# Common Core Math **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 10, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118 "2018-09-10T19:27:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/81 "2018-09-11T16:18:04Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > And I make mistakes, and I reward kids who catch me at it … If the class catches you in a mistake, that’s a really good sign. Because [list=A][li]they are paying attention, and [\*]they are going to remember the time they caught Mr. **Dorkness** in a mistake better than a dozen worksheets.[/list]Admit it - you were setting us up to see if we noticed. :)[/li] Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/82 "2018-09-11T16:20:15Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Do you have kids? If doubt anyone would fuck you other than yourself but if you did somehow manages to impregnate someone else without that person immediately swallowing a tub of Plan B and getting their uterus removed, they probably gave birth to really dumb kids that NEED common core to understand simple math. We are dumbing down America in an effort to avoid reinforcing your kids well deserved feelings of inadequacy. If you think Trump is bad, your kid is probably going to be one of the dumb fucks that vote for someone even worse than Trump in order to “fix” social security and Medicare. You’re a jerk who believes a lot of stupid things and tends to overreact to the products of your own emotionally-crippled imagination but the above is amusing and I praise you for it. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/83 "2018-09-11T16:32:12Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So my problem isn’t with Common Core, its with bad teachers? > > OK, I can buy that. > > However, these particular teachers seem to have drunk the cool aid on common core. When I explained that my kid (and several other kids in her class) was doing long multiplication and division, her specific comment was “I am not impressed that some child has been drilled to be able to do long multiplication or division, that’s not real learning” Hey hey now. You shouldn’t judge this teacher or be critical of her teaching style until you’ve spent a day in her shoes ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/84 "2018-09-11T16:45:25Z")
I’m still not convinced he even knows what he ranting against. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/85 "2018-09-11T17:34:13Z")
**manson1972** beat me to the punch, but here’s the reference from another thread: > [@Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/14299): > > You guys should go become cops. > > I’m only half joking. Walk a day in their shoes. I get the feeling you guys don’t even associate with very many cops. So, do you expect us to treat your opinions about how teachers ought to teach with as much validity as you treat others’ opinions about policing? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/86 "2018-09-11T18:36:29Z")
Well, at least _half_ validity. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/87 "2018-09-11T18:51:43Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > You’re a jerk who believes a lot of stupid things cite? Not for the jerk part, I have plenty of cites for that. > [@](#): > > and tends to overreact to the products of your own emotionally-crippled imagination cite? And how is imagination emotionally crippled. my experience has been that emotionally crippled people often have EXCELLENT imaginations. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/88 "2018-09-11T18:55:56Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > **manson1972** beat me to the punch, but here’s the reference from another thread: > > So, do you expect us to treat your opinions about how teachers ought to teach with as much validity as you treat others’ opinions about policing? I’m not the one that said she was a shitty teacher. And we are not questioning why other teachers aren’t calling her out on her shitty teaching. So to cross threads here. You can’t judge why cops aren’t jumping on the BLM bandwagon. From their perspective BLM may be simply full of shit. After all, cops do not shoot poor blacks any more frequently than they shoot poor whites. They tend to shoot poor people more frequently than rich people. Studies show that cops aren’t shooting blacks more than whites but critical race theorists don’t really give a shit about studies. They care about narratives and storytelling. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/89 "2018-09-11T18:59:05Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Singapore’s math curriculum is a little unique in Asia. Places like Korea, Taiwan and Japan have a lot of brute force memorization. They almost take it from the other direction. Rather than learning the principles and having the repetition of the principles develop into a memory of the tables, through the memorization of these tables, they start to internalize the relationships between the numbers. They extrapolate the principles from the rote memorization. > > I will bet dollars to donuts that 100 random Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese students who have learned math largely through rote memorization (after being exposed to the principles and theories) will _ **understand** _ math better than 100 random US students who learned it the common core way. How would they do against a 100 Singaporeans? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/90 "2018-09-11T19:05:48Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I’m not the one that said she was a shitty teacher Pretty sure you accused the teacher of drinking the Common Core cool aid. > [@](#): > > So to cross threads here. You can’t judge why cops aren’t jumping on the BLM bandwagon. From their perspective BLM may be simply full of shit. After all, cops do not shoot poor blacks any more frequently than they shoot poor whites. They tend to shoot poor people more frequently than rich people. Studies show that cops aren’t shooting blacks more than whites but critical race theorists don’t really give a shit about studies. They care about narratives and storytelling. You can go on and on with your “crit race theory” and whatnot. I’d rather have cops shoot less unarmed people. How can you possibly be against that? I just don’t understand it. Maybe I need to spend a day in your shoes. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/91 "2018-09-11T19:14:29Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > If the class catches you in a mistake, that’s a really good sign. Because [list=A][li]they are paying attention, and [\*]they are going to remember the time they caught Mr. **Dorkness** in a mistake better than a dozen worksheets.