The Children Are Our Future

3 Replies to “The Children Are Our Future”

1. Wow! In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Outliers in The ‘Rice Paddies and Math Tests’ chapter, he details how the Chinese way of expressing numbers, how they memorize strings of numbers and how they calculate just makes them faster (and smarter) in math than North Americans. If this new math is picked up and taught everywhere there will never be an opportunity to approach their math, and IT skills. That’s all of North America’s technology advances you see circling the drain.

2. And in Alberta, the Education Gurus have been trying to remove basic math (i.e.times tables) from the curriculum. Dr Nhung Tran-Davies has been tireless in fighting this foolishness, dealing with three different Ministers and keeping the issue in the news.
   I went through the “New Math” experiment in the 60’s, but luckily my parents insisted on home schooling the basics; that served me well through my Electrical Engineering courses.

3. … and as long as the student starts writing some strings of numbers similar to what is instructed … but gets nowhere near the correct answer … they will get a “passing” grade … for “attempting” to answer the problem. The ENTIRE Common Core curriculum was invented to “level the playing field” for “urban” youth who were not born with the “privelge” of an intact family with; proper bedtimes, and homework time.
   Just as Chairman Mao instituted … the smart will be made dumb, and the dim-witted will be elevated to positions of great honor. Welcome to the Mao-States of America