Public school math goes full retard: 3 * 4 = 11?

[Ensam]

Of course this conversation has been going on since the mid 60s.

See Tom Lehrer c.a. 1965:

 

[placer]

Hamster logic in action. If you feel strongly enough that 3 * 4 = 11, well, by golly, 3 * 4 is 11 for you. Because it's all about feelings and facts be damned.

 

[Architekt]

Not necessarily. The method can be 100% correct, but you accidentally mess something up, e.g. copying wrong or just a mental mistake.

What is the point of teaching someone that it's ok to get things wrong, as long as you can explain why or you know ? It makes literally no sense at all

Getting over a 50% mark here is considered a pass. Marks are awarded for your working... Leaving say 25% of the final answers you actually need to have correct to pass a test. Let's see, if we released a fresh bunch of graduates into the industry who are only actually getting the right numbers 25-50% of the time what the fuck is going to happen to all the projects they're working on?

The point where a condom breaks is now 3.4*10⁴ instead of 6.0*10⁵, because someone did all the working correctly but messed up a number somewhere. Suddenly there are bitches getting pregnant left right and centre and more retarded babies than we know what to do with. Suddenly mothers are starting to die during abortions because, while the doctors are practicing the right methods, they are only performing the right procedure 50% of the time. On the plus side, you won the lotto today - unfortunately, you only got $240.00 instead of $240,000. They were pretty close, and it's better than nothing - at least you can enjoy a nice meal at a restaurant for the first time in a while... except the chefs cooked your salmon the way they should cook a steak. Hey, at least they demonstrated that they know the method for cooking a steak, right? On the way home, after your meal, you get to a set of traffic lights and half of the lights have been put on upside down so no one knows whether to go or stop and it's pandemonium and chaos, and ambulances are crashing into the fire trucks which are crashing into civilian cars and the building to the right is about to collapse because, while the foundations are solid, they are uneven and the building is leaning over to one side, putting more stress on the already over worked structure.

A bit ridiculous, but I think I made my point..

I also find it interesting that they're encouraging the children to justify why they did something, but they themselves can never explain to the children (or even understand, probably) why they do the things they do in school.

 

[Goldin Boy]

But if the answer was wrong ergo your method was wrong too. There's no need to reward incorrectness.

This sort of subjectivity in assessments is better suited for literature, which more open to multiple interpretations.

Not necessarily. The method can be 100% correct, but you accidentally mess something up, e.g. copying wrong or just a mental mistake.

If the the question was 4 * 3 and the kid write 11 in the answer box with the second "1" having been an accident, he's still wrong.

I went to a dentist for a root canal on tooth on the left side of my mouth a year ago. She was gonna anethesize the right side but I asked what the hell was she doing.

She had the x-ray upside down. She knows how to do a root canal but would've done the wrong tooth.

If I were asleep(which I insisted against) should I have said:"It's ok that her end result was wrong as the did the procedure correctly" after jacking up a good tooth?

 

[TheRookie]

This may seem just stupid, but it is inherently anti-male instruction - what smart little boy will want to sit there explaining the "how" and the "why" of such elementary problems? Utter nonsense - and it slows the math instruction down to a slow crawl so the bright students will be bored to tears.

Exactly my experience. I easily-grasped the concepts in primary school, and could tell the teacher the answer instantly. It required no thought. I didn't see why this would be considered 'wrong', but it was, and I was dragged to the Principal, back in the day when there was still corporal punishment.

"You could be cheating, or have read the answers. You need to write down the process."

"But it's slower. If the answer is right, why does it matter?"

"That's just how it's done. We can't make exceptions for you. How would the other children feel..."

Maths became the most boring subject in the world after that, and my interest degraded because of the tedious, unnecessary process to the degree that even now, I always know the answer right away, but then think i've done something wrong for not working it out slowly and methodically, so mentally then go through the longer process to arrive at the same answer.

Basically: i mentally self-sabotage my mathematical ability because of the repeated shaming of women in eduation.

I really need to train myself back out of that.

This policy is anti-male.

I can relate Bosch. I was advanced in Math until my family moved across the country to a school district that taught the dumbed-down new age math, where showing your steps and demonstrating processes is more important than getting the right answer. Lost interest in math almost immediately.

 

[gringochileno]

This may seem just stupid, but it is inherently anti-male instruction - what smart little boy will want to sit there explaining the "how" and the "why" of such elementary problems? Utter nonsense - and it slows the math instruction down to a slow crawl so the bright students will be bored to tears.

