The Dad Who Wrote a Check Using “Common Core” Math Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About

Since the U.S. has long been below the level of many other countries in math and science, if all parents could "understand" their parents homework, it would indicate a lack of progress. Many parents who say they "don't understand" their children's math homework never understood math; they just memorized some ways to solve some problems, w/o understanding why they worked.

When I worked as a computer programmer/analyst, I wasn't given some numbers to add up by hand, or even calculator, and give them to someone. I had to figure out the methods needed to tell the computer how to process a file of records for employees. The only reason I had to do things arithmetic operations was to test that my program was doing things right.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/09/21/the-dad-who-wrote-a-check-using-common-core-math-doesnt-know-what-hes-talking-about/

Sept. 21, 2015

Doug Herrmann, a father from Ohio, was frustrated that he couldn’t help his second-grade son with his math homework last week. Even though it should have been easy, the curriculum his son was using didn’t look familiar to him. It wasn’t the way Herrmann learned math growing up. On Tuesday, he wrote on Facebook: “Mental math and ten-frame cards? Common core sucks!”

Then, on Wednesday, he posted a check made out to Melridge Elementary School in the amount of… well, no one was sure, because he did it “using common core numbers.”

He didn’t actually send the check to the school, but the post struck a nerve. It’s been shared more than 25,000 times as of this writing and a whole bunch of articles have been written about it. Herrmann is already scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning.

But does he have a point?

Not at all. Instead of trying to figure out what his child was learning, Herrmann did what so many parents do these days: He complained about something he doesn’t understand.

I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t know what “ten-frame” cards were and I wasn’t sure what he was trying to write in his check. Then I spent a couple of minutes doing the research he couldn’t be bothered to do himself.

So let me back up for a moment and try and explain this. It’ll take a second, but it’ll be worth it, I promise.

A lot of adults (myself included) learned math through repetition and algorithms. We memorized times tables, learned to use “zero” as a place holder when we multiplied big numbers, and subtracted by sometimes “carrying” numbers.

If that sounds familiar to you, can you explain why zero was a place holder or what “carrying” a number even means?

•••••

Over the past several years, what math teachers have realized is that kids who relied on memorization, algorithms, and calculators had a really hard time understanding math as they got older. Classes like algebra become scary for those kids because, all of a sudden, they couldn’t just plug things into their calculators. Variables got in the way, they had to start manipulating equations, and they just hit a wall.

I’ve had a lot of those students in my classes over the years. The one thing they had in common was an over-reliance on formulas and methods. They all wanted to know the “right” way to solve a problem, when the truth was that there were a bunch of ways to solve them.

Have you ever seen the show Chopped on Food Network? The competing chefs are handed a basket of random ingredients every round and told to make an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. There are no recipes. There are no step-by-step instructions. They just have to make it happen using whatever cooking knowledge is in their heads.

The best contestants are the ones who see those ingredients and know instinctively how to use them and combine them.

That’s what great math students learn how to do, too. They see a problem and they just know how to manipulate the information at their disposal. They knew how to step away from the algorithms. They didn’t need a “recipe” because they understood how to mess around with the numbers to get the answer they wanted.

So the question is: How do we teach all kids to think that way?

The answer — which is addressed by the Common Core standards — is that we have to start teaching math differently, and it has to start when kids are young.

Yes, we should still teach the times tables. Yes, we should still show them how to long divide. Yes, we’re aware everyone has a calculator now. But we also need to show kids how to manipulate and rearrange numbers so that they can develop those important mathematical instincts.

Common Core doesn’t dictate curriculum. It only sets standards that kids ought to meet.

•••••

“Common Core,” by the way, doesn’t even say you have to use ten-frames. For second graders, it says students should learn the base-ten system. There are all sorts of ways to teach that, whether it’s ten-frames or old-school addition. All are acceptable. And the more ways you learn how to solve a simple problem, the more tools you have available to you when the problems get more challenging.

The problem with the method people like Herrmann learned is that it didn’t work when the math got harder. Strong math students find ways around that, but many students just give up on math altogether.

That’s why your parents, if they struggled with math, couldn’t help you with your homework by the time you reached high school.

•••••

Common Core isn’t the problem here.

The problem is all the parents who immediately dismiss better, more effective ways of teaching math because it’s “different” from what they learned.

If Herrmann doesn’t understand what his son is doing, then they should sit down together and work through it. Read the textbook. Go to Google. Ask the teacher for help. Any of those things would have helped and none of them would have taken very long.

Instead, Herrmann wasted everyone’s time by writing a useless check and putting it on Facebook.

Because, to people like him, ignorance is hilarious. He’d rather see his son learn math the old-fashioned way, putting him in danger of struggling in his math career as he gets older, instead of course-correcting early in his education when everything is still fresh.

To answer the obvious rebuttal, yes, a lot of adults are able to get through the day just fine even though they were never very good at math. But why wouldn’t they want their children to aim higher, understand things better, and think more critically?

I’m not a shill for Common Core. I’m just someone who understands what it is, unlike Doug Herrmann, who couldn’t explain it to you if he tried.