Roamin' Catholic wrote:
I can describe math in Two Words-
Math Is Hard.
IMHO: The more you practice (doing your homework) the easier it gets. Some students are just too lazy to learn, and some teachers are too lazy to teach, or in some cases are forced by the government to teach an agenda. Showing your work is a tool that allows the teacher to see where the students are going wrong and allows the teacher to correct them. Letting the students grade each others test papers, and the teacher not reviewing them, is a terrible way for a teacher to teach. I've had experience with one of my sons concerning this problem, and I discovered he was dyslexic by watching him solve homework problems, so I went to his teacher about it and now that teacher doesn't do that any more because I got involved! Observing a student at a chalk board allows an observant teacher, a rarity anymore, to spot visual problems, such as dyslexia and a need for eyeglasses.
Mathematics is just a set of rules one follows to get a particular result, and if one doesn't learn the rules one will be handicapped for the rest of their life. Reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, along with civics, history, spelling, and grammar, are very important life sk**ls, and from some of the comments I've seen in OPP over past times is absolutely living proof of it.
Both students and teachers can share the blame; there are good teachers and students and bad teachers and students, but for a teacher to pass a student that isn't truly prepared to the next grade is about the worst thing that can happen. The student will likely never catch up and the workload of a good teacher in the following grade is seriously impaired by having to try to salvage the slacker student without slowing down the rest of the class, which is very hard to do. I know, because I've been there and done that! Of course if the teacher who the slacker was dumped on happens to be of the same mindset as the teacher who passed the slacker on, they will simply pass the slacker on, and on, and that is why a customer in a fast-food joint has trouble getting the correct change back if the cash register is broken (and raising the minimum wage won't help this problem, either), and industrial employers get new employees who can't do the task they were hired for. I've also worked with some of these under-educated people and had to carry them until I could get them trained; some of them had trouble tying their shoes until Velcro came along!
I almost can't believe Oregon would teach what the article pointed out, almost, but the e******n is proof that it's probably true, and Oregon isn't the only state that is promoting this crappy education. It doesn't have a thing to do with "race" or "white, black, or green supremism" either. Basically, the modern public so-called "education" system has a lot to do with the condition that we find our un-United States in now. Truly a bloody shame, and it's getting worse by the day. If we are ever to get our new banana republic, wh**ever we decide to call it now, back on track, the public educational system, the home, and the family is where we have to start. Throwing manure into the Establishment Swamp just made the problems grow.