Exactly my experience. I easily-grasped the concepts in primary school, and could tell the teacher the answer instantly. It required no thought. I didn't see why this would be considered 'wrong', but it was, and I was dragged to the Principal, back in the day when there was still corporal punishment.

"You could be cheating, or have read the answers. You need to write down the process."

"But it's slower. If the answer is right, why does it matter?"

"That's just how it's done. We can't make exceptions for you. How would the other children feel..."

Maths became the most boring subject in the world after that, and my interest degraded because of the tedious, unnecessary process to the degree that even now, I always know the answer right away, but then think i've done something wrong for not working it out slowly and methodically, so mentally then go through the longer process to arrive at the same answer.

Basically: i mentally self-sabotage my mathematical ability because of the repeated shaming of women in eduation.

I really need to train myself back out of that.

This policy is anti-male.

I can relate Bosch. I was advanced in Math until my family moved across the country to a school district that taught the dumbed-down new age math, where showing your steps and demonstrating processes is more important than getting the right answer. Lost interest in math almost immediately.

Yeah I remember when I was in grade school I would skip steps by doing them in my head, then get points taken off for not showing my work even when getting 100% of the questions right. That shit really pissed me off.

I'm glad they don't fuck around with that shit in the real world. Getting the right answer is actually important when you're doing something with real consequences, who knew!

 

[TheRookie]

This is one of the best posts I've seen on education. Memorizing for exams supports credentialism. Get a piece of paper, get rewarded by the system even though you're brain dead. We need thinkers and doers and creators.

In response to those who just "got it" and didn't want to show reasoning, a good system would present you something you couldn't just get and force you to reason. No system is perfect. We need the system to stop rewarding cramming for exams by memorizing facts or the country is finished.

This is bullshit because you have to start with first principles, or building blocks, that are intuitively grasped. Little Billy doesn't need to explain how and why the sky is blue every time he says "the sky is blue." He doesn't need to draw four blocks every time he writes that 2 + 2 = 4, once he has grasped the concept.

Science and math is about standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. Modern day education is about knocking you off the shoulders of giants and putting you through mindless rigmarole.

 

[TheKantian]

What is the point of teaching someone that it's ok to get things wrong, as long as you can explain why or you know ? It makes literally no sense at all

I highly suggest you read what I wrote, instead of imaging things.

If the the question was 4 * 3 and the kid write 11 in the answer box with the second "1" having been an accident, he's still wrong.

I went to a dentist for a root canal on tooth on the left side of my mouth a year ago. She was gonna anethesize the right side but I asked what the hell was she doing.

She had the x-ray upside down. She knows how to do a root canal but would've done the wrong tooth.

If I were asleep(which I insisted against) should I have said:"It's ok that her end result was wrong as the did the procedure correctly" after jacking up a good tooth?

It does not follow that a wrong answer necessarily implies a wrong method.

It's like looking at someone's work on a definite integration problem and finding their integration is correct, but they just messed up the arithmetic at the end. They got the wrong answer, but their method wasn't wrong.

 

[phil81]

This is one of the best posts I've seen on education. Memorizing for exams supports credentialism. Get a piece of paper, get rewarded by the system even though you're brain dead. We need thinkers and doers and creators.

In response to those who just "got it" and didn't want to show reasoning, a good system would present you something you couldn't just get and force you to reason. No system is perfect. We need the system to stop rewarding cramming for exams by memorizing facts or the country is finished.

This is bullshit because you have to start with first principles, or building blocks, that are intuitively grasped. Little Billy doesn't need to explain how and why the sky is blue every time he says "the sky is blue." He doesn't need to draw four blocks every time he writes that 2 + 2 = 4, once he has grasped the concept.

Science and math is about standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. Modern day education is about knocking you off the shoulders of giants and putting you through mindless rigmarole.

I think you are missing his point which is that society is full of people who don't know how to think because modern education teaches them to memorize instead of teaching them how to think critically. The method is important because it teaches people how to think. Something as simple as 3 * 4 is a terrible example but as things get more complex the method is what is important and being able to figure out the method is what is valuable in the real world of math/science/engineering.

 

[Samseau]

Hey guys: IT GETS WORSE!

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/173908/

National Assessment of Educational Progress ‘Indefinitely Postpones’ Tests of U.S. History and Civics.

Kids won't even learn about American history or the US constitution anymore!

 

[Big Nilla]

I'm homeschooling my 6-year old. His old school starts next week. He flew through all the 1st Grade stuff I threw at him in less than 4 weeks (averaged 1.5-2 hours a day for everything, sometimes less... did probably about 1,000 pages of worksheets in that time... more than what he'd probably do in the 170-day school year. He also did hundreds of pages of reading and flash cards). We just started with 2nd Grade curriculum stuff this week. He should be doing 4x3 multiplication stuff by October. Not hard to push your kids ahead and advance them.

