Posted on 12/04/2002 9:41:55 AM PST by Lizavetta
Learned responses can lead to creative and inventive outcomes. We know that Edison wasn't the "genius" that is portrayed in the movie, "Beautiful Mind". But Edison did invent the 20th Century. I visited that little lab in New Jersey as a high school student. What a marvelous place!
He gave the world light, sound, camera, and action!!!! His talent was to surround himself with intelligent and creative individuals and then he made his dreams a reality!
Social/socialist math. In a few years they can meet as a group when they try to calculate change for a dollar at McDonalds.
And in a few more after that they'll meet as a group to calculate what your allotment of McDonalds Vegan Delux Gruel should be based upon your race, enthusiasm for social justice, and footprint upon the earth mother...
He dropped out of school in the 3rd or 4th grade. His mother DID educated him for some limited period of time.
My daughter, last year in 8th grade, spent two weeks writing an essay for her math class. Why? I never quite figured that out.
This same school, a Catholic elementary school, wasted years of these students lives with the Univ of Chicago Math books. My youngest had it from 1st grade, by the 4th grade could not even add single digit numbers. And she was the norm for the class. They did finally get rid of this stuff, but it took a lot of complaining. My hubby and I went to a kids' book store that carried homeschooling supplies and got Saxon math books to get her up to speed.
Okay; but his mother's participation in his education was also fairly limited in the sense that he was doing experiments on his own at a very young age, building telegraphs and such, and was employed by the Railroad by the age of 12. Beyond the first few years, he was for all practical purposes self-educated.
I "figured" that you would be interested in this.
That's the problem: 4 freeloaders and 1 worker.
That's how I see it. Problem solving will be a great tool for my children to have........later. Having "problem solving" stuck in your face before you are totally grounded in the basics is asking for that deer in the headlights math phobia that I, for one, wound up with. I can't help but feel that scrambling with abstracts before you have the methods is teaching math out of order.
This reminds me of the "whole language" sham that is being thrust upon children learning to read, where the "context" is supposed to be the guide for what the word is, NOT the sounds each letter makes. In my opinion, context reading can be used for definitions of words, NOT the actual reading of the word. Yet another fraud the government schools use that make me madder than a wet hen.
I repeat - PROBLEM SOLVING IS NOT JUST ANOTHER WORD PROBLEM. IT IS WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO.
So many people equate word problems with problem solving. They are not the same thing!
There is so very much truth to what you say. The NEA loves little groups - communes if you will - where each may provide according to his ability while supplying the non-contributors according to their need. In other words, the ambitious end up carrying the dead wood until they finally tire of it and fall in line with the lowest common denominator.
Incidentally, this method has crept into colleges as well. They tell us that they are teaching "socialization" but what they are really teaching is socialism.
Whatever reason parents send their children to public school, it isn't for academic benefit. The only way public school students can do well is if, as in the article above, their parents provide homeschooling or tutoring outside the school.
When are the taxpayers going to wise up?
I'm thinking that many people's perceptions of what constitutes word problems v. problem solving may be different than the perceptions of others. I've always described math problems that involve words as "story problems", even in calculus and physics classes. Many of those problems involved the cumulative knowledge of previous chapters' lessons along with the new lesson. These problems, at least in the math arena, always followed some increasingly difficult repitition in the functions being studied as well as those studied prior.
I'm kind of hoping that you could provide some kind of example of what you are describing when you refer to each. Not nit-picking; rather, I'm just trying to discern what you are thinking when you compare the two.
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