Reply to Common Core's epic fail: Special Education

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[quote=Anonymous]

I have a math phd. I just get math and see its patterns long before I can explain it. The "explain your work" can kill creativity.  My DD is very verbal and this method helps her since she can step herself through things.  My son, on the other hand, who can "see" patterns can't always explain them but is almost always right.  As he is figuring this stuff out, it is absolutely not ok to penalize him for not being able to describe his processes.  [/quote]

Yes! Common Core is a thought straitjacket. It requires all children to learn the same things in the same ways and express them in exactly the same ways.

It's interesting -- and sad and frightening -- to hear those from China say it's very similar to the Chinese system.[b] No creative thought[/b], but hey, they're good test takers!

[/quote]

I think CC is opposite of "no creative thought".  Previous teaching methods were all rote - that is no creative thought.

CC requires *a lot * of thought, and some would say, too much for simple problems.  And this may surely be the case, but CC standards are far from "no creative thought".

And how was the previous curriculum so creative?  Didn't all the kids have to meet the same standards back then, too?  Pass the same tests?  In the previous curriculum, when they all learned 2+2 = 4, didn't they all express it the same way?  Actually, in CC standards, you can express 2+2 in different ways... in my DC's class, DC can show 2+2 with numbers, pictures, graphs.  That is more creative than just writing 2+2=4.[/quote]

I think that showing kids multiple modalities before understanding the concept absolutely can kill creativity.  Here is an example from my son.  He was asked to add 36 and 24.  He immediately said 60.  He was taught that you can add the tens and then the ones and then add them together.  He was told you could count forward.  He was taught some estimation tricks.  All are totally fine but he got stuck trying to explain how he came to his answer.  Turns out that he groups in his head by 6 (this month).  He was actually recognizing that 24 and 36 are groupings of 6 and using that insight to come up with 60.  He doesn't have the language to explain multiplication (he doesn't know what it is).  He does know his 6 times table because he heard his sister memorizing it.  It took me a very long time to figure out what he was doing and an even longer time to convince him that it was totally fine to do it that way even though it wasn't one of the options.  Kids have to be free to make their own connections and to not try to do them until they are ready.  Teach the concept. Being teach multiple ways of getting there until the concept is super solid.  And when they are ready, they will be able to brainstorm these methods in their own.[/quote]

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