We Really Need To Talk About Common Core Math
School may be out for the summer, but that's hasn't stopped people from having strong feelings about Common Core math.
This image was circulating online earlier this week, illustrating what many parents say is wrong with Common Core -- that it doesn't make sense.
Sorry haters, I’m a Common Core math believer. My 8-year-old fully understands abstract algebra in a meaningful way (and now so do I, thanks to SuperTecherWorksheets, communicating with my kiddo's teachers, and YouTube). I do sympathize with parents whose kids had to switch methods during the course of their school career. We were lucky that Common Core started the same year he started kindergarten.
You might be thinking, there was nothing wrong with the way we were taught when we were kids, right? I disagree that the way math was taught wasn’t broken, and it needed fixing.
Old math focused more on memorization and not process, lacking situational context or applied concepts until higher level math instruction (like the kind of math we took once we got to high school). It's true, you can learn by rote, but you'll likely struggle with understanding it that way.
I don't teach math, but I can tell you from my experience as a college professor, that previous learning modalities focused too much on what's the answer, instead of how did you arrive at this answer. I see it in my college students who struggle with critical thinking, or re-explaining concepts to me in words NOT memorized from textbooks.
I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't say how well Common Core kids will perform once they get to college, but I'm a big fan of methodologies that promote the process of learning (which I believe Common Core math does rather well).
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