. I no longer know what a “past participle” is, but I know what sounds right and can write good sentences. Because I had good teachers who knew what was important, what works, I’ve retained those basic skills quite well.
Seriously, will math teachers hold off on teaching the equation for the area of a circle, until the kiddies know enough integral calculus to understand the equation and how to derive it for themselves?
Place value to billion by 5th grade. Rounding, and knowledge of place value for multidigit multiplication and long division without calculators. 5th grade.
One of the things that impresses me about folks is how much harder school was back then and how screwed up school is now. Question everything. Even your own pet beliefs. Notice how hard it is to change our own? Let alone the beliefs of a CAGW believer.
I also thought it interesting how one commenter thought them too hard and another thought them to be too easy. We all tend to view our world thru rose colored glasses. We tint facts and data with belief. And we rewrite our own histories in much the same way.
Two digit divisor, 4 digit dividend, with remainder. No calculators. Reminds me of math when I was young. What we didn’t do back then was learn how to problem solve a real life situation mathematically and to figure out how to gather missing data. Instead we solved the two trains coming at each other. But not until Jr High.
Bottom line I think these standards are achievable even for students with learning problems. Yes they are more rigorous than previous standards at any time in our US schools. But we must raise the bar or continue to lag behind other developed countries in math problem solving ability. This will require high fluency in basic algorithms, handling multidigit numbers with speed and accuracy. It will also require building perseverance. The ability to spend more time working on relevant math problems in order to compete in the global market.
Kadaka Im not quite following your 12 inch description of 2 digit divisor problem. Besides that your contention that 5th grade students r working with “12” as the two digit divisor is not what my 5th graders have been doing. U would see that problem in 3rd and 4th grade as a division fact problem.
Memorize their multiplication tables … up through 16 x 16. (Yeah – I know, it used to be 12 x 12. But that was when learning was gross, and you had to sell eggs by the dozen. Now, we need to talk in bytes and 256’s. 8<)
Know the rules of grammar, and how to use them.
One fine budding actress, a career you may just want to watch unfold. She doesn’t give a thing away until the last thirty seconds. I suspect science will be her fall back career. Put’s a whole new meaning to “she’s got it down to a science”!
when i was in kindergarten (age 4) we were beginning cursive and rehearsing our multiplication tables to 12*12 out loud.
it was not a special school; it had good teachers.
Galane: Median is the middle value. Average and mean are basically the same value. Mathematicians seem to use mean most often, while everyone else uses average. I personally believe average is one of the worst statistics out there but since it’s easy to figure, it gets used for way too many things. People like it.
Pamela: Real life school science fair experience. I used to judge science fairs for a school in the town I live in. That is, until I was paired with a judge that judged kids on the merits of their work. Up until that time, I was flat out told I could NOT mark any participant down more than a point or two or the parents would be upset. The judge I was paired with marked down a girl who did the very tired volcano demonstration because it lacked creativity. We were never asked back. At state science fair, one of the winners looked at the differences in orange juice, including Sunny D. No one would tell the girl that Sunny D is not orange juice. It would hurt her feelings, so she was allowed to continue with the mistaken belief.
My niece came to live with me for a while. She was an A student in her hometown. We noticed that she seemed very slow at reading. When tested for grade level, she was over two grades behind in reading skill. This is a child who was considered one of the brightest and, as noted, had excellent grades.
Schools have serious problems. Not all schools, but a lot.
Oh, we also had a high school that functioned much like a Montessori school–the students created their own curriculum and learned math, science, etc. based on the ideas they submitted. I would have loved a high school like that. The school is no longer in existence–lack of interest. Rote learning seems to be the way most children learn–only the highly motivated branch out. For most things in life, that’s enough. Be able to make change, figure a budget, don’t mix toilet bowl cleaner and bleach, etc. English is being replaced with texting, so we’ll see where that goes.
I don’t know if school is harder or not. The attitudes toward school are very different today and may contribute to the belief that we are pushing kids too hard. Without a push, they pretty much are slugs, so it’s a fine line there.
Memorizing your A B C’s and being able to use that knowledge to alphabetize are two different things. Same for kindergarten students memorizing multiplication facts. That’s one of the things I like about the standards. Application of rotely learned algorithms is the goal, not rote and repetitious work.
nomish: I am jealous! I got in serious trouble in second grade for writing in cursive (that was not allowed until third grade) and had to make my own algebra class in 8th grade because that was not allowed until 9th!
@ur momisugly Reality check & Pamela Gray:
The apparent goal is push complex concepts to earlier grades and this has been occurring for some decades. However the human intelligence spread is overlooked by assuming that almost all can cope adequately. But what is likely to occur is a larger and larger percentage of failures, by the new standards, as things progress. Of course these have to be covered up because an admission of massive failure would be anathema to the unrealistic objectives that have been established. Eventually what will be needed is student separation at some point into technical versus academic career paths as in some other countries, but unfortunately resistance to this in the US will be high.