I drove him last year for kindergarten to save him time on both ends of school, but I saw the bus schedule for this year... be at the bus stop at 6:38am and get back at 2:56pm. That's torture for kids, especially younger ones. Most school time is wasted/useless time. His lunchtime last year was 10:33. Q: Is that good for kids or good for the school? I saw his kindergarten schedule and only 4 of the hours were for instructions. He learned very little the whole year. Twice he had 4 different homeroom/main teachers in a week. The schools don't care. My wife and I prepped him and he just missed jumping straight to 1st grade last year... so I knew his baseline where he was starting from and saw where he ended. His teacher refused to work him ahead of other kids (another parent said the same thing to me about her daughter).

I'm freeing up a lot of time for my son. None of this wearing him down, dumbing him down, obedience training. I won't allow him to be a numb, no personality follower like most public school kids are being programmed to be.

Going to sign him up for an improv class to help him build a dominating, entertaining personality... to go along with his beastly athletic ability and advanced academics. I'd pat myself on the back for what I'm doing, but it's a joke how easy it is to move your kid into the top 5% these days.

Here's a link to a 1912 8th grade exam to show you how dumbed down schools have become. Quite humbling, even for smart people.

http://www.infowars.com/newly-disco...912-shows-how-dumbed-down-america-has-become/

 

[TheBulldozer]

Nilla,

Great stuff, just don't forget to let him be a kid too. Let him be occasionally lazy, and let him pursue what seems interesting to him.

 

[Architekt]

What is the point of teaching someone that it's ok to get things wrong, as long as you can explain why or you know ? It makes literally no sense at all

I highly suggest you read what I wrote, instead of imaging things.

I read your post about 8 more times.

I still stand by the premise that we should be teaching kids to do shit properly rather than that "half-assed and close enough is good enough."

@Big Nilla: This might be for you

 

[Big Nilla]

MD,

I'll start phasing in un-schooling in a few months... allows him to have some control over what he wants to learn while teaching him responsibility for his own education (I'll still make sure reading, writing, and math get done). Got him hooked on 80's action tv series like Knight Rider, The A-Team, CHiPs, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Incredible Hulk, Miami Vice, etc. to stimulate his creativity and bring out the kid in him. (Gotta keep him away from the SpongeBob crap... can't believe that's on tv. Toxic stuff for kids.)

One advantage I have is both my 6-year old and 4-year old are competitive with studying and exercise. I was having my 6-year old push a cooler with 30 pounds of weight (redneck prowler... builds up explosive speed) 30 times for 15 feet in the living room as part of his "PE" today. My 4-year old came along and joined in. End result... I had to stop the 4-year old at 100 pushes and the 6-year old at 120 pushes (over 1/3rd mile). They would've kept going to top each other.

 

[JimNortonFan]

This is one of the best posts I've seen on education. Memorizing for exams supports credentialism. Get a piece of paper, get rewarded by the system even though you're brain dead. We need thinkers and doers and creators.

In response to those who just "got it" and didn't want to show reasoning, a good system would present you something you couldn't just get and force you to reason. No system is perfect. We need the system to stop rewarding cramming for exams by memorizing facts or the country is finished.

This is bullshit because you have to start with first principles, or building blocks, that are intuitively grasped. Little Billy doesn't need to explain how and why the sky is blue every time he says "the sky is blue." He doesn't need to draw four blocks every time he writes that 2 + 2 = 4, once he has grasped the concept.

Science and math is about standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. Modern day education is about knocking you off the shoulders of giants and putting you through mindless rigmarole.

One size fits all doesn't work. For the guys who get it, showing method is tedious. If they're really smart and not just bright they need to be pushed to high level work where they can't just get it and need to learn the importance of process and understanding what they are doing. If they're just bright and not smart they're usually the kind of asshole who wants to feel superior for being bright and not push themselves or be pushed anyway. Personally I DGAF what the bright ones do or don't do, again they're usually assholes. Bright people usually end up as losers because they're not smart. They end up as losers because they never get pushed or learn to push themselves. See the movie Good Will Hunting. I lived in the honors dorm in undergrad school. Bunch of bright loser freshman moved in my sophomore year. Watched 'em drop like flies from engineering because they watched ESPN and played D&D all ay long. Lazy fucks always trying to show how smart they were. They needed their butts kicked and to be humbled then supported by real teachers before they got to college. Instead they slid through the joke of a system we have. All of them were "incel" type assholes with no social skills BTW. Their eidetic memories were good for sports stats though.

