/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7561998]

Explain the whole Common Core flamewar to a Eurofag

[Anonymous No.7562001]

>ppl failing
>helicopter parents complain
>reduce course expectations
>everyone passes, but are useless sincenot much was expected
>flame battle 420

[Anonymous No.7562003]

Muh countrywide standard vs muh small government

Also the material is dumbed down and retardified for the average American

[Anonymous No.7562023]

>>7562003
>material is dumbed down and retardified for the average American

there's actually a bit of debate about this point as well, especially on /sci/...
elementary school mathematics in the US traditionally focused on rote memorization of simple tables and algorithms, where CC tries to prioritize analytical approaches at a very early stage that look completely unnecessary and/or unintuitive to anyone already out of school.

/pol/ hates CC, and /sci/ mostly loves it because it strokes their egos from muh superior problem solving skills.

my personal opinion is that >95% of 7-10 yo.s don't have any abstract reasoning skills worth two shits, so nearly all of them will forget the goofy didactic methods and probably make the entire exercise a waste of time.

you need to consider the broader goals of public education and figure out whether you want a more fully realized STEM workforce, a higher baseline technical skill set for the bulk of society, or a more unified/less stratified education system.
despite what the PC police tells you, people have a broad range of innate mental potentials, so you really can't have all three.

[Anonymous No.7562717]

Is there any beef with this outside math (and maybe teaching evolution)?

Does anybody opposes to, say, the texts taught in lit -- or is it just a "math is too difficult" thing?

[Anonymous No.7562743]

>>7562717
normies who look at some of the CC methodologies get annoyed by how pedantic some of the system is.
e.g., insistence that students explain how they are "making a ten" when doing any sort of carrying operation, over-reliance on number lines/tally marks, etc.

[Anonymous No.7562776]

>>7561998
>Explain the whole Common Core flamewar to a Eurofag

Idiots that hate common core versus people that haven't forgotten all their high school math skills.

[Anonymous No.7562841]

Basically what >>7562023 said. It's not inherently bad, but in a lot of cases I've seen personally, it was executed horrendously, which isn't necessarily a fault of the system, just those imposing it.

[Anonymous No.7562858]

>>7562776
i just don't like how common core is lowering the standards for public education. I had a challenging education in an intelligent, rich neighborhood; and i certainly don't want my kids to learn all this remedial garbage presented I've seen in shitposts about common core.

[Anonymous No.7562864]

My wife is a special education teacher and she hates it as whoever came up with it apparently took no consideration that special education students need to be held to a different standard than the regular population.

I'm fine with nationwide standards. I think a public education should be as good in the poorest parts of the country as they are in the richest. But it sounds like the system as it currently exists was dreamed up by bureaucrats instead of pedagogues.

[Anonymous No.7563222]

>>7562841
>it was executed horrendously
This is pretty much my perspective. Our public school teachers, especially K-6, are horrendously complacent, incompetent and occasionally even stupid. The strong shift to standardized testing is an attempt to address this (though quite ineffective.)

The intuitive methods are better if and only if we can trust teachers to understand and faithfully teach them and can trust the public school textbook cartel not to make massive factual mistakes in course materials. These two have proven to be much more difficult to satisfy than any reasonable person could have predicted.

But there's so much outright opposition along the lines of >>7562776
that's gr for keks.

>>7562023
>95% of 7-10 yo.s don't have any abstract reasoning skills
Hm, that couldn't be because they've not been required and taught to develop them, could it?

[Anonymous No.7563229]

>>7562776
>drawing a number line for subtraction

Is jack a fucking retard or something

[Anonymous No.7563247]

>>7561998

Ignore the shitposters.

Anyway, since 1964 when schools stopped being officially racially segregated the Federal DoE has had this problem where there's no consistent way to judge education quality amongst the entire school system across 50 states and US territories and overseas air/naval bases. Schools wouldn't accept any sort of non-compulsory standard, so in 2001 the federal government passed the No Child Left Behind Act which mandated that all schools taking DoE funds have standardized exams. It was implemented fully by 2008ish, though it's biggest criticism is that it tied school funding into only a handful of common "core" subjects (namely, Algebra and English Language Arts) while igoring everything else. This basically gave a school a massive financial incentive to drop everything except common core subjects. All of this was "based on the european model of education" or some shit.