I also fail to see what this has to do with world competition, as most of the problems here are caused by management near profit decisions, not science design capability. Most of the job loss overseas is because of cheaper labor. GM or Ford could have/can build long lived, high reliability autos, but wouldn’t/won’t, mostly to save a few bucks per vehicle and to garner side profits from dealer repairs (example, I have a 1995 Corolla @ur momisugly 276,000 miles that still has the original alternator, water pump, power steering pump, electric fuel pump, automatic transmission and engine; I replaced the thermostat and fan temperature switch @ur momisugly 250,000). State side attitudes are dominated by patent contests and not-invented-here-syndrome where it would do little good to have advanced concepts because most wouldn’t be accepted/put in place. Here corporate gambling with derivatives is more important than making an honest profit producing needed high quality products. In such an environment, a highly educated workforce is mostly wasted.
Pamela:
Yes, these are two different things. The question is whether or not you need standards and teachers to be able to move the the foundation (memorizing you ABC’s) to alphabetizing and for memorizing multiplication tables to figuring out doubling the ingredients for a recipe. “Old school” held that the student was capable of applying the memorized knowledge without the teacher spelling out the process for them. The child has the foundation and can extrapolate to the task. If the child cannot master extrapolation to tasks further up the learning chain (ABC’s lead to alphabetizing and word recognition) he or she probably will be quite limited in their academic success. I am not certain I believe children are so severely limited in their ability to move from one learning step to another without outside help. True learning only comes if the child learns to see the connections on their own.
NotFooled: I would note that the reason companies make cheap crap is because people buy cheap crap. Until we stop buy cheap crap, expect to see that as the norm. But don’t blame the companies.
Pushing learning to a younger age may or may not be a bad thing. I do agree that children will be failing and it may be covered up. This is part of a larger societal push for everyone to be exactly alike. Children who are different are drugged into compliance and we drug them at a younger age now. Which is why the attack on skeptics is so strong. Disagreement and standing up to “authority” is a threat to society as a whole. TV networks may claim to celebrate differences, but they only celebrate the differences they have deemed acceptable. Step outside those rules and you will not be celebrated.
Reality Check, when we were young, the drop out rate was 50%. If you couldn’t hack it, there was no one willing to teach you how to apply what you had memorized. During that same period of time, Japanese students were in class being taught how to persevere through a problem. What would you say to the idea that a math problem you could solve in 5 minutes isn’t worth much educationally compared to a math problem that takes hours and even days to work through?
And by the way, this discussion on the common core state standards has been very enjoyable and speaks directly to the issues at hand: mathematically contemplating data, its significance, and its interpretation. It also speaks directly to the ability to discern opinion from verified fact in informational text.
Do you suppose that these new standards might prepare our children to better develop the kind of thinking skills and discerning eye necessary to navigate the multi-media, highly commercialized presentations bombarding us in the world we live in today?
And don’t you think these new standards are better than what we had when learning was all about memorizing “this is this, and this is that”?
It appears I went to school on another planet. I have little ability to rote memorize but graduated salutatorian. School was not boring or confining. There was little rote memorization. The drop-out rate was under 10%. I completely missed the torture reported by most people. Therefore, I will stop commenting as I have no way to relate to the “school was horrible” childhood. Sadly, it seems my love of schools is a huge anomaly on the reaction to schools curve. I surely cannot answer you questions since I have no experience with the memorize “this, this and this” education you describe.
I am back and apparently more awake than before. Pamela–I think I did answer your question with my comment “we also had a high school that functioned much like a Montessori school–the students created their own curriculum and learned math, science, etc. based on the ideas they submitted (a semester long problem solving exercise)” and that school closed. Whether or not it is a better teaching method, it was not accepted by the community nor the students.
It appears that perception is entering in here as to schools and effectiveness. Most people seem to perceive their schooling as unpleasant and ineffective. Standardized tests, while they measure retained learning, are greatly criticized. What other way do we measure the effectiveness of school? How do we know if the curriculum is better or worse? Maybe we can’t.
Nationally the drop out rate in the middle of the last century was 50% give or take a few percentage points depending on decade or reporting year. Even in good schools. Back then, even public schools could find a way to turn away students that didn’t meet their version of the IQ requirement, and tracking took care of the rest. All of that occurred outside the day to day experience of “regular” students (aka “white”) who were surrounded by students very much like themselves and who were provided the better teachers as well as curriculum. Again, our own histories are often as not, colored by the engineered environment we were placed in. Then from that not-the-real-world base, we add our own “rewritten” history to our memories. Thus it becomes very difficult for us to assess our current thinking as being better or worse than what we remember.