For the kids who don't just get it letting them cram and get points for answers that mean nothing to them rewards them for buying into the system of credentialism, the system that fucks over the smart and the bright.

 

[Samseau]

I'm homeschooling my 6-year old. His old school starts next week. He flew through all the 1st Grade stuff I threw at him in less than 4 weeks (averaged 1.5-2 hours a day for everything, sometimes less... did probably about 1,000 pages of worksheets in that time... more than what he'd probably do in the 170-day school year. He also did hundreds of pages of reading and flash cards). We just started with 2nd Grade curriculum stuff this week. He should be doing 4x3 multiplication stuff by October. Not hard to push your kids ahead and advance them.

I drove him last year for kindergarten to save him time on both ends of school, but I saw the bus schedule for this year... be at the bus stop at 6:38am and get back at 2:56pm. That's torture for kids, especially younger ones. Most school time is wasted/useless time. His lunchtime last year was 10:33. Q: Is that good for kids or good for the school? I saw his kindergarten schedule and only 4 of the hours were for instructions. He learned very little the whole year. Twice he had 4 different homeroom/main teachers in a week. The schools don't care. My wife and I prepped him and he just missed jumping straight to 1st grade last year... so I knew his baseline where he was starting from and saw where he ended. His teacher refused to work him ahead of other kids (another parent said the same thing to me about her daughter).

I'm freeing up a lot of time for my son. None of this wearing him down, dumbing him down, obedience training. I won't allow him to be a numb, no personality follower like most public school kids are being programmed to be.

Going to sign him up for an improv class to help him build a dominating, entertaining personality... to go along with his beastly athletic ability and advanced academics. I'd pat myself on the back for what I'm doing, but it's a joke how easy it is to move your kid into the top 5% these days.

Here's a link to a 1912 8th grade exam to show you how dumbed down schools have become. Quite humbling, even for smart people.

http://www.infowars.com/newly-disco...912-shows-how-dumbed-down-america-has-become/

:clap:

 

[phil81]

What is the point of teaching someone that it's ok to get things wrong, as long as you can explain why or you know ? It makes literally no sense at all

I highly suggest you read what I wrote, instead of imaging things.

I read your post about 8 more times.

I still stand by the premise that we should be teaching kids to do shit properly rather than that "half-assed and close enough is good enough."

The point is that the method is what counts in the real world of math, science and engineering. Understanding the method is the most important part of "doing shit properly". Any engineering design or software program in the real world is going to be reviewed extensively before going into production. Doing QA to make sure the design or program is correct is the easy part. The hard part is finding the talent to create the design or program which is all about understanding the method.

You guys are arguing this point from perspectives that are so different that you are not really arguing the same point. If you're talking about simple arithmetic and comparing getting the wrong answer to doing a root canal on the wrong tooth then the correct answer is what matters most. If you're talking about more advanced math and comparing it to the math or problem solving skills needed in a technical job in the real world then the method is what is important.

There is a lot of BS in public education but grading math based on "how and why" isn't the problem and it isn't anti-male. It is actually a good thing and pro-male. Men will excel when math is graded on "how and why" instead of stupid multiple choice tests. 3 * 4 is a bad example but the concept is correct. Kids need to learn how to think not how to memorize.

 

[Architekt]

The point is that the method is what counts in the real world of math, science and engineering. Understanding the method is the most important part of "doing shit properly".

I'm not denying that. The how and why allows for greater understanding and easier extrapolation of knowledge. That being said, however, getting the right answer at the end is the part of the process that ultimately counts in practical applications. It's all well and good if you know how to cook a steak, but if you're going to burn it all the time, either you need to pay more attention, learn more about cooking steak, or start rethinking your dream of becoming a chef

 

[aphelion]

These people who support this bullshit are the same people who'll raise hell when their cell phone coverage goes out because some engineer at the main office plugged a network cable into the wrong port.

 

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

You put three apples (or donuts, if in USA) on the table before the class. Then you say:

"Class, there are too many of you for just three apples. There are twelve of you, but only three apples. If we want each one of you to have an apple, we need to multiply the number of apples.

If we multiply the three apples that we have by two, we now have six apples. That's still not enough for all of us. Multiplying by three wouldn't give us enough apples either. But if we multiply by four (take three more piles of three apples each and arrange them on the table separately, then join them into one big pile)... now we have twelve apples. And that, kids, is how multiplication works. Saying "times four" means that you now have four items of the same kind as the one that you started with.

Class is over, go get some fresh air.

Bam. Where is my Race to the Top grant?