Fb reply about poor grade in "Common Core" math

And yes, some of the core methods lead us to a gray area in grading, because in that approach, it isn't the answer that is the point, though it is a verifier of the process. For many, the "why's" of some of the core methods are opaque, even though, as the article above points out, it is in fact what we ordinarily use, say in making change. 