Of course, the issue was that there still existed 50+ different standards. So in 2009 the DoE, along with other bureaucrats (and publishing industry jews) worked to create a single standardized system, again "based on the european model". Presently, 42 states officially use Common Core standards and thus only buy Common Core complaint teaching materials.

A lot of people will say it's dumbed down, but I disagree with that. It is however an excellent way to destroy all the things that makes education "fun" and engaging for students and teachers. Essentially, teachers have now been replaced by a single set of common standards, which they cannot deviate from or else they get fired. The biggest NCLB and CC haters are teachers unions, because now there exists a method to quickly judge teacher "performance" independent of them.

Basically, people hate it because it removes control from parents, teachers, principals, school districts, states and consolidates education into the federal government. Just like in Europe.

[TheGashPunisher No.7563249]

>>7561998
You see, anon. There are two kinds of government here in America. State government and Federal government.
For the past decade Americans have been dumbed down due to a horric education. This horrific education was created by state government. State government wants to teach creationism and the Bible in class instead of evolution. State government doesn't put emphasis on math and science, but instead put it on sports and English and History classes. History and English classes that suck anyway. Also, state governments have been lowering the qualifications for graduation to pad their numbers and get more funding.
To remedy all this, the federal government has come up with the idea to create an minimum requirement of education and curriculum to graduate from high school.
This is great, but the retard conservative states says it gives the government too much power over education as they can pick and choose what is taught.
The reason they are upset about that is THEY want to pick and choose what is taught. They want to use the class room as a propaganda machine to convert others to Christianity.
In the end, state government, due to its low voting people, has been hijacked by lunatic Christians, and said lunatic Christians are upset they're losing their precious propaganda machine.

[Anonymous No.7563256]

>>7563247

tl;dr both the NCLB and CC:

1. takes control of education away from local municipalities
2. more or less destroys "teaching" as a profession that has prospects for gainful employment
3. forces schools to only buy CC compliant materials
4. penalizes schools for teaching anything but CC standards, a school has much more to gain from making a vigorous compulsory peer tutoring program instead of investing in a workshop or art or music program because they do not get federal money if they are good at the latter

[Anonymous No.7563262]

>>7563249
you do know there are other states than texas, right?

[Anonymous No.7563264]

>>7563249

Are you trying to be sarcastic here or are you serious? Because nobody gives a shit about creationists in education. The NCLB and CC exist so that the government can more easily hand out funding. That's it. As a side effect, school districts also get an extremely powerful too to fire teachers.

>>7563256

You forgot to add that now because of the Common Core, every school assignment can be digitalized and tracked so that the student can check their grades at any time and their progress can be monitored down to every individual assignment and question. Everything the student writes is recorded into their school record. This is what a "one on one european social democracy style education" looks like in the US.

[TheGashPunisher No.7563266]

>>7563262
Yes, of course.

[Anonymous No.7563270]

>>7563264

>too to fire teachers

*tool

[TheGashPunisher No.7563276]

>>7563264
Teachers need to be fired. Teachers here in America SUCK and lack motivation. The reason Common Core exists is because test scores suck compared to other countries compared to how we were decades ago. I merely pointed out why common core was created and why states and conservatives are angry about it. Liberals are angry about it for pretty much the same reason. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.

[Anonymous No.7563284]

>>7563276

>Teachers here in America SUCK and lack motivation

They always have, it's a truism that "those who can't do, teach". I believe even Plutarch brought up how Roman teachers would "teach the same rotten cabbage over and over" (or to that effect). Teachers aren't the problem, extreme centralization is. The federal government's goal to create one unitary education system isn't going to survive very long either.

But I see your point.

[TheGashPunisher No.7563300]

>>7563284
>Teachers aren't the problem, extreme centralization is.

