Galt's Gulch
11

A rational response to a nonsensical Common Core math question

Posted by Non_mooching_artist 9 years, 8 months ago to Education
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Well, kudos to this kid who used logic to state a fact.
Big raspberries to the teacher, and the response written below the student's. I would feel hot, burning shame if I ever wrote such and idiotic statement. She/he may as well have stuck their tongue out, that response was so obnoxious.
SOURCE URL: http://conservativetribune.com/kid-destroys-common-core-words/

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  • Posted by LionelHutz 9 years, 8 months ago
    I actually do math in my head this way, but it isn't the way I was taught. It's easier to convert the terms into 10s and 100s and 1000s and shift the small change into the end. However, teaching you to do this from the beginning of math lessons is a mistake because if you can't quickly add a single digit number to a two digit number by sight, you are in trouble. This method is a timesaver when we're talking about numbers two digits and greater, but with such a trivial example, it's actually just adding a lot of overhead to the process - making you think "math is confusing and hard". This is a shortcut that should be taught around the same time when they're teaching how to estimate sums rather than calculating precise sums.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 8 months ago
    I was helping my daughters (one year apart in school but same math class) factor polynomials last night - that's breaking x^2 + 4x + 4 into (x + 2)(x + 2). A full SIX of the twelve problems were polynomials which could not be factored down - ie they were bogus questions. Then I looked at the bottom of the page as to whom made the questions: Common Core. I just shook my head and told my kids that they should tell their teacher to proof all the assignments before handing them out. They need to focus more on the math and less on the ideology.
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    • Posted by $ Susanne 9 years, 8 months ago
      It's not to teach them math... it's to teach them that the "authority" is wiser than they are - they will have the correct answers... even if (and when) they're wrong - and therefore should be listened to, obeyed, and revered.
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  • Posted by helidrvr 9 years, 8 months ago
    WHy is it that almost everybody looks at CC math and stops there. Math is just the tip of a monstrous Iceberg.

    http://youtu.be/Si-kx5-MKSE
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    • Posted by Bobhummel 9 years, 8 months ago
      probably because "correct and incorrect" is so clearly defined in mathematics. CC history, CC literature, just like environmentalism disguised as the CC natural sciences are all easier to manipulate into the statist's ideology. You need to be an expert (or at least and educated layman) in those fields to wave the BS flag. Basic math is easy for everyone to understand. When the fundamentals are being manipulated and distorted, it is easy to identify.
      We have a difficult task ahead to dismember Common Core because it is tied to government funding.

      I absolutely loved Esda's base thirteen answer above. The CC teachers likely have no idea what that means, because they are not educated to understand the concepts, just to indoctrinate.

      Cheers
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      • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 8 months ago
        I agree with Bobhummel. One looks to mathematics as a paradigm of the whole process because math is imminently 'answerable'.

        I (a non-mathematician) feel that the problem is technically incorrect. If you ask in a word problem, "How do you make eight and five come out to ten with some left over." that is OK. But if you write: 8+5 then you imply that this is a sum...and the answer is NOT 10. Anything that implies that it is 10 is factually incorrect.

        Jan, counts on fingers and toes
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    • Posted by Non_mooching_artist 9 years, 8 months ago
      History is getting taught out of sequence to skew context. And the reasons things happen the way they did, as a consequence of what PRECEDED said events. Don't even get me started on the lack of classic literature being taught! Creative writing is going to be lost. Argumentative is what replaces it. Sigh....
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      • Posted by scinch 9 years, 8 months ago
        It's late...please explain how history is being taught out of sequence? I still have content standards to teach and the Common Core is just but one tool in the kit of strategies to read and think like a historian.
        For the first time ever...I've been freed from the inch deep-mile wide approach to world history. I just finished a month long unit to start the year on the Age of Reason (Enlightenment) to establish the grounds for democratic thinking and change around the world. For the first time ever, I've had the time at my discretion to utilize important primary source documents versus the shittiest textbook on earth, for the students to read and write about. I finally have kids understanding Locke's concept of life, liberty and property. I even had one kid after we read the Declaration of Independence try to convince me that John Locke wrote it and not Jefferson.
        I have kids that can now understand the differences in Hobbes view of the Social Contract with Rousseau's collectivist view of the Social Contract. For me being a history teacher...I can now teach history.

