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As a parent, I find there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking and opinions from people who don't have school age children or have never had children. The obsess

As a parent, I find there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking and opinions from people who don't have school age children or have never had children. The obsession over competing with other countries' test scores seems to assume that first, these other countries are reporting test scores accurately and second, these test scores represent an accurate measurement of the quality of education. I would call into question both assumptions. The USA isn't perfect by any means but we have one of the most transparent bureacracies in the world. You can't say the same for a country like China. You have to wonder if the test scores are accurate and represent a comparable cross section of society. Also, common core sucks. When my son was in 3rd grade, the teacher and parents felt like the math textbook was terrible. Mainly because it was all word problems. I have a master's degree in engineering and I found some of those word problems to be ambiguous. The result is that if you were struggling with reading in 3rd grade, you were also struggling with math. Because it was common core, it couldn't be changed at the class or school level. Common core's goal seems to be to remove teachers and parents from the equation of how best to educate your child.

fatnoah 7y ago
>I have a master's degree in engineering and I found some of those word problems to be ambiguous. I faced a similar problem when my son was in 3rd grade (I also have an M.S. in Engineering). All of the work seemed to be geared to helping kids develop an intuitive understanding of math and numbers, which is a great goal, but the way it was taught was to teach the same "intuitive" methods to all kids. We all intuit things differently and my humble opinion is that parents and teachers aren't fully prepared to understand and teach math this way. Attempts to promote intuition simply become methods that are different than the ones we learned. I was able to work around those things and help my son, and he was able to develop a fairly good intuitive understanding of numbers. Where the approach falls down (again, in my opinion) is where structured approaches are required, such as in long division. By the time 5th and 6th grade came around, my son didn't have the reps at doing it and had some struggles.

fatnoah 7y ago

>I have a master's degree in engineering and I found some of those word problems to be ambiguous. I faced a similar problem when my son was in 3rd grade (I also have an M.S. in Engineering). All of the work seemed to be geared to helping kids develop an intuitive understanding of math and numbers, which is a great goal, but the way it was taught was to teach the same "intuitive" methods to all kids. We all intuit things differently and my humble opinion is that parents and teachers aren't fully prepared to understand and teach math this way. Attempts to promote intuition simply become methods that are different than the ones we learned. I was able to work around those things and help my son, and he was able to develop a fairly good intuitive understanding of numbers. Where the approach falls down (again, in my opinion) is where structured approaches are required, such as in long division. By the time 5th and 6th grade came around, my son didn't have the reps at doing it and had some struggles.