When teachers don't know the subject that they are teaching, they are the problem. In high school, I had a Spanish teacher that didn't know Spanish. Becoming a teacher is one of the easiest things to do. And ANYONE can be a substitute.
The federal government saying, "Hey, how about our kids at least know Trigonometry, basic Chemistry, how our government works, and how to write a proper sentence" isn't the problem.

[Anonymous No.7563305]

> Common core

[Anonymous No.7563307]

>>7563222
>>95% of 7-10 yo.s don't have any abstract reasoning skills
>Hm, that couldn't be because they've not been required and taught to develop them, could it?

Uh, not very likely.
Cognitive development models have long acknowledged that people don't start gaining certain levels of insight until certain approximate age ranges. I.e., base motor skills precede linguistic replication precedes certain forms of simple pattern recognition and inference skills and so on.
Abstract reasoning is one of the last skills kids pick up, regardless of what culture or school district they're raised in.
Most people don't really start being capable of it until their early teens, and if you remember differently from personal experience, you like most others here are probably an outlier on the age-development spectrum.

The average person is not as smart as you would hope or your academic homophily might lead you to over-generously believe.

[Anonymous No.7563311]

>>7563300

And how does the Common Core help that? It makes this situation worse as teachers are now expected to only teach what's in the textbook.

>The federal government saying, "Hey, how about our kids at least know Trigonometry, basic Chemistry, how our government works, and how to write a proper sentence" isn't the problem.

True. But the federal government saying "just teach what we tell you to" means that the role of the teacher is now completely redundant, and more importantly puts control of curricula content into the hands of bureaucrats. Now, while those bureaucrats may have fancy degrees in their field of expertise, there's even less accountability on their end to make course materials that are worthwhile.

And, ultimately, regardless of what the feds say it's not going to work. The US is simply too large, the problems too diverse for a one-size-fits-all mandate. The fact is, the feds tie k12 funding into standardized exams now. Does this mean better education? No, it just means kids will be better test takers. The fact is that most kids are stupid and hate school and that will always be the case, the feds are making it worse by removing the human element from it.

[Anonymous No.7563325]

Goofy shit that most kids will ignore because like a normal person they figure out what simplifying operations they like in their head by just getting shown a problem. Apparently good for kids who can't do this by themselves.

[Anonymous No.7563332]

>>7563311

>...are now expected to only teach what's in the textbook

No, not at all. Common Core is a list of standards that students, as well as teachers, have to meet. They can teach whatever they want, as long as they fit the standards in. You make it sound as if teachers are teaching kids just fine without Common Core. What great lessons are kids missing out on with Common Core? It's not that teachers can't teach anything other than what's in the textbook. It's that, currently, they aren't teaching much at all.

Whether the feds' Common Core works or not is still up in the air. I agree that it probably won't work. Not because the standards failed, but because the teachers failed and need to be replaced. If teachers were fired, only effective teachers would be left. Just like any other job, employees who aren't doing their job should be fired.

[Anonymous No.7563341]

It focuses on stupid shit like make fucking arithmetic more intuitive. But doesn't focus on the main issue, the math curriculum needs to change. Kids are bored because they think solving for x is all mathematicians do. In reality, learning to add , subtract etc etc takes no more than a year. I mean it is pretty bullshit that kids enter middle school without knowing some basic algebra.I mean, where are the proofs? Where is the emotion? This may sound like an autistic rant, but you will never get anyone interested in math teaching this shit. No it doesn't need to be fucking brutal for the kids, but rather should feel like a space of debate, creativity and free thinking. I mean, it still shocks me there isn't some sort of Euclid Elements for kids.

[Anonymous No.7563352]

>>7561998
>Explain the whole Common Core flamewar to a Eurofag

american schools get shitty results, and you have a number of different parties partly at fault but trying to blame everyone but themselves.