[/list]Admit it - you were setting us up to see if we noticed. :)[/li] > Regards, > Shodan Yeah, that’s the ticket, it was totally on purpose! (For real, though, while I don’t make mistakes on purpose, I try to be totally open with my kids about it: we all make mistakes, but the good mathematicians are the ones who know how to watch out for mistakes, analyze them, and fix them. I think that’s the most realistic approach to take.) > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I’m not the one that said she was a shitty teacher. > > And we are not questioning why other teachers aren’t calling her out on her shitty teaching. I’ve totally called teachers out on shitty teaching, IN THIS THREAD. I haven’t called her out because you’re coming across as an unreliable narrator, and I’m not convinced that we’re getting all the relevant details. That said, though, what you’re saying is at least plausible. I’ve worked alongside, and under, teachers who have an appalling lack of understanding of math. Another anecdote: once I was at a math training for teaching second grade math. We were analyzing a lesson that was designed to help students “find the difference between a two-digit number and a multiple of ten.” So far, so good. Take a minute and imagine what this might teach. Did you think it might teach students that, in a problem like 86-20, they only need to change the tens place? Did you think it might teach students that, in a problem like 80-26, they need to know how to regroup (“borrow” for you codgers), or how to count backward from 10, or how to decompose tens, or something similar? All that’s fine. But the math coach conducting the training said, “So, students will learn that a multiple of ten ends in a zero, but a two digit number doesn’t, so that’s one difference.” I was gobsmacked. I went to her afterwards and, in private, reminded her that “difference” was a mathematically specific term with a specific definition, and it wasn’t looking for similarities and differences. I expected her to be like, “holy shit, I can’t believe I said that, brain fart, lemme correct myself to the group.” No. SHE NEVER GAVE AN INCH. She insisted that her meaning was correct, **despite the evidence in the lesson itself**. She became my nemesis, until she was promoted out of my orbit. * * * I know there are bad teachers out there. It’s not the fault of common core, and to the degree that it’s anyone’s fault but their own, it’s the fault of a system that underpays teachers compared to other college grads, and consequently doesn’t attract folks who are both competent AND primarily motivated by money. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/92 "2018-09-11T20:16:04Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > How would they do against a 100 Singaporeans? About the same. "teachers rely heavily on textbooks, worksheets, worked examples and lots of drill and practice. They also strongly emphasise mastery of specific procedures and the ability to represent problems clearly, especially in mathematics. Classroom talk is teacher-dominated and generally avoids extended discussion. Intriguingly, Singaporean teachers only make limited use of “high leverage” or unusually effective teaching practices that contemporary educational research (at least in the West) regards as critical to the development of conceptual understanding and “learning how to learn”. For example, teachers only make limited use of checking a student’s prior knowledge or communicating learning goals and achievement standards. In addition, while teachers monitor student learning and provide feedback and learning support to students, they largely do so in ways that focus on whether or not students know the right answer, rather than on their level of understanding." > **[Why is Singapore’s school system so successful, and is it a model for the West?](http://theconversation.com/why-is-singapores-school-system-so-successful-and-is-it-a-model-for-the-west-22917)** > > For more than a decade, Singapore, along with South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Finland, has been at or near the top of international leagues tables that measure children’s ability in… The ministry of Education might want more common core type stuff but what they are getting is still mostly what you see in the rest of east asia. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/93 "2018-09-11T20:21:14Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Pretty sure you accused the teacher of drinking the Common Core cool aid. (A) I thought Common Core was supposed to make them better teachers. (B) the claim that the teachers are the problem preceded that statement. > [@](#): > > You can go on and on with your “crit race theory” and whatnot. I’d rather have cops shoot less unarmed people. > > How can you possibly be against that? I just don’t understand it. Maybe I need to spend a day in your shoes. :rolleyes: You seem to think that cops wake up in the morning thinking, gee, I’m going to shot an unarmed person today. Ad lets not be coy. The BLM movement has not bee about cops shooting unarmed people. It has been about the perceived disproportionate number of shooting victims that are black. It has been shown several times that cops do not in fact shoot black people more frequently after correcting for SES. And sure reducing cops shootings overall is a worthy goal. Demonizing cops is not. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/94 "2018-09-11T20:24:21Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I know there are bad teachers out there. It’s not the fault of common core, and to the degree that it’s anyone’s fault but their own, it’s the fault of a system that underpays teachers compared to other college grads, and consequently doesn’t attract folks who are both competent AND primarily motivated by money. You don’t need to be primarily motivated by money, either. You just need to require more money than teaching provides. I would never expect elementary level teaching to be a road to upper class wealth, but if a typical single income family can’t afford to level within an hour of the school, the salary is going to weed out potentially good teachers who just can’t afford to be teachers. The way we fund teachers means that you have to have another source of income to have a family. And, at least were I live, a significantly larger source of income. