Friend of mine teaches elementary school. She says that now they have to teach a whole bunch of strategies, and each kid is tested on each of the strategies. So, its not "here are 3 techniques to could try to get the answer." Its "here are 3 techniques and you need to be able to use all of them."
That's really young to be teaching elementary school.
All the adult teachers died, because of the Obamacare death panels.
1: I don't know who to blame - textbook manufacturers for making super prescriptivist materials? Someone on the district level who really is confused about the point of this stuff? I also don't know if this describes the vast majority of classrooms, or half, or just some of them.
The strategies are often pretty good - ten frames and finding gaps and so on - but the devil is there too.
It was mostly pre-CC, but this sort of thing was my sense of my kids' grade school math classes. I think you're right, that it's more robust in the hands of a confused or math-phobic teacher than a more old-school curriculum.
OTOH, I think you're also right that it can come off as maddening prescriptive busy work. Something that annoyed me about it, and is sounds like the curriculum you're looking at is similar, is that my kids never got told what seemed to be the fundamental point of doing math this way: that the specific algorithms don't matter. There's a million ways to do arithmetic, and anything that works is going to be conceptually equivalent to anything else that works, so if you can make a couple of different algorithms work for you, and understand how they're really on some level doing the same thing, then you really understand what you're doing.
If you can't muddle through ambiguous instructions asking you to do the same thing multiple different ways for reasons that aren't made clear, then I don't know how you can handle being out in the working world.
9: I remember being taught via the prescriptive method and getting really frustrated when I came up with another algorithm that seemed more efficient. My teacher thought I was struggling with being able to apply the prescribed algorithm, but I was actually struggling to understanding why we would use one algorithm vs. another when they both worked.
I think the good version is mostly what's being taught at my children's school, but then at least in the youngest grades there was a problem aligning this to the state standardized test, where the question would be 6 + 4 = _ _ and rather than drag 1 and 0 (which upset the math teachers anyway because ten is one ten and zero ones not a one and a zero) and the wrong answers were things like 6 4 or 3 7 and they're not really sure how to teach the necesaary test skills without undermining the actual instruction going on.
There also needs to be (and it seems like there often isn't) an emphasis that different techniques are useful in different contexts. Like 41*39 is a very different question than 43*48, which is in turn very different from 40*50. Or if you're adding 82 and 38, you really should notice that 2+8=10 before you do anything else.
12 seems very much on point. It's really hard to make easily graded homeworks and written exams that measure actual understanding.
and rather than drag 1 and 0 (which upset the math teachers anyway because ten is one ten and zero ones not a one and a zero) and the wrong answers were things like 6 4 or 3 7 and they're not really sure how to teach the necesaary test skills without undermining the actual instruction going on.
I cannot make anything of this clause.
14: That I shouldn't comment while cooking dinner? (Am presidential because I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about test content openly. I've been pushing for years to make sure the littlest kids are taught explicit test strategy skills, which has been resisted as teaching to the test but is finally sounding appealing.)
The state test does things like have kids drag the two digits of a two-digit answer from a list of numbers to the answer box. No only does this require a lot of dexterity of kids who aren't used to using computer-mouse setups but it isn't intuitively clear to kids who have gotten used to manipulating numbers in more sophisticated ways and don't necessarily understand what's being asked. The game-based apps they use regularly are a better assessment of what they can actually do, and do promote different ways of getting to the same answer.
I worked for two world-famous medical researchers, of whom one was a doctor. There was a lab meeting where everybody got confused for five minutes about a plot that was on a logarithmic scale.
I sometimes make confusing graphs too, but I usually don't brag about it.
I noticed you were slacking on supplying Unfogged with bitter remarks about biomedical research, so I thought I'd do my best to chip in with some of my own.
Related to 16, my response to
"Even two DOCTORS couldn't figure this out!"
is to think that these two people have a lot higher estimation of the general intelligence of doctors than I do.
I just tell anyone overly impressed by doctors to remember that almost all doctors were once premeds.
