RE: The State of Education- Part 4: Common Core not for the Commoner
Thanks for sharing. It is important to get the perspective of teachers on these sorts of issues. Another problem I have noticed with common core math is that many times, parents who were taught the 'old way' struggle to help their children with homework. I recall a time I was helping my niece with her homework that her parents had already checked and it was riddled with errors. In some cases her parents were the source of the errors. I was a physics major/math minor, so the mistakes were obvious to me, but to older people with more limited education exposure, it can be quite a change. Even some teachers seem to struggle with understanding it (which makes things worse) . Given my own math background I can see how common core attempts to build a more intuitive and deeper understanding of math and believe it has potential, but I agree there have been big issues with the implementation. However, I also wonder how much of the implementation problem comes from America's inherent stubbornness and resistance to change. After all this is the country that is still giving the finger to the metric system for some reason.
That is a good question! We are quite stubborn. My daughter is doing great and loves math, and I do see the potential as well, but it still needs some tweaking methinks. I appreciate you taking the time to check this out and leave such an awesome, thoughtful comment!