> parents
> teachers
> school administrations

in reality, you need a good home environment, reasonably intelligent and motivated teachers, and kids who have good genetics and not too much fetal alcohol/lead paint fumes exposure, and any one of these things being out of place can seriously fuck a kid's chances at success.

but this being america, everyone tends to say, "more money would fix everything", so we've seen inflation-adjusted per-student primary/secondary education expenditures more than triple in the last 40 years with basically nothing to show for it.

CC and standardized testing are ways for state and federal governments to try to regain advantage over educators lost over the decade more than they are a way of actually making kids perform better.

Almost everyone who ends up being a significant benefit to society is self-taught to a huge extent, but making the average kid learn a little more for less money is the eternal dream of bureaucrats everywhere.

[Anonymous No.7563353]

>>7563332

>Common Core is a list of standards that students, as well as teachers, have to meet.

Yes. And those standards are reflected, point-by-point. For example,

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/7/introduction/

Is very specific. The goal of the CC is to create a standardized method of judging educational quality. This can only be done if everyone teaches the same material. A goal of the CC is to allow for constant monitoring of students' progress, so everything is now digitized and standardized to a handful of compliant books.

>It's not that teachers can't teach anything other than what's in the textbook. It's that, currently, they aren't teaching much at all.

That's because, currently, we have the NCLB. The US's education system has been fucked since 2001 when it became law.

>If teachers were fired, only effective teachers would be left. Just like any other job, employees who aren't doing their job should be fired.

While that's a laudable goal, to fire bad teachers, there's no real way to go about it without destroying everything else. My point is, trying to get rid of every bad teacher isn't a realistic goal especially when the "answer" the government has come up with is extreme centralization. The CC destroys the role of the teacher down to just "instructor" and puts all the new responsibility on publishers and federal bureaucrats. This means that teachers now have no incentive to be "good" when their job no longer allows for any creativity, and it means that the people in control of education are obscure officials that cannot be easily removed from power.

It's a matter of not seeing the forest through the trees. The broader picture with the CC is that yes while it "fixes" the bad teacher "problem", it does so by dismantling it altogether. This is *especially* true for schools that are adopting hybrid courses with online assignments and lectures, where the teacher can be any tutor they can pick up instead of being a licensed professional.

[Anonymous No.7563422]

>>7563352
>in reality, you need a good home environment, reasonably intelligent and motivated teachers, and kids who have good genetics and not too much fetal alcohol/lead paint fumes exposure, and any one of these things being out of place can seriously fuck a kid's chances at success.

This is what is troubling about using nothing but student's standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. Some schools are filled with poor kids from terrible homes. Why would any teach risk their career working in a school with so little chance of success? Everyone would want to work in rich and upper middle income areas where parental involvement is high and students have access to educational resources beyond the school.

[Anonymous No.7563443]

>>7563422
the fact is that home environment matters a shit load more than teacher quality, but teachers are torn because they want to maintain the pretense that more money would fix things.

there is a massive fraudulent bubble in US education all the way from grade school through at least undergraduate levels.

Reading to you kids and having a generous amount of books around the house is the biggest predictor of academic success after heredity (whether controlled for environmental factors or not).
American schools have increasingly become education theater in the last century, and parents believing that schools determine their kids' success more than they do has been disastrous for society.

[Anonymous No.7563611]

>>7563422

That's already the case. Post NCLB "at risk" or "low performance" schools have an extremely difficult time finding talent.

>>7563443

>education theater

That's a good way of putting it. Parents are so obsessed in making their children "perfect" they either babysit them or otherwise ignore their emotional development. Kids need room to grow, when parents won't provide it, you get kids that grow up into half formed barely functioning adults.

[Anonymous No.7563709]

>>7563266
So why'd you keep saying "state government" as if this applied to more than 4/50 states?

[Anonymous No.7563713]

>>7563307
>[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.7563718]

>>7563353
>http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/7/introduction
Did you even read your link? It's the opposite of specific. All it says is WHAT students need to understand and WHEN.

It literally does not say anything about how teachers are supposed to teach.

>This can only be done if everyone teaches the same material
Says who, you fucking retard? This can only be done if students are examined the same way. But the methodologies and material are completely independent of the testing.

