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September 11, 2015 at 1:10 PM #789300September 11, 2015 at 1:14 PM #789302
all
Participant[quote=flu]
I am not against all of ccm…. But questions like this seem to beat around the bush of whether a kid really knows what a least common multiple is and overcomplicates explaining what an lcm is and how one goes about finding it.The purpose of this question is suppose to challenge whether a kid knows lcm or not. But along with it, it introduces a lot of other things that while may be fine for some of us more mathematically inclined, will utterly confused he heck out of those that aren’t. For example, your average nonmath oriented kid is not going to feel that comfortable with fsomething like a function and variables. And now this questions overcomplicates the lcm lesson by introducing max(a1,a2), etc….and there’s a more practical consideration… When is such a “puzzle” type lcm question ever used in the real world, even in engineering and science… (It isn’t)…third.. This type of question will also make math incredibly more difficult to understand for those social-economically disadvantaged esl students by now introducing a heck of lot of English leaning language into a fundamentally easy math concept that should have been language agnostic. So… Again…I am not sure I understand the point of this type of question, except to see how well kids are at solving clever puzzle questions that have very little bearing on the real practical math use cases in the real world.
Anyway..my 4th grader figured this out, simple because her Chinese ol school math lessons taught lcm the old fashion way back when she was in 3rd grade and because she understands lcm now..simply because of practice practice practice.[/quote]
Sorry for the confusion. The language did not include the notation I used. The kids are supposed to think about the problem. OK, lcm(7, 9) is 63. However, lcm(a1, a2) is not always a1 x a2. So, when will that be?
I just liked the fact that you cannot simply drill the kid into applying specific algorithm to solve the problem.September 11, 2015 at 1:42 PM #789303NotCranky
ParticipantJust to squeak out a little vent here, the militarization and nationalism agendas at the public schools are still the most bothersome items. That and recruiting kids for commercial efforts aka, fundraisers and “gift” store days.
Makes it clear our country sees children as military pieces and consumers on strings and wants the kids to see themselves that way too. The same old get them while they are young.
International peace day Sept. 21 Hooyah!
September 11, 2015 at 2:22 PM #789305paramount
Participant[quote=Blogstar]Just to squeak out a little vent here, the militarization and nationalism agendas at the public schools are still the most bothersome items. That and recruiting kids for commercial efforts aka, fundraisers and “gift” store days.
Makes it clear our country sees children as military pieces and consumers on strings and wants the kids to see themselves that way too. The same old get them while they are young.
International peace day Sept. 21 Hooyah![/quote]
Agreed. Have you been to a padres game lately? Wow – instead of ‘take me out to the ballpark’ they played ‘God Bless America’ which I’m all for, but not at a padres game. I am convinced that fascism in America has arrived.
Fascsim=Hyper-nationalism and merger corp/state.
September 11, 2015 at 2:28 PM #789304njtosd
Participant[quote=poorgradstudent][quote=njtosd]What is the answer? Pay science and math teachers more to lure science-y types to teaching. Not sure whether the unions would permit that. But when you look at the fact that California’s big industries – agriculture, high tech, biotech and pharma all are dependent on a supply of people with math and science capabilities, something has to be done.[/quote]
Well, like those of you who work for QCOM and associated industries and like to complain about the number of foreign visas, the fact is right now we don’t really NEED more science grads for biotech and pharma. The current pipeline is fine, and it’s arguably not a growth industry.
It’s funny when we talk about STEM, we really mean “TE”, specially those with computer programming skills. There’s actually a glut of biologists, and we’re fine on chemists.[/quote]
Perhaps a glut of PhD biologists, but a quick search of the Indeed job board has 54 listings for “biologists” in San Diego. Not everyone has to be a PhD to be a scientist (and from a patent standpoint, I prefer a creative BS or MS person over a professional student PhD). Which is not to say that all BS/MS people are creative or all PhDs are professional students – just saying that the emphasis on PhDs is sometimes misplaced, in my opinion.
September 11, 2015 at 2:55 PM #789307an
Participant[quote=all][quote=flu]Out of curiosity…I am sort of curious what percentage of the people that like ccm are STEM degreed/career oriented people.[/quote]
I like the fact that common core is not 100% focused on making sure that 12 year old child can multiply one digit numbers. Imagine where your kid would be if all she had to do is meet pre-ccm standard of good enough?[/quote]WTF? 12 years old multiplying one digit? My 6 year old kid started learning simple 1s, 10s, 100s multiplication and division at the end of his 1st grade school year. You must be joking, right?
September 11, 2015 at 3:20 PM #789308Anonymous
Guest[quote=no_such_reality]
Follow the money is a bit trite when talking about schools. Schools ARE big business. School teacher unions ARE big business. LAUSD is the 2nd largest school district. It’s adopted budget only for 2015 is $12.6 Billion. As a matter of comparison, Facebook ranked #242 has revenues of $12.4 Billion. Starbucks, $16 Billion, Visa is $12.7 Billion and that little piddly utility called Sempra energy in San Diego ranking #270 on the Fortune 500 by revenue pulls revenues of $11 Billion.That’s ONE school district in California. They serve just under 10% of california students.
Schools are BIG business. And there are a lot of entrenched deep pocket vested interests in the Educational-Political complex.[/quote]
Agree that public education is big business but only a tiny fraction of these budgets are in any way influenced by the common core standards. There are some peripheral industries such as publishing and testing that would benefit from new curriculum and new testing standards, but it’s not a “follow the money” sort of thing. No doubt these industries have a lobby, but I doubt the executive branch was bought out by textbook publishers.
