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Comment by pdx | Hacker News Reader

I don't like Common Core because it attempts to solve a problem that does not exist. The way we learned math was sufficient to enable us to build atomic bombs and go to the moon, all with slide rules for the most part. It has a proven history of working and working well.

The math shown in this article as well as much common core does not provide the user/student with understanding. Instead, they are taught incantations and rituals to get to an answer. This is a recipe for a society of math illiterates. Who is pushing this and why do they want such a society?

Common Core is not a better system than the one taught for a hundred years in this country. If you disagree, I would love to see the evidence. I'm sure before such a huge change was made to our educational system, there must be MOUNTAINS of such evidence that was presented. No? Not really?

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> Instead, they are taught incantations and rituals to get to an answer.

My early school math involved memorising multiplication tables. Later on, there was rote memorisation of other aspects of math that I just never understood - you just "had to", and none of the teachers could explain why.

It was for this reason that I hated math, and it wasn't until I started understanding some of the more fundamental relationships many many years after school that I finally got it.

While this is but one anecdote, and having heard similar stories from others is just more anecdotes - there does seem to be research backing up that a lot of people don't understand the fundamental relationships between numbers and how math works.

I see Common Core math trying to teach relationships between numbers - showing that by being able to break down large unwieldy numbers you can get something that while it might have a bunch more steps, they're at least feasable without counting on fingers/toes or trying to remember times tables.

For some reason, I immediately groked calculus and why it would be useful (maybe because I liked physics and the relationship between velocity and position is an intuitive one), but the point of linear algebra was a complete mystery to me.

Why are we multiplying these big matrices of numbers, and what is this complicated determinant thing? Why would anyone ever care what a kernel is, and what are these subspaces that keep getting referenced?

Now every other somewhat mathy problem I see can be broken down into linear algebra and I wish I had learned it better (and that it was taught with more intuition).

I completely suck at calculus, but have a great need for kernels. I am an intermediate programmer/musician and I use them for audio convolution[0].

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_reverb

I don't like any programming language that's not Assembly because it attempts to solve a problem that does not exist. Assembly was sufficient to enable us to go to the moon, all in 16-bit for the most part. It has a proven history of working and working well.

The way we learned math was sufficient to enable us to build atomic bombs and go to the moon, all with slide rules for the most part. It has a proven history of working and working well.

It was sufficient to allow a few people to build atomic bombs and go to the moon. It wasn't sufficient to impart the mathematical intuition and literacy needed by the rest of the citizens in a modern democratic society.

"How to teach math to people who are way into that kind of thing" may be a solved problem, but "How to teach math to everybody else" isn't.

Speaking of slide rules, most kids today don't even know how they work (log(a) + log(b) = log(a*b)). The engineers who did all those things you mentioned knew on an intuitive level, which isn't what you get with mechanical application of arithmetic algorithms as was taught in most schools prior to Common Core.

This is completely wrong, and a brief look at Common Core shows that it's not "incantations". It replaces the "incantations" of the past

gf is an English teacher. This is some of the research underpinning the instructional changes in CCSS for English specifically:

Bonfiglio, C. M., Daly, E. J., Persampieri, M., & Andersen, M. (2006). An experimental analysis of the effects of reading interventions in a small group reading instruction context. Journal of Behavioral Education, 15, 93- 109.

Burns, M. K. (2007). Reading at the instructional level with children identified as learning disabled: Potential implications for Response-to-Intervention. School Psychology Quarterly, 22, 297-313.

Burns, M. K., Dean, V. J., & Foley, S. (2004). Preteaching unknown key words with incremental rehearsal to improve reading fluency and comprehension with children identified as reading disabled. Journal of School Psychology, 42, 303–314.

Carney, J.J., Anderson, D., Blackburn, C., & Blessing, D. (1984). Preteaching vocabulary and the comprehension of social studies materials by elementary school children. Social Education, 48(3), 195-196.

Daly, E., & Martens, B. (1994). A comparison of three interventions for increasing oral reading performance: Application of the instructional hierarchy. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27,459-469.

