Update: Visit the Carnival of Homeschooling!
Also visit The Old Schoohouse Magazine.
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I thought if I wrote about race and intelligence, the sky would fall. It hasn’t. Not even a star. In my little corner of the blogosphere, I’m trying to raise awareness and get a few things out in the open.
While people are castigated for even raising the subject, government schools get away with ignoring or glossing over the differences. And it’s your kids who suffer.
The subject of this post is a classic example. Read on.
If you’re a parent, I’m sure you’ve heard of so-called whole learning where children — your children — are guided to “discover” answers instead of being rigorously taught. There is whole reading, where kids aren’t taught phonics — the best way to learn to read. They’re given books to “read” so they can figure out what words mean in context. I was in elementary school in the 1970s and was taught how to read phonetically. For the rest of you old heads, remember when the teacher had you “sound out” the letters of an unfamiliar word? Based on a solid foundation of knowing the sounds of letters, you were able to figure out the word.
But that’s too boring, regimented, and linear. It’s the best way to learn to read, but “best” is a such a relative and judgmental idea, isn’t it?
Kids in government schools are being cheated. I saw this headline in the Washington Post, New Way To Teach To Math Adopted, and knew instinctively what bureaucrats liked about this “new way”:
The program — “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space” — uses mostly worksheets and often poses math questions as real-life anecdotes, requiring students to show how they can solve a problem in many ways rather than merely scribble answers based on memorized formulas.
Some hard data showed “Investigations” was closing the achievement gap between white and minority students, a high-stakes goal that school districts nationwide are scrambling to meet under the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act. After the program was initiated for Neabsco’s third-graders last academic year, school officials saw sharp increases in the number of students passing the SOLs, including black students and those in special education classes.
Let’s use our common sense and figure out what’s going on. When the reporter says “merely scribbling answers,” he’s showing distain for the traditional and reliable way to teach math (and most things): drilling, memorization, and linear thinking. Yes, readers, I got all that from those three words. The idea behind the “new way” is to remove the cognitive muscle of the lessons and dispense with such pesky things as mastering mathematical formulas, necessary to move to the next skill level. To give the appearance of improved performances, such programs use a “dumbed down” approach to teaching. Either too many black kids can’t grasp basic mathematical concepts, or teachers have just given up trying to teach them.
The academic achievement gaps between various races are an embarrassment to them, no doubt, and if there’s a way to “raise scores” and make themselves look good in the process, they’ll take it. But your kids are the ones who suffer.
Black children in lousy government schools using these programs don’t actually learn anything with these imbecilic education fads. Children aren’t taught basic problem-solving methods, which they will need for the rest of their academic careers. They receive feel-good lessons that make schools look good for “improving” performance but do nothing to help them master necessary skills. And nobody seems to care, NOT EVEN YOU PARENTS!
Didn’t mean to shout.
So what exactly is the “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space” program? Here’s what one evaluator had to say about the second grade material:
Addition and Subtraction of Whole Numbers [1.1]
This course guides children through a vast array of games and activities geared to providing them with a “feel” for numbers. In their adamance that facts and algorithms have no place in modern math classes, the authors accept that some children, at the end of second grade, will still add and subtract by drawing pictures and counting, or by counting back and forth on a “100 chart.” So much emphasis is placed on personal strategies that an entire activity is devoted to adding 29 + 12 (book 5 page 7). The children do not work with numbers greater than 100, they are never expected to memorize their number facts and never see the standard method to add or subtract multidigit numbers. Place value does not seem to be emphasized. The title page of the book concentrating on addition and subtraction notes, as do all the books, “Grade 2, Also appropriate for Grade 3” (emphasis in original). In other words, so what if kids don’t get anything in second grade, they can not get it in third grade as well.
Multiplication of Whole Numbers [1.0]
With the exception of some discussion of counting by 2′s, 5′s and 10′s, multiplication is not obviously introduced. If the word multiplication is used, the reviewers could not find it. The concept of multiplication is hinted at in book 4, Investigation 2, session 3, in which students make rectangular arrays from square counters. The students spend some time “copying” arrays that have been flashed on the overhead for 3 seconds (the purpose of this activity is hard to discern). Later they build rectangles given a fixed number of squares. Since they are asked to describe their rectangles (“I have 2 rows with 7 cubes in each”) the idea of 2 x 7 might come out, but this does not appear to be the purpose of the lesson. (Source)
He gives the program an F. The fifth grade curriculum fails, too. He writes:
Although there is a fairly reasonable number of student worksheets, the actual work expected is severely limited in depth and scope and is unlikely to support mastery of content.
Bottom line: Centuries worth of tried-and-true methods of learning are scrapped, and kids revert to drawing pictures and counting objects in groups when a simple multiplication formula would do. Teachers don’t have to teach, and kids “discover” the answers on their own. Amazing, isn’t it?
Since “minority” children tend to perform worse on traditional tests, social engineers, education Ph.D.’s, and other bureaucrats come up with these experiments — trendy, fluffy, and empty new programs — to test on your kids in a vain (double meaning intended) effort to raise the scores without actually teaching your precious progeny to achieve academic success.
Black kids overwhelmingly make up the student body at the worse schools in the nation. For whatever reason, black parents aren’t storming the schools, demanding reform and a return to the basics. Black parents aren’t filling up the PTA meeting halls like the white parents. Black parents aren’t going to parent-teacher conferences in great numbers, insisting on accountability for the schools, teachers, their kids, and themselves. Too many are content to complain and shout for more money, more money.
It’s either the racist Bush administration or the racist teachers who aren’t doing their jobs. The parents have no part to play in all this, right? Any parent who cares about his kids — white or black — would not put up with this nonsense. I feel sorry for kids stuck in failing government schools because the parents don’t have the decency and motivation to get them out and/or get them help. HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS, for goodness sake. Don’t you care?
The rant is over. Have a nice day.
Sources:
- Frontline Phonics
- Hooked on Phonics
- The Reading Wars
- An Analysis of Investigations in Number, Data, and Space
- Experimental mathematics programs and their consequences
- Math program changes get mixed reviews
- Why American kids aren’t learning math
- More than 600 petition for math changes
- Fuzzy Math Invades Wisconsin Schools (PDF)
- Alpine defends math classes
- Manila parents meet with administrators
- Mathematical Unknowns
- Parents hope to change ‘fuzzy math’
- Critics Say Math Curriculum Doesn’t Add Up
- Program divides district
- Do NCTM Standards-Based programs prepare students for calculus?
(I think you get the idea.)