[Anonymous No.7563751]

>>7563718

>All it says is WHAT students need to understand and WHEN.

Check any common core book. Each standard has a number and each lesson lists it at the start of every chapter.

>Says who, you fucking retard?

Says the government. That's what the Common Core is all about, use *our* standards and *our* exams or you get no money.

[Anonymous No.7563757]

>>7563229
>Drawing a graph for linear equations

[Anonymous No.7563766]

Guys. Listen. We can do away with all of this stupid bullshit like NCLB and CC if we federally subsidize teacher salaries and place a salary control (floor) on what teachers must make.

Then the competition for the jobs increases, and therefore education and training requirements increase. We can just pay teachers more, and let market forces do the heavy lifting.

[Anonymous No.7563802]

I think people have mentioned all the main issues but I'll also add that it seems to set things up nicely for having no teachers at all, just robots and computers to teach.

Textbook companies, government bureaucrats that want more power, "educational psychologists", it's all there.

I would really disagree with the idea that common core algorithms teach " real thought" or a deeper intuition while the older ones don't. They're so didactic that they're like watching an adult teach a baby to speak by telling the baby to grab its own lips and move them

[Anonymous No.7563819]

>>7563766

>we can just pay teachers more

the AFL has been attempting to do that for the past 50 years, and the result (among other things) is the NCLB/CC as well as conservatives calling for the abolition of public education

>>7563802

>but I'll also add that it seems to set things up nicely for having no teachers at all, just robots and computers to teach

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but that's pretty much the point. The companies that supply CC material digitize all of it and offer hybrid classes for schools that want them. That way, schools don't have to hire actual teachers. Private "tutor"-ing centers already get away with it presently.

[Anonymous No.7565313]

>>7561998
For starters, they've made math more complicated than necessary as a lot of people believe. Arithmetic algorithms that used to be roughly short can now take up half a page, if not an entire page.

[Anonymous No.7565473]

>>7562864
>I think a public education should be as good in the poorest parts of the country as they are in the richest
I agree. But it seems to me that CC is doing the opposite: Making education in the richest parts of the country as bad as it is in the poorest parts.

[Anonymous No.7565538]

>>7563819
The AFL is a union. As weak as unions are right now in America, nothing like that could even hoped to be achieved with laws that protect employers and strip workers of rights (via collective action at least). It's really popular to hate unions in the US, even among people who barely know what they are.

However, if price controls were instituted, that's an entirely different mechanism. I guess what I'm saying is that the AFL failed. Many teachers make slightly above poverty wages and teach in abysmal, underfunded environments. The reason the AFL failed is because of a successful anti-union push. Therefore teachers never made the sort of money I'm talking about (at least not in anything but post-secondary education, and even then starvation wage adjuncts are becoming commonplace).

That mechanism to increase teacher salaries by any substantial amount failed. It does not follow that if teacher salaries rose in the way that I'm talking about that public education would not improve. It is also not the case that it's impossible to raise teacher salaries by a considerable amount simply because the AFL failed to do so. Price controls do work, and a minimum (and subsidized, as opposed to an unfunded mandate) teacher wage would do a lot to make more competent people want to become teachers.

This should also come along with making schools more efficient and less shitty in general. This is an aim if the CC, but just streamlining a baseline curriculum is not enough. Infrastructure, access, and the environment of most public schools in general all need serious improvement.

We are the richest country in the world. There's absolutely no reason public school should look and feel like incarceration.

[Anonymous No.7565740]

>>7563751
Our exams. But not our handbook.

I still don't think you know what you're talking about. They tell you what to teach, and give suggestions on how. But the only mandatory part is being able to pass a common core exam.

Everything else has nothing to do with common core.

[Anonymous No.7565869]

>>7563709
>So why'd you keep saying "state government" as if this applied to more than 4/50 states?

>One of today's lucky 10000

Texas is THE biggest buyer in school text books, and as such, all text books are written so they will sell in Texas. If you're using a textbook in a different state, it is still, effectively, a Texas textbook written to sell well to the unified purchasing agents of Texas.