Eckert, T. L., Ardoin, S. P., Daisey, D. M., & Scarola, M. D. (2000). Empirically evaluating the effectiveness of reading interventions: The use of brief experimental analysis and single-case designs. Psychology in the Schools, 37, 463-474.

Faulkner, H. J., & Levy, B. A. (1999). Fluent and nonfluent forms of transfer in reading: Words and their message. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 6, 111-116.

Gickling, E. E., & Armstrong, D. L. (1978). Levels of instructional difficulty as related to on-task behavior, task completion, and comprehension. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 11,559-566.

Hall, K. M., Sabey, B. L., & McClellan, M. (2005). Expository text comprehension: Helping primary-grade teachers use expository texts to full advantage. Reading Psychology, 26,211-234.

Levy, B. A., Nicholls, A., & Kohen, D. (1993). Repeated readings: Process benefits for good and poor readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 303-327.

McComas, J. J., Wacker, D. P. & Cooper, L. J. (1996). Experimental analysis of academic performance in an academic setting. Journal of Behavioral Education, 6,191-201.

Neill, K. (1979). Turn kids on with repeated reading. Teaching Exceptional Children, 12, 63-64.

O’Shea, L. J., Sindelar, P. T., & O’Shea, D. J. (1985). The effects of repeated readings and attentional cues on reading fluency and comprehension. Journal of Reading Behavior, 17, 129-142.

Pany, D., & McCoy, K. M. (1988). Effects of corrective feedback on word accuracy and reading comprehension of readers with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 21, 546-550.

Rasinski, T. V. (1990). Effects of repeated reading and listening-while-reading on reading fluency. Journal of Educational Research, 83, 147-150.

Reitsma, P. (1988). Reading practice for beginners: Effects of guided reading, reading-while-listening, and independent reading with computer-based speech feedback. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 219-235.

Rose, T. L., & Beattie, J. R. (1986). Relative effects of teacher-directed and taped previewing on oral reading. Learning Disability Quarterly, 9, 193-199.

Sanford, A. K., & Horner, R. H. (2013). Effects of matching instruction difficulty to students with escapemaintained problem behavior. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 15, 79-89.

Sindelar, P. T., Monda, L. E., & O’Shea, L. J. (1990). Effects of repeated readings on instructional- and masterylevel readers. Journal of Educational Research, 83, 220-226.

Smith, D. D. (1979). The improvement of children’s oral reading through the use of teacher modeling. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 12 (3), 39-42.

Stoddard, K., Valcante, G., Sindelar, P., O’Shea, L., & Algozzine, B. (1993). Increasing reading rate and comprehension: The effects of repeated readings, sentence segmentation, and intonation training. Reading Research and Instruction, 32, 53-65.

Taylor, N. E., Wade, M. R., & Yekovich, F. R. (1985). The effects of text manipulation and multiple reading strategies on the reading performance of good and poor readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 566-574.

Turpie, J. J., & Paratore, J. R. (1995). Using repeated reading to promote success in a heterogeneously grouped first grade. In K. A. Hinchman, D.J. Leu, & C.K. Kinzer (Eds.), Perspectives on literacy research and practice: Forty-fourth yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 255-263). Chicago: The National Reading Conference.

VanWagenen, M. A., Williams, R. L., & McLaughlin, T. F. (1994). Use of assisted reading to improve reading rate, word accuracy, and comprehension with ESL Spanish-speaking students. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79, 227-230.

Weinstein, G., & Cooke, N. L. (1992). The effects of two repeated reading interventions on generalization of fluency. Learning Disability Quarterly, 15, 21–28.

Wixson, K.K. (1986). Vocabulary instruction and children’s comprehension of basal stories. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(3), 317-329.

As it stands, this comment appeal to authority. What those authorities have to say might be right or wrong. But you give no hint even at what they are saying.

If you want to do a kind of literature review, where you cite these papers as a way of building some kind of actual thesis, that might be interesting. But what is the point of the above?

The point of the above was a direct response to the parent, who asked for "mountains of evidence", which they didn't see for a simple reason of not bothering to check if they exist.

I'm not summarizing the literature just providing, as requested, some of the research that was directly referenced in the construction of the standards.

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