Common Core

...or how I stopped worrying about the Atomic Bomb because I gotta learn seven ways to do math.

Listen. I've heard all of the sides of the Common Core debate, and while I am "only" a service provider, I work with some kids who are in typical classrooms who have to learn Common Core items. The Math is the larger problem, particularly in the younger grades (which is where I have experience at this point).

Do I think it's a good idea to have standards? Yes. But the implementation of the standards is left up to each state.

For those of you who think this is much ado about nothing and parents are having knee-jerk reactions about Common Core without really understanding things, let me give you a nice real-world example.

I work with a kid. To obscure details, let's call her Susie. Susie is a terrific kid who has a moderate bilateral hearing loss, which is just about completely corrected with hearing aids. She is a bilingual kid whose family speaks exclusively Russian. Because her family emigrated when she was four, her hearing loss wasn't discovered until she was five, putting her way behind the eight-ball.

Susie also suffers from incredible anxiety. She gets especially anxious about her schoolwork and worries that she will get something wrong, because she feels like she has to work extra hard because she feels "slow". (Testing has proven that her IQ is absolutely average, but in addition to her hearing loss, she also suffers from a processing problem, in part because she's now trilingual, adding ASL into the mix.)

In fourth grade, Susie had to learn how to do the same math problem seven different ways. The fact that she could completely grasp the "usual" way to do things no longer mattered--now it was about the process.

Please, someone tell me how that relates to the real world. Sit down, Sam, I know that we learn these things because eventually we have to think in non-linear ways about math. But in the real world, if you can do the math, whichever way you do it doesn't matter as long as the answer is accurate.

I think that Susie should learn other ways to do the math. But I don't think she should learn them at an age (8) where she can see no benefit from thinking about it this way. I do think it's too early. And I know the heartbreak of a kid whose parents can't understand why she's so upset about her schoolwork because she knows a way to get to the right answer and her worksheets are still looking like she's failing, making her miserable and even more anxious about school.

Welcome to the vicious cycle.

Seemingly Random Anecdote That Definitely Pertains to the Topic at Hand:
Most of the people reading this, all five of you, will either know of or know personally my mother. Carolyn was everyone's favorite teacher. She's still mine, truth to tell. As she taught Kindergarten for the majority of her career, she would see kiddos as they came into school and so often, particularly this time of year, she would come home looking worried. And she would extemporize to me the following: "why do so many people feel that they have to push their kids into school early? Some kids need an extra year with Mom [ed. note: this was still in the age when there were plenty of one-income households in the district], and I know I'm going to see these kids repeat Kindergarten because they are just not ready. I have far too many four-year-olds in the mix."

She began to look into the phenomenon and found that a very large longitudinal study was done that showed that kiddos who start Kindergarten at age 6 and graduate High School at 19 were more successful at age 25 than their peers who started school just one year earlier.

So let's take that and apply it now. Everything in education seems to be earlier. Kids are learning about concepts earlier than I was introduced to them in school.

Why?

If the study above shows anything, it shows that we need time to process and we do better if we are given said concepts later.

(Also: why the bleep are we trying to rob these kids of an actual childhood? I don't have the energy to go there. But feel free to talk amongst yourselves.)

I do think that Common Core needs to go, but that's just my opinion, based on the fact that the people who thought up the standards for each grade keep pushing things to earlier grades, and they should bleeping KNOW BETTER. If the little "Think It Up" telethon thing I saw a few Fridays back is any indication, the jobs we are preparing these kids for do not exist yet--so how do we know how to prepare them in the first place?

For now, why don't we do the drill and kill math facts in fourth grade that served people like Richard Feynman and Neil deGrasse Tyson well, and then maybe we start teaching kids seven ways to do a simple math problem in seventh grade as a break from learning all the new concepts and pre-algebraic stuff. Then they can see the value in a different route to the answer.

I think these kids can be what the future needs if we stop trying to reinvent the wheel and instead look to how to build an actual foundation of skills, starting with making sure the basics are mastered.

I'm Fed Up

I don’t try to make waves about things. And I don’t like discussing controversial topics in particular, but I’m about to try to hit home with something that bothers me that our culture as a whole thinks is perfectly normal.

This morning I woke to my radio alarm, as most mornings. As I slogged out of bed, I noted to myself the advertisement I heard, and I realized that I had accepted this as a normal advertisement to hear on any given day, and I heard the lies that it feeds all of us. So I wrote a parody of it to make a point. 

The copy below is NOT what I heard--but I want to be clear: I only changed the phrasing slightly to suit the material. About 2/3 of it is EXACTLY what I heard--just with a different message about how we view ourselves: 

Do you have a problem with your gayness? Is it something that you have said to yourself, time and again, that you really just need to get it under control? Well, we here at the GayAway Reformation Center have a plan that will fit in easily with your current lifestyle. No longer will you have to worry about how many people of the opposite sex you are attracted to—we will give you a number that is appropriate for you and help you stick to it! I have gone through the GayAway plan myself and now I am healthier because I am appropriately attracted to the right gender for me….and it was easy! No more looking for ways that I shouldn’t want this person or that person, but instead I read the material that my very fabulous—whoops, should I say that?—GayAway consultant gave me and just stuck to the plan. We know it’s hard to get away from the gay when you have so many stressors in your life, so we take the guesswork right out of the equation for you!

I imagine that any company like that would be firebombed by any one of about eighteen different civil rights groups. But I'm trying to make a point here. 

Now I want you to imagine that somewhere in the 1920s, this GayAway thing became a bit of a fad. People wanted nuclear families and natural proclivities were getting in the way of that. People wanted to look differently than they felt. 

They wanted to fit in. 

And an entire industry was built around the notion of going against your genetics and "winning" a battle that God never intended us to wage, an industry that bloomed even larger after World War II. "Straight is great!" becomes a motto, a rallying cry--not just for fundamentalists, but suddenly doctors get in on the act and come up with some statistics about how having a heterosexual relationship has incredible health benefits. The detractors don't gain ground because most people want to fit in with how everyone else looks. 

You're repulsed, right? I hope you are. 

But I wonder if you've ever stopped to consider the phrase "thin is in."