20. As my old boss used to say, "With doctors and lawyers, always remember that they're just as good at their job as your are at yours." Intelligent people, not superheroes.
Someone I've been working with for a couple of months just greeted me with an overly formal (and somewhat surprised-sounding), "Welcome to the scheduling meeting, Dr. Lastname." I grinned and said "Not that kind of doctor!" which is my usual response, but I wanted to ask how the hell they thought I got this job without the credential.
Re: log plots, my previous lab decided, for a arcane but statistically valid reason, to represent data in log2. It gives hilariously simple looking plots, but is completely not intuitive.
...but I wanted to ask how the hell they thought I got this job without the credential.
The government is weirdly picky about that. Like more picky than universities. It turns out that not having a Ph.D. means that you don't get to move to Philadelphia if you want to make more money.
22.last- I've seen that from others in the field. Similarly the biologists in the field tend to piss off chemists by insisting on using ug/mL instead of uM.
23 You'd think they'd have figured that out a bit earlier in the process. There's still Montreal, though, right?
Apparently there were differences of opinion.
Ah hell Moby, sorry to hear that.
23: Boo. If it's government and you were the preferred candidate, they will sometimes declare a "failed search" and rewrite the job posting. Unfortunately, the folks writing postings are frequently not the people hiring, and communication between the two groups isn't very good.
24: I joined right as the battle of ug/mL vs uM really started to get ugly (PI was a chemist, managers were biologists). I hadn't seen the log2 thing for clinical data before.
23: Sorry to hear that. The up side is that moving is super stressful and time consuming and generally sucks.
I'm pretty sure the existence on Montreal can be objectively established.
Sorry to hear about the bullshit credentialism, Moby.
I'm sorry, Mobes. That is stupid.
Thanks. Anyway, the position was a GS level lower than I was willing to move for.
Can you get a cheap paper PhD to fool the system? If they're going to be stupid, throw the stupid back at them. I'm sure you could submit a thesis based on your unfogged comments.
Theoretically, I should have written my dissertation.
Some kind of pun analysis using SAS.
I didn't know SAS when I started my dissertation.
Boo, Philadelphia! Phooey on my city.
I'm bummed for you, Moby. But hopefully there will be another opening that makes full use of your skills. Puns included.
It was actually a reasonable show for your city. It's just that my housing costs and commuting time are absurdly low here. If I were comparing both offers moving in from somewhere else, the Philly position would have been better.
It can be dangerous to work in Philly, at least if you're a reporter:
While the tired, old adage of how Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus is annoying and overused by the national media when talking about the "personality" of Philadelphians, it is worth mentioning considering what's happening to television reporters during their coverage of Saturday's blizzard.
TV news reporters are getting hit with snowballs while reporting on the winter weather.
As long as the snowballs don't have batteries inside.
It's been all downhill for Philadelphia since Welcome Back Kotter went off the air.
45: Darn. Why was I remembering it as Philadelphia? Was there different 70s comedy with teenagers that was set there?
I don't think I ever knew where What's Happening was set. Was that Philly?
Could the greatest thing in the world, the ReRun Dance, have been set anywhere else?
I'm sorry to hear that, Moby. Their loss, and their decision is wrong-headed and stupid.
The first part of the opening credits for the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was set in Philly.
The guy who was trying to get them to hire me said that most of his Pittsburgh acquaintances based their knowledge of Philly on that part of the song. Kind of. I'm paraphrasing.
Speaking of, can you turn down a job application by email? Assuming you want to keep a good relationship with the person. Is a phone call better or is that just dating?
Then.
End of day typing is The Worst.
55: turn down a job offer (as the employee who was seeking employment), or turn down a job application (as the employer who has decided not to hire the applicant)? If the former, you should call. If the latter, email (or, before email, by letter) is the only way I've ever been turned down. I don't think I've ever received a phone call. (Although maybe that just means that no one cared about keeping a good relationship with me.)
But thanks for making me feel bad I did it wrong.