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/95 "2018-09-11T20:31:43Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > (A) I thought Common Core was supposed to make them better teachers. No–it’s supposed to make students better mathematicians. Coincidentally, I have a math professional development tomorrow, and I have homework for it–an article I have to read. I groaned and opened the article a couple of minutes ago, and lo and behold, it’s directly relevant to this conversation. All this talk about flexibility with numbers can be illustrated in this problem: How do you solve something like 299 x 7? If you’ve memorized a method, you can solve 7 x 9, then add that to 7 x 90, and then add that to 7 x 200. (You may not use that place value, you may just write them on staggered lines, and hope you line everything up). Like so: 63 + 630 + 1,400 That’s doable in your head, if you’re good at holding a lot of numbers in your head. But it’s real hard. If you have, instead, internalized a deep understanding of multiplication, you know that 299 x 7 means 299 groups of 7, and that’s nearly 300 groups of 7, which is also 7 groups of 3 hundreds. 7x3=21, no matter what the unit, so 7x3 hundreds is 21 hundred, or 2,100. And 299 sevens is just one less seven, or 2,100-7, or 2,093. (And I just double-checked with a calculator to avoid another embarrassing mistake, which is how mathematicians learn from their mistakes 🙂 ). That second method is a lot wordier, but I bet it’s very close to how a lot of y’all solved it in your heads. The goal of common-core style math work is to get more kids to be able to play with numbers like that. The memorization method won’t get kids there, but the deep understanding of multiplication that we’re working toward will. But it requires more work from teachers, far more work than passing out multiplication drills every day and leaving it at that. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/96 "2018-09-11T20:33:20Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > How would they do against a 100 Singaporeans? Also Singapore is kind of unique. They have a school system smaller than NYC or Los Angeles. At the same time the GDP per capita is among the highest in the world. They have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. It is also for all intents and purposes a (democratic/popular) dictatorship ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/97 "2018-09-11T20:36:32Z")
[Here’s a pretty cool video I accessed through my article](http://mathsolutions.com/NTWNC34): it shows a really good math teacher helping a class solve some problems using mental math. The girl at 1:20 is my favorite kid ever, for reasons that will be apparent :). ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/98 "2018-09-11T20:52:42Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > The schools I attended years ago had contempt for rote memorization as well: it was thought to be more important to understand the underlying concepts. This has been US pedagogy for decades. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Memorization, as I see it, is not the essence of math–but it is another cognitive tool, just like using a number line is a cognitive tool, or counting on your fingers is a cognitive tool. Add memorization to your toolbelt, and you’re gonna have an easier time following the three rules of choosing a method to solve a problem. Yup, and that was understood as well: you need to learn your times tables. Even a kid like me, who was better with concepts than memorization. I discounted memory, partly because I wasn’t good at it. But it’s a key aspect of learning foreign languages. It also has more general uses, like memorizing phone numbers (something I’m bad at), or remember syntax for whatever computer language you are using. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/99 "2018-09-11T20:59:20Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I haven’t called her out because you’re coming across as an unreliable narrator, and I’m not convinced that we’re getting all the relevant details. OK so why am I not coming across as a reliable narrator other than because I am critical of common core? I had no preconceived notions about common core, I had only heard of it in passing. I would have started bitching about it a lot sooner than now if had some sort of ideological issue with it. It may very well be user error on the part of the teacher but there certainly seems to be a lot of disdain for memorization. Perhaps that disdain goes away in later grades. But right now in the first month of 3rd grade, they are drawing little dots on graph paper and if you draw 3 rows of 7 dots you are wrong but if you draw 7 rows of 3 dots you are correct. Its third grade, they don’t have scores and grades don’t matter but they are putting confusing ideas into these kids’ heads. [quote] That said, though, what you’re saying is at least plausible. I’ve worked alongside, and under, teachers who have an appalling lack of understanding of math. [/quote Are there some methodologies that lend themselves to more user error than others? > [@](#): > > I know there are bad teachers out there. It’s not the fault of common core, and to the degree that it’s anyone’s fault but their own, it’s the fault of a system that underpays teachers compared to other college grads, and consequently doesn’t attract folks who are both competent AND primarily motivated by money. I happen to think teachers should get paid more but teachers don’t get paid very much in any society. Asian societies tend to have more respect and reverence for teachers but they don’t exactly pay them a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118/100 "2018-09-11T21:04:03Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I know there are bad teachers out there. It’s not the fault of common core, and to the degree that it’s anyone’s fault but their own, it’s the fault of a system that underpays teachers compared to other college grads, and consequently doesn’t attract folks who are both competent AND primarily motivated by money. Though I understand from the Economist magazine that simply raising teacher’s wages isn’t sufficient - it doesn’t have a great track record. Also, I’ll note that many private schools pay lower wages than public schools. Vouchers are no panacea because… parents aren’t all that hot at choosing curricula. They can tell which schools are safe. They can understand what a teacher:student ratio is. Underlying point: educational reform is really really hard. We haven’t figured it out yet. One virtue of Common Core is at least testing permits some level of comparison across states and school districts. But that’s fraught with problems too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-core-math/821118.md?page=6)