The attacks on common core are mostly founded in right-wing anti-Obama conspiracy nuts. You’ll also find a lot this talk in the home-schooling circles. I have no issue with home-schooling for K-12 education but it does tend to draw in the kooks.
September 11, 2015 at 3:49 PM #789310flyer
ParticipantAlso agree education is big business, per several family members who have had careers in the field at various levels.
They’ve also shared that the stats reveal only about 15% of college grads today are finding employment in their chosen fields, so, although teaching methods are important, it’s clear there other defining elements in play as well.
September 11, 2015 at 3:58 PM #789312
CoronitaParticipant[quote=AN][quote=all][quote=flu]Out of curiosity…I am sort of curious what percentage of the people that like ccm are STEM degreed/career oriented people.[/quote]
I like the fact that common core is not 100% focused on making sure that 12 year old child can multiply one digit numbers. Imagine where your kid would be if all she had to do is meet pre-ccm standard of good enough?[/quote]WTF? 12 years old multiplying one digit? My 6 year old kid started learning simple 1s, 10s, 100s multiplication and division at the end of his 1st grade school year. You must be joking, right?[/quote]
No. Multiplication of 2 digits is implied by end of third grade. At least it was in our district. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention what was actually taught in school since I sort have have our own enrichment at home and at Chinese school (which in itself has issues..)
In public schools, if you are lucky the teacher will try to break the students up into different levels depending on ability. If you are unlucky, the teach won’t and the same material will be taught and your kid might end up being bored.
September 12, 2015 at 6:24 PM #789340joec
ParticipantI just watched this on Netflix:
http://www.racetonowhere.com/Anyone else see it and have comments?
One thing about other countries and the US in terms of teachers is in places like South Korea, Singapore, I believe their pay can get closer to 150k/year and they actively recruit top seniors from high school to teach. They also only take the top 30% or so of the class to possibly teach and they also pay all their educational costs (Singapore). Have you noticed that no matter what school district you are in, you don’t really see ANYONE from say a top college or anything like that?
That, and teaching being a very very well respected profession in these countries makes the teachers probably much more effective since they probably have more power and wealth. They can also get canned and are evaluated a lot more.
Not that we can emulate that in the US at all with how wide the societal, cultural, economic differences with all the immigrants and natives here…but I don’t think this school thing is ever going to turn much better. There are simply way too many hands and pockets involved and no one has enough power to change things enough to matter. Also, as was mentioned, and I mentioned this before as well, some kids should probably just leave school since even “if” they graduate, they still won’t amount to much and any work they do won’t even need that degree. As I voiced before, you maybe better off just starting them on welfare as long as they stay out of trouble.
There is simply too much supply of labor nowadays.
I honestly think the “good” homeschooled kids are probably the best off now (assuming the parents or people doing it) know what they are doing.
September 12, 2015 at 6:36 PM #789341CoronitaParticipant[quote=joec]
I honestly think the “good” homeschooled kids are probably the best off now (assuming the parents or people doing it) know what they are doing.[/quote]I wouldn’t trust myself to completely homeschool. Plus I do like my kid being out there with a lot of other kids so they know what it’s like out with different people. That said, different people do different things and if it works homeschool, not home school its all good.
I do prefer to spend time with my kid to go over extra math and reading and writing, since I believe the problem is kids aren’t practicing enough to understand and remember the concepts. But that is just me.
September 12, 2015 at 9:46 PM #789338CoronitaParticipantPhew…. I guess old school math did it’s job….[img_assist|nid=25497 | width=700 | height=600]
I was actually expecting since my kid is utterly careless in her work that she would have done worse on these standardized tests……Or maybe I should be a tiger parent and ask my kid why didn’t she reach the 99th percentile……Fail….
Anyway, I guess these tests aren’t as bad as people make them out to be. Math is math, and probably won’t change that much.
September 13, 2015 at 5:45 PM #789355ParticipantIt probably is just us…I think it’s probably also because as you were a kid, you probably killed it in math so you weren’t one of the “slower”, “did not meet expectation” kids.
The whole drills and practice is probably us being Asian overall (or Kumon, etc). I know specifically, when Design 39 (PUSD) was starting, they actually stress less practice and drills since they feel this just upsets kids, etc and reminds the non-super math kids they aren’t good and they get discouraged and shut down…Will have to see how this plays out in a few years.
From some of these videos and other movies, less homework resulting in higher AP scores, etc…who knows what’s correct.
At the end of the day, all this talk of everyone needing to code really makes me wonder if even if people knew how to code, would it really help that much if EVERYONE (that’s important in the hiring process) is now the same and can code basically. Not like the non-tech/computer loving people would ever do it well compared to someone who actually wants to sit infront of a screen and tap at it all day anyways.
Overall, I simply think we have too much labor, not enough jobs and there is no simple solution until a lot of the labor disappears.
I won’t trust myself to homeschool neither, but from seeing whatever I come across, the homeschool kids tend to get a lot of friendly interaction too so it’s not like locking your kids up to be total anti-social hermits nowadays.
September 14, 2015 at 10:40 AM #789361Participant[quote=flu]
No. Multiplication of 2 digits is implied by end of third grade. At least it was in our district. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention what was actually taught in school since I sort have have our own enrichment at home and at Chinese school (which in itself has issues..)In public schools, if you are lucky the teacher will try to break the students up into different levels depending on ability. If you are unlucky, the teach won’t and the same material will be taught and your kid might end up being bored.[/quote]
The teacher will revisit multiplication at the beginning of 4th and 5th grade. I thought the concepts introduced the first couple of grades were fairly advanced. I guess they do that to make the iterative jumps smaller, but it seems too repetitive. Multiplying fractions in 3rd grade – fairly advanced. Doing it again in 4th, 5th and 6th, not so much.
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