Regarding testing, benchmark testing is a criterion referenced tool, not standardized testing in the classical sense. Because the common core standards are criterion-based, the assessments that have been developed are also criterion based (if you score at a certain level, it means you as an individual can successfully perform those skills that were being assessed). Standardized assessments would simply provide us with the average performance and standard deviations without telling us whether or not some pre-set criterion (students will be able to…) has been met by an individual student.
I am uncertain of the statistics on graduation, but I am going with that prior to 1950, the dropout rate was around 50% (statistics are fascinating in that they are not black and white and a minor change can shift the argument from one side of the fence to the other). At that time, I am uncertain as to that being a bad thing. Technology, etc, were not that advanced and people without diplomas did find work. Prior to that, 8th grade was sufficient. Now, society demands a diploma. It is not clear why comparing 1950 to 2010 is valid for graduation rates.
What is an example of a “criterion-based” test? I don’t have any idea what you are speaking of. Why is it better than knowing the child can perform math at an average level? Or speak English on an advanced level? Wouldn’t the criterion-based test just apply to that specific criteria? I don’t get it.
Pamela Gray has demonstrated here how an interesting subject can quickly be turned into a crashing bore by a teacher. Academia is a very narrow and inadequate measure of intellect and intellectual capability. It is an archaic and outmoded method of instruction. The stats in University of children that have been home schooled are showing this clearly. On average head and shoulders above traditional students.
Pamela Gray has not had the courage to respond to “my bitch” demanded of me by her defender U.K.(us) on a previous thread . His unnecessary defence of Pamela was a distraction from the issue at hand. She has consistently ignored my posts, and by this action reaffirms my stance. Teachers refuse to learn, which cripples students and education in general. The small box of standardization diminishes all and marginalizes the development of very bright minds and even average minds that are capable of incredible and original thinking. Original thinking is discouraged by academia as a whole limiting humanity from development and broadening of understanding. It is a failing that a teacher dare not address for it undermines the whole ancient methodology and reveals it as such.
Clearly one can see the connection to AGW as we are taught not question academia but accept blindly what we are told. Is it too late to change the climate of education? Are the leaders of the scholastic industry afraid to examine the very foundation of the “system”? I fear it is so.
Anthony and mods, I harbour no resentment towards Pamela herself and hope that other teachers have the temerity to respond with their views as well. It is high time that the antiquated method of teaching be questioned as to whether it is the best for the future of humanity or not. It is a system that has not changed a great deal throughout it’s entirety, and no one seems to be questioning whether or not it is working. I posit that it is not.
I am curious how one would teach to both rote learning and for “today’s” society, or if you think there is another way. Letting students just develop their own learning seems to be marginally effective and today’s students may lack the drive to think outside of the box. Home schooling is quite effective if the parents remember the “schooling” part (I know several families that home schooled and not one child ever bothered to get a GED or finish high school–they were simply allowed to run wild and free and they called it schooling) and the child interacts with other children so as to develop social skills. While children are taught not to challenge the teacher, with the internet and hopefully parents who care about learning, the child can look things up and form his own opinions. It comes in handy when their boss wants them to do something mindless later on. Allowing children to challenge the teacher always sounds good, but with only 6 hours a day, 9 months a year, how much questioning will teachers and students have time for? Perhaps teaching real logic and scientific methods would be a start.
Getting past the AGW consensus beliefs and the group think will be even more difficult. High school is all about conformity and I fear we are not far enough removed from the days when we needed conformity to survive to extinguish that trait. Teachers often are taught they must be “in charge”, or worse yet, as in the case of my science fair experience, that they must reward all answers, even wrong ones. This is a difficult thing to change. We can try.
The difficulty is envisioning a method completely different from what is being done today. The world is changing quickly. The dissemination of information is very fast. Look at the number of papers being published on any subject compared to even 20 years ago. A teacher in a class cannot possibly compete to retain a students interest.
The teachers I had taught me a certain subject. They did not endeavour to teach me how to learn. Fortunately for me my father did that. Made all subjects interesting because they are.
Children misbehave when bored (as do some adults). Mathematics on it’s own can be excruciatingly boring but combining it with History of Mathematics, or Applied Mathematics, brings it into real world perspective. Archimedes was interesting because he started with no apparent predecessors. East Indian mathematicians created problems and formulas far ahead of their time, some unresolved to this day. Interesting stuff.
My eight year old is very interested in why Machu Picchu was built. I have also had him understand the winter solstice and why it was important to early man. His friends are extremely curious about what he is finding out for himself. He is very capable on the computer which we monitor of course. The standardization is like Obama’s bottom up socialist mentality. All children should be challenged to the max. Not some state mandated idea of what is “normal”. This standardization is archaic and ultimately hurtful to all students.
I am just getting started as to my ideas of a better classroom for the student, the teacher, and the future. My opinion is that mankind should be WAY further ahead than we are. The classroom is the place to start.