Re: Girl Scout cookie sellers scammed

On 2008-02-22, Dan Abel <dabel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


The parents love "drill and kill". Some teachers love it. It is
certainly a necessary part of math education at that level.

You better believe it. Call it what you like, it's immutable fact not open
to tinkering or philosophical debate.

the kids get a real life problem and don't know whether to add,
subtract, multiply or divide, they just can't apply those math facts
that they have learned.

Learning 1+1=2 and 8x8=64 are constants. They do no change. If children
learn that and still don't know whether to "add, subtract, multiply or
divide", there is something seriously wrong with the math program. I saw
when "new math", a dangerous detour in basic math, hit the scene. Whatta
load of crap. It helped no one and delayed learning basic math. The whole
time I was taking calculus and physics and chemistry in college, every
single math problem I encountered reduce right back down to the basic fact
that 1+1=2 and 8x8=64 and heaven help you if your $200 whiz bang calculator
went dead. You better hope to god the "drill n' kill" you did in the 3rd
grade is still in good working order. I know it worked for me.

If there is anything wrong with today's schools, it's that wrong-headed
educators keep trying to improve that which needs no improvement. The
alphabet and the numbers from 1-10 are just that and no more. You can't use
them if you don't know them. I worked with a lot of foreign educated
engineers and it became quickly apparent which had been taught extensively
by rote teaching methods, so I'm well aware of the shortcomings of relying
on such an approach. OTOH, there are areas of learning where it is
unsurpassable. I think we've spent so much time trying to improve the
system, we've hamstrung a couple generations of people in the US. Educators
snivel they are tired of hearing "let's get back to basics". Well, the
basics are called the basics for very good reason.

nb
.

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