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Comment by TheHegemon | Hacker News Reader

I'm unsure of what everyone's concern with common core is. It was way easier to teach my kid's once I realized that it's just what I've always been doing in my head without anyone telling me to.

It's just about breaking apart problems into digestible pieces.

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I don't have a problem with common core, I like that kids gets to see all the different ways to solve a problem. The problem I see is that schools are testing all the different methods instead of asking the students to use the method to solve the problem.

This is a great point. I found myself both admiring and hating some of my son's school work recently in that it illustrated and described mental problem solving exceptionally well, then gruelingly pushed him to repeatedly explain the model rather than simply use it. Pages upon pages of dissection and regurgitation. My son could understand the model just fine, but was perplexed as to why he had to go over it like that.

That's because public school uses memorization as a cheap stand-in for understanding. It's easy to internalize 2+2=4, but it's impossible to internalize the quadratic equation. At some point, you need to just know the procedure and it's application, and most importantly, recognize when to use it in novel situations.

There's some value in that. Not as a long term principle, but I am all for having students learn a variety of methods and have to spend some time working through those methods. But only to make sure the students are giving the different methods a shot and actually finding the one that makes the most sense to them, rather than just sticking with whatever was learned first. If they're never given the chance to just work with their method of choice after, it's pointless.

It took about a one paragraph explanation to not only realize this is how I already do things in my head, but to suddenly become much better at it because I can now slow down and conceptualize the whole process when necessary.

I learned math in the "traditional" method through several levels of calculus in college (decades ago) and found a young relative's common core math curriculum to be extremely cumbersome and far more confusing for the student. In my opinion its far better to teach a student to understand a mathematical principle than to force them to absorb your prescribed method of understanding. You could know a mathematical principle backwards and forwards and be an expert in the field and still end up baffled at the nonsensical "core curriculum" methods and jargon.

a large segment of the population would have to come to grips with the fact that they didn't understand their math classes.

Math education in the U.S. is notoriously behind the rest of the world. It's about time. Speaking as someone who barely passed undergrad calculus and still has nightmares from that 7 problem 4 hour final exam.

Honestly, a lot of it is because of elementary school teachers in my opinion. I don't want to bash them too much, but they often struggle(d) with math. They don't have much of a number sense, and now we're asking them to teach our kids how to have number sense (which is what common core does; it shows that 65+37 = 70+32, etc etc). I actually remember my 6th grade math teacher specifically for this reason. She explained things to us in a way that gave us number sense, instead of just memorizing rote steps. It made my math skills so much better, and I'm still thankful for that today. Sadly, it was only one teacher at the entire school.

I'd love to start a charter elementary school (as much as I generally dislike the concept of a school getting state/federal funding with no testing accountability) where each subject is taught by someone who actually studied the subject, not just "elementary education". Then you might see kids enjoy math and understand it, as their teachers understand and enjoy it and can teach that; it's infectious. I wouldn't be surprised if reading scores also raised when kids are taught by people who clearly enjoy reading and are passionate about reading.

In the 6th grade, you were mentally developed enough to understand some of the basic concepts of algebra. Someone (most) in the 3rd or 4th grade isn't developed enough to understand those concepts. This would be analogous to teaching elementary school students latin roots, it just doesn't make much sense, and their ability to dissect particular words is of little to no value at that stage in their development.

This isn't true. Kids start learning algebraic concepts in roughly 2nd grade, and are well-acquainted with the concept of variables, algorithms, order of operations, roots & exponents, converting fractions to decimals & vice versa, etc before they get out of 5th grade. The only fundamental key concept I don't think they're taught, that is critical in algebra 1, is how to solve systems of equations.

I think math is taught too slow in the U.S.. I remember learning to add, then once I got whatever score on the flash card assessment I got to learn to subtract, then multiply, then divide. Slowly, painfully, and in a way that leaves you bored early, causing you to checkout and fall behind, then you are left wondering why you suck at math later in life.

I think we could stand to move the math curriculum up 3-4 years. Geometry and trigonometry can be taken in 5th grade instead of 9th, algrebra 1-2 in 6-7th grade, then calc in 8th grade, instead of waiting until high school to take these courses. Then in high school, you could offer advanced courses and an actual course progression in statistics, rather than solely AP stats.

Tone down the difficulty, maybe, but there is no reason why these concepts shouldn't be introduced a lot sooner. Basic algebra is pretty intuitive, and in geometry classes you are kinda just plugging and chugging sines and cosines with your calculator anyway. This is coming from someone who sucks at math and wishes they didn't.

> (which is what common core does; it shows that 65+37 = 70+32, etc etc)

I did automatically 90+12 and I am old. How would common core improve my mathing?

It wouldn't improve yours if you're doing that, but the point of it is to teach the kids number sense and how numbers work and can be manipulated to make problems easier.

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