Well, I am horrified by what I saw yesterday. I have 3 kids, youngest is first yr of high school (9th grade). Two older kids did very well, never needed school help. Mom and I had it easy. #3, while a good kid, is determined to be different in all possible ways-including doing well in Math. So, I had a conference with the math teacher to find out why the grades were so bad (yeah, it is terribly late for that. In my defence his first 3 quarters were pretty good and he promised to do better) I was horrified. The teacher showed me his “textbooks”. I note the part about text. These books didn’t have any. Not a word. They are two modern (in the US) Algebra I textbooks widely used in a good school with good students. They are in fact hardcover workbooks. The only teaching one can find in them is a few examples where the solution steps are written out. Each chapter consists of a large number of rote problems, a few “word problems” which are really just words wrapped around another equation to solve. There is no attempt to explain concepts, answer questions, provide any help to the student. Back in 1995 I sat on the state textbook adoption committee (for Louisiana) as a parent representative. We shocked everyone by rejecting many of the books. That caused a stink! But the books weren’t very good and didn’t necessarily teach well the concepts the curriculum was emphasizing. So we voted em down. Eventually got overruled because the state had to have something to teach with. Anyway, those books were marvels of education compared to what I saw yesterday. It has only been seven years. WTF? The teacher says all the math books are like this. Her job is to present a concept in the first 15 minutes of the class and then stand by while the students work problem after problem for the rest of the class.
I know the US is “getting back to basics” and “teaching to the tests”, but this is plain rediculous. Those books had no educational value at all. Have I just stumbled onto a weird case or is this story familiar to others?