Common Core's Dirtiest Trick: Dividing Parents and Children

American Thinker ^ | April 15, 2014 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

When you look back at New Math (ca. 1965) and Reform Math (ca. 1990), one of the most striking and persistent features was that parents could not understand the homework which their children brought home.

Mystified parents were trying to advise mystified children. The parents, presumably the wise members of the society, were helpless to say anything useful when confronted by the weird complexities of “reform” math, which has now been rolled forward into Common Core.

Here is a commonplace horror story that can stand in for millions of others: “When Mike and Camille Chudzinski tried to help their son with his homework earlier this fall, they were bewildered. The fourth-grader brought home no spelling lists, few textbooks, and a whole new approach to solving math problems. When he tackled multi-digit addition, for instance, Patrick did not just line up the two numbers and then add the columns, as his parents had been taught to do. Instead, he sketched out a graph with a series of arrows and marks that appeared at first to his parents as indecipherable as hieroglyphics.”

When we hear these stories, we typically focus on the comical oddity of adults not being able to do homework intended for children. How is that even possible? But the ramifications are anything but funny. The real damage is that Reform Math opens up fractures throughout society Parents are cut off from their children. Parents and schools are pitted against each other. Students are alienated from their teachers and schools.

Sociologist James Coleman said that the most important thing in successful education is what he called “social capital.” Ideally, parents, kids, schools, and community are on the same page, working toward the same goals. In this way the children feel they are doing appropriate and necessary things...

[bigbob]

Yep, show the kid how their parent is just too dumb to even be able to help them with homework, and you’ve started undermining the parents credibility in everything else.

[BenLurkin]

Parent will have to teach their kids how to do it the right way.

[all the best]

Education is something that happens LOCALLY there is no need for no-it-all bureaucrats in Washington to get involved. Period. Never.

[oldtech]

There should be no federal gov’t. dep’t. of education;they should have absolutely nothing to do with it. They can’t even do the basic stuff right;things that are supposed to be a function of federal gov’t.

[Wayne07]

Don't worry, this is dumbing down math, so parents will still be able to help their kids.

The only confusion will come from parents wondering why their kids are still in public school.

[I want the USA back]

Yes, that is one of the intended consequences of this idiotic government takeover of education.

[RitaOK]

Open rebellion should be mustered. If not over education, then what? Education has collapsed America and guarantees our future shall be stolen permanently. Education is the breeding ground for more Marxists coming.

If we won’t muster for this cause and fight, trust me, we will fight for nothing, ever.

Bring kids home en masse and save the nation. It has to be done. The clock is running out. Union tactics should be borrowed and we should organize, united against this open WAR on FAMILIES.

[clearcarbon]

I think the most important lesson in today’s mathematics is to be able to recognize when a calculating device has produced a questionable result.

[BobL]

Usually I trash parents on this site for STILL sending their kids to public school, while rationalizing that their specific public schools are immune from what is happening in virtually every other public school.

But this time I won’t. Instead, if you do send your kid to public school, you must MAKE SURE he learns math properly, and EARLY, and stays WELL AHEAD of what’s going on in school. For example, if division is ‘taught’ in 4th grade, you MAKE SURE junior has learned it by 2nd grade (i.e., push his schedule forward). So, by the time he’s in 4th grade, he can do all the doodling and write all the essays that now count as “math”, have fun with it, but also know how to get the RIGHT ANSWER. And you need to take that approach right up to Calculus.

There are various ways to make sure junior learns math - you can “after-school” him, rather than have him play piano (or football), for example. You can use after-school learning centers, which, actually do teach it right. You can use tutors. But you MUST DO SOMETHING if you keep your kid in these schools, or he will be paralyzed for life in the job market. It is a lot of work, buy you WILL NEVER regret doing it.