My wife recently became a math support teacher in a local elementary school and she comes home with lots of what we call "math crimes."
For example, did you know that "a fraction cant be greater than the whole"? I think that is "true" in conversational English, but completely false mathematically.
Our theory is that the people who went to Ed Schools in the 80s and 90s and are now professors HATE and do not understand actual math. They have tried to write curricula that they think will work (at least for people like them) -- e.g. "Everyday Math" which is now part of common core. But these approaches are worse than the rote learning approach that Gen-X and before had.
Compounding the problem is that current teachers learned the math the "Everyday" way and have no idea what is going on. So you have curricula which don't work taught by teachers who are clueless.
The best thing to do is to dust off the 70s 80s textbooks and start from scratch. Also to close all Schools of Ed.
Re: math.
My wife recently became a math support teacher in a local elementary school and she comes home with lots of what we call "math crimes."
For example, did you know that "a fraction cant be greater than the whole"? I think that is "true" in conversational English, but completely false mathematically.
Our theory is that the people who went to Ed Schools in the 80s and 90s and are now professors HATE and do not understand actual math. They have tried to write curricula that they think will work (at least for people like them) -- e.g. "Everyday Math" which is now part of common core. But these approaches are worse than the rote learning approach that Gen-X and before had.
Compounding the problem is that current teachers learned the math the "Everyday" way and have no idea what is going on. So you have curricula which don't work taught by teachers who are clueless.
The best thing to do is to dust off the 70s 80s textbooks and start from scratch. Also to close all Schools of Ed.