answer this CC question ... !

Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 11 months ago to Education
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these folks are nuts! . I have taught kids, and
this kind of question is stupid. . they hate
"word problems" !!! -- j

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  • Posted by brando79az 10 years, 10 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I totally agree. Brackets were unnecessary. Another thing, however, is that when I was in 5th grade I did not know the order of operations. I do not remember learning them until I was in 7th grade (maybe even 8th!) I understand things change with the times but I remember all my word problems to be 1 step, maybe 2 step processes (without brackets or perentheticals.) Maybe this is because I did not use a calculator? I understand calculators are common in education these days.
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  • Posted by woodlema 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I do not think they are dense at all in this idea. Remember it is EASY to govern the stupid, errr. let me use a better proper word. "Ignorant".
    THAT is the goal.
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  • Posted by NealS 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Precisely my reasoning on this 7's thing, 0, 1, or 10. Since 1 and 10 were listed I chose 1. I almost skipped the first one, then all of a sudden it came to me what they were asking for. I have no idea what any of these had to do with math. They had more to do with trying to figure out what they were asking.

    My kids are grown now, my grandkids are just starting college. That's even scarier, politically what they're going to get brainwashed into. At least they're in Eastern Washington where there are more responsible human beings than here in the West. The majorities (Seattle and Western Washington) however do not have the same opportunities to learn to think for themselves. That's what we need to be scared about.

    I don't think my parents ever worried about what or how I was being taught, much the same as I really didn't worry too much about my children. I do worry for everyone today. It's actually another learning lesson for me how educators and want to be educators can influence youth.
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  • Posted by term2 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    How about teaching people how to think, and also how to trade with other people to promote ones life. There are calculators now to take care of a lot of the need for "common core math". Of all the skills, being able to think and deal with thinking while you are under emotional influences is the MOST important
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  • Posted by term2 10 years, 11 months ago
    That is a pretty dumb test. I cant believe 3rd graders would understand the questions, let alone have the concentration to get through them
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  • Posted by mccannon01 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    LOL, sumitch, you made me smile. I can recall decades ago the mantra was "The earth is cooling and NYC is going to be under 200 feet of ice by the year 2000 and it's all your fault so we have to limit your rights and tax you more to combat it." Then it became "The earth is warming and NYC is going to be under 200 feet of water by the year 2015 and it's all your fault so we have to limit your rights and tax you more to combat it." Now it's "The earth's climate is changing and we don't know what going to happen, but it's all your fault and we have to limit your rights and tax you more to combat it." They can't miss with the last one! Whatever!
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Me too. It asked for the value of the digit comparing one to the other. This is confusing and stupid. This is what you get when non-educators who think they can educate better than actual teachers, get control.

    My daughter is a HS math teacher. Her cousin graduated from SLU at the same time with a degree in "political science." Cousin is now in DC "teaching" inner-city kids as a "Teach for America" job. Now, she had no college courses in education, but she "knows" how to teach these inner-city kids. She spends 6 hrs each day focused on 3 students, sitting next to them in the classroom and helping them read assignments and complete their work. My daughter, on the other hand, has classes of 24+ students with all the various predilections of contemporary students (lack of discipline, phones/texting, disengaged parents, etc.). There were some interesting discussions over the Christmas break. Of course, my niece had "all the answers," while my daughter merely nodded politely. After the cousin's family left, we discussed this type of mentality. My daughter was as conservative as me to begin with, and now she is seeing what she will have to deal with in the education and political hierarchy. She's seriously thinking of moving to private school teaching.
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  • Posted by mccannon01 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Agreed, NealS, on both. It seems the do not call list is a telemarketers phone book.

    That question is truly lame. It asks to compare the digits themselves, not the power of 10 they reside in. I guessed the answer should be 1, as in 1x7=7. If 0 was a choice, I would have picked that, as in no difference between those two digits at all. So now, based on the PC writer's English-as-a-second-language question, you could have three possible answers: 0, 1, 10.

    This is "newspeak" math separating the generations and destroying our kids minds.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No. I did it all in my own head. My teachers taught me to do that. They also made and enforced a rule: no calculators, and no borrowing, from our parents, the mechanical adding machines that were all the rage then.
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  • Posted by Zenphamy 10 years, 11 months ago
    I got them, but I was always good at word questions.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    well, I think that it's the 3rd answer;;; this shows
    the illegitimacy of this quiz!!! -- j

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  • Posted by LetsShrug 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That was the one I got wrong because I didn't understand the brackets!! Also, yes, I totally agree that part of the CC goal IS to make parents look like they don't have the answers, and if my parents are confused then they'll be okay with accepting confusion and they'll just get used to being confused and not wanting to think hard to make things make sense and wait for someone else, who MUST be smarter, to spoon feed them answers. gag!
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  • Posted by $ Mimi 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I had trouble in a math class when we were using Pearson products. The questions were similar to these. They also put out objectionable history lessons. It’s a British company. Do we really want a British company explaining the American Revolutionary war? Lol.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I think you have something there.

    The wording of some of these questions is just insane. Not reasonable for real-world but overly and unnecessarily complex.

    My daughter is a HS math teacher (her first year). If she's going to be receiving students taught with this claptrap, I really pity her.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Oh How I Wish! . but, like idiots, politicians keep on
    becoming more and more clever!!! -- j

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  • Posted by $ puzzlelady 10 years, 11 months ago
    Presumably the students are drilled in how to read such problems, unlike us coming in cold. They learn the special meanings of the jargon used. I don't object to word problems if they are not ambiguous. Perhaps that's the point here, to decode the ambiguity. Will that prepare students to see through politicians' lies?
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    by the 3rd grade we had the multiplication tables to 12² down cold, by 5th we were learning how to do square roots and complex division, some geometry, and basic English grammar and composition. . If you didn't know the "basics" by 8th grade, you didn't go on to your freshman year... VERY FEW (maybe 1 out of 100+) got held back.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    yes! . they can distort the facts about climate
    much easier than about terrorist actions. -- j

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  • Posted by sumitch 10 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Sure they did. You can play catch your tail for years talking about global warming/cooling/climate change and not get anywhere. But if you start dealing with reality (terrorism) then it's harder to hide the facts.
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