A guy I know, pretty high up in public education, stated that his eyes have been opened to the point that he is almost ready to equate public education to public housing. And it is a matter of years until they do equate.
From the womb to that tomb brah. You didn't really think Obama was worried about education did you? He wants to expand Pre-k to give those who elected him some free day care. The parents don't want those lil phuckers home cause then they have to take care of and feed them.
I feel like my kids' generation will be the last to learn handwriting (we know cursive is practically a lost artform already); but with the plethora of portable technology available, handwriting is quickly going to become a thing of the past (which will be great for my older daughter, whose penmanship is pathetic; my younger, dyslexic child--ironically enough--has beautiful handwriting.) Both of my kids have iPads and before long, I see more and more of those being on each school child. Math is the same way, just as Red suggested. As for the Chinese, my district invited a professor from the University of Oregon to speak to all of the core subject teachers a month ago. He was a native of China and had really interesting things to say about standardized testing. First, of course, the Chinese (and many other nations to whom we are compared) only test the best students. In America, we test them all--and even that is disingenous because in Louisiana and Texas and many other states, private school students aren't tested on state assessments at all. Secondly, the notion that American students are performing below other nations on standardized testing is true. However, since these sorts of tests started being measuring tools some 60 years ago, Americans have ALWAYS scored poorly. So, this isn't a new phenomenon. Conversely, Chinese students feel very unconfident about their performance in math and science, and the Americans who have crappy scores generally report that they feel pretty good about their performance (that American cockiness and swagger that makes us great...) The professor showed a graphic of patents applied for and granted in the past 25 years. Americans had over 400,000, while the Chinese had around 400. He attributed this to an ingrained fear of failure in the Asian cultures--when failure is what makes inventors and creators great. He said that although we have a gazillion dumbasses in America (and yes, he was just about that politically incorrect, and I loved it), we are so confident and brazen as a nation that we succeed in spite of being standardized test idiots. And YES we should educate everyone--because from time to time, there is an accident of nature, and that child born into poverty can become great. That cannot happen in other countries. Rock on, America.
Amazing. It takes @StaceyO 6 pages to answer a question asked in the OP and she sidesteps it all together.
Am I a teacher--or a politician? My kids have been taught this "new math." My older daughter didn't understand it at all, and I had to teach her the old way when she was in elementary. My younger daughter does most of her math in her head, but she can do it the new way or the old way. The teachers at my middle school don't love the new ways of teaching math facts because it does present problems when the kids are in 6th grade and can't do long division or big multiplication problems without 8 gazillion steps. By pre-algebra in 7th grade, it doesn't seem to be as big of a problem; even my math-challenged 7th grader is finally "getting it." Ah, six days...a birthday sleepover for nine nine-year-old girls and an ice storm ago...I've haven't been online much.
Maybe she teaches typing and needs the practice. Practice. We talkin' bout practice. Not a game. Practice
