Posted on 10/21/2014 8:41:57 AM PDT by BenLurkin
COSTA MESA (CBSLA.com) — A discussion over the controversial new curriculum, known as Common Core, got heated Monday night in Costa Mesa during a special meeting at the Orange County Board of Education.
Those on both sides of the initiative, which encompasses state standards, spoke out although no decision was reached during the meeting.
“Our job is to educate students. To look at both sides. And I think that that’s what Common Core wants you to do. Critical thinking,” said one attendee.
But even some teachers admit that no one really knows what Common Core is.
“I think it’s supposed to be standards that promote critical thinking in our students,” said the attendee. “If that’s what it is, then I fully support it and I would think everybody does.”
But Bridget Huso, a Huntington Beach parent, told KCAL9’s Stacey Butler that she blames Common Core for frustrating students and teachers alike.
“She would come home from school and say, ‘I’m stupid’ and ‘I don’t want to go to school,'” recalled Huso of her youngest daughter.
That’s when she made the decision to home-school her three youngest children.
“We need to stick with the basics. Why are we trying to re-create this new thing,” Huso said.
The next public hearing to discuss Common Core is scheduled for Nov. 17, Butler reported.
Critical thinking skills cannot be built on a sand foundation
where successful approximation at correct spelling is a satisfactory result
and math problems become an exercise in breaking down the formula
so it can be solved on the fingers
rather than knowing math FACTS
while applying the correct order of operations.
Critical thinking allows you to use established facts
to make sense of the world around you,
not to create some alternate universe of unicorns pooping rainbow skittles across the sky.
T-Bird came close to what I want in his greasy (am I deciphering correctly? .. /8^) .. ) #17
oops ... ping to #22
Yeah, that first sentence was a doozy but I just couldn’t stop myself. Good breakdown, no forgiveness required! Have a great FReepin’ day!!
If it were only for information, no one would need public schools (I’d argue that we don’t). Schools are to house kids so both parents can work, and schools are for social sheepherding, and schools are for carrot and stick making kids do their learning.
Common core is forcing kids everywhere to get the exact same education. That is dead wrong when now you can get nearly for free info from all sides about any subject. Common core wants all Americans to have the same exact facts in their heads. It’s more of a box of facts than we need with the explosion of variety of facts available to us.
Also, it’s politically correct. Thus not allowing for other opinions. It’s important for kids to learn from true real documents and books of the times they study, not everything washed through a filter of liberal education experts.
The private High school school off aviation in manhattan beach is very proud of it. Forget the name.
Love it ... thanx, Yaelle
Your post reveals a worldview that the lefties don’t share.
Your post is based on the assumption that “objective truth” and “objective reality” actually exist.
The don’t believe that.
From what I can discern, Common Core attempts to teach expert thinking without teaching the long path needed to get a young mind to that point. Yes, some of those crazy CC math examples ARE representative of how mathematicians actually think about math, but they think that way not because they were taught some convoluted technique in the beginning, but because they started with simple processes and elaborated on them until the concepts were internalized to a point where complex sequences _are_ perceived as simple. The educators implementing these CC approaches don’t actually understand the mental model themselves, so they’re teaching by testing precise “show your work” in complicated sequences rather than evaluating for actual comprehension.
I remember being taught “estimation” in 3rd grade. It was similarly insane, trying to get kids to act on a sense of numbers which they did not have. After you’ve done arithmetic for years (decades?) you may reach a point where you can juggle numbers like juggling recipe ingredients, but you can’t get to that point without lots of precise measuring and faltering attempts in the process of developing that sense.
CC is like trying to teach gourmet cooking without any measuring devices (cups, scales, rulers) and using recipes which include complex sub-recipes that create extra material (”...use a little of the resulting sauce, and refrigerate the rest for later use”) - and grading it with Hell’s Kitchen like brutality over any deviation from the intended result and method for achieving it.
They simultaneously believe that one can immediately grasp objective truth, and that there is only one correct path to it.
The have no comprehension that a long and sometimes convoluted mental process is required to elevate one’s mind to the level of comprehending an objective truth, and that there may be numerous paths (some more suitable for some individuals than others) to it.
Put another way, they believe they instantly understand something, and the way they understand it is the only way to understand it - dolling out punishments for anyone who grasps it differently and/or concludes it’s wrong.
Cognitive dissonance culturalized.
Excellent points.
The fact that students learning Common Core are to be graded based on their adherence to an illogical “process” rather than graded based on the accuracy of the results they obtain proves — to me — that CC is a poor tool for use in the real world.
If anything, CC resembles the precise recitation of a magic spell.
Who could have guessed that “progress” in education would lead us back into “superstition”?
Is what you really want a way to criticize Common Core or do you want a way to fix education?
(in my best gomer pyle)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.