        As for the math teachers down the hall...well they are tearing the hair from their heads trying to figure this shit out.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 9 years, 8 months ago
    You still come up with thirteen at the end. Ten becomes an intermediate step. There's no reason even to think of intermediate steps. They always told me they wanted a final answer.
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  • Posted by UncommonSense 9 years, 8 months ago
    What drugs were the zombies who created this "math" taking when they came up with such mental insanity? And this is simple arithmetic. I can only imagine calculus: one problem would take 4 hours to complete.
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    • Posted by $ Susanne 9 years, 8 months ago
      IF they could complete it using this backhanded smoke-n-mirrors approach. My thought is they would have to go to the "authority figure" to tell them what the answer is - right, wrong, or indifferent.

      Showing it's not a lesson in math - its a lesson in acquiescence and obedience.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 9 years, 8 months ago
    I discussed this particular problem with a teacher I know who is in favor of common core. I asked why this kind of thing is taught. Her answer?...They are actually teaching the kids (with this particular problem) to break problems into 10s "because that's easier to handle". See, something like times tables is too advanced now. While I appreciate her honesty...this leaves me chilled.

    My life is built on math skills. I'm a professional engineer and also do work in the finance industry. I think common core is a disaster. I actually see it as assult on our children. They must be doing this on purpose. Nobody is so stupid to pass this off as an honest program...
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 8 months ago
    I disagree with the math question and agree with the kid's response. You can't always take only 2 from 5 and add it. Suppose you have one circuit pulling 5mA and another pulling 8mA. Your power budget only allows 10mA. You cannot simply subtract current you wish you weren't pulling.

    Based on all of the politicization of Common Core, I suspect this wrongheaded question has almost nothing whatsoever to do with Common Core.
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  • Posted by m082844 9 years, 8 months ago
    The assault against reason is subtle. Since when is achieving 10 by adding 8 and 5 not wrong? I could understand regrouping the values in (8+5) so that one of them is 10 is possible, i.e., (8 + 5) = (10 + 3). But that's not what the question was asking. The quesion that was asked wasn't meant to be understood, in my opinion -- this is the attack on reason by the attempt at making the world not understandable.
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  • Posted by NealS 9 years, 8 months ago
    The only thing I like about Common Core is that some are starting to call it "Obamacore", it's got a special ring to it. I'm still trying to figure out the concept behind the "Number Line" thing somehow demonstrating that 427 - 316 = 111. There is little difference between Obamacore and "Michellecare". โ€œThe federal regulations restrict snack foods at school to only those with at least 50% whole grain, low sugar, fat, and sodium, as well as less than 200 calories." Damn, get out of our lives. Where does it say that the federal government tells us what and how to teach and what we can and can't eat. I would never have made it through school had it not been for the Snickers bar, and I was never obese, not even fat, just skinny as a rail (at least until now over age 70).
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  • Posted by woodlema 9 years, 8 months ago
    Ok, first let me preface this by saying if you teaching this as a math class, the question is bogus. If your teaching this as a "
    Creative Problem Solving Puzzle" I totally understand this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epR-NvH6...

    The problem is in the context of the question. Is this math or creative problem solving. I would pose the teacher could be said to be wrong. Why not take 5 from the 8 and add 5+5,= 10, then add the 3 remaining from the 8. Government in its effort to "try" to do good does nothing but screw things up.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 8 months ago
    When I was a kid, back in the stone age, I got every bit as inane comments from teachers of English and Social Studies. Example (grade 11) Q: Explain socialism. My answer was something like "It's where the government owns everything and everyone works for the government." Not too bad for a 16 year old. Teacher's answer: "It's where the top and bottom of the income ladder is cut off." I didn't know how to respond at that age, with my limited knowledge. All I knew at the time was that it didn't seem right. I could go on and on with examples from my sons and grandchildren's experiences. Giving my grandson some books, he asked me after reading them, "How can they get away teaching that stuff?" My response -- "Because we let them."
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  • Posted by amhunt 9 years, 8 months ago
    Given the logic employed in the "answer" there are an infinite number of answers. I doubt that the "teacher" is aware of that or much else for that matter.
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  • Posted by brando79az 9 years, 8 months ago
    The way I was trained, in the 80s and then in college in the 90s, is to set up an alegebraic equation to solve for 10. I would have solved for (a) by "moving over" 8 and 5 by subtracting them from 10.
    a=10-8-5
    a=-3
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