Gee, flash cards worked great for my kids. They excelled at math all the way to calculus and differential equations. How? They had (a) performing teachers and (b) parents that cared and helped.
Liberalism is...as liberalism does. A true horror story.
Yep.Today all you need is something like Khanacademy.org.
Public schools are a 19th century paradigm that outlived its usefulness in the late 20th century.
My daughter has a “special needs” situation where she cannot “memorize” large blocks of information. We found out when she was trying to memorize her times tables. I used to get mad at her when she would ask what day it was. Every day.
It is a “wiring” issue and no amount of work is going to correct it. So, rocket scientist was out of the question.
But, the teachers worked on concepts. They worked on the concept of subtraction, multiplication, and addition. And it worked. Generally, they figured she would have access to a calculator so if she understood the concepts...it would be OK.
We were lucky to live in a community where the teachers and the special ed folks had some brains.
When I read stories such as this Common Core stuff, I cringe at the thought of my daughter having to try to deal with this. She would have given up.
Instead, she is going to be a senior in college, on the deans lists and scholarships to the tune of no loans and a college tuition bill I can put on my low rate visa card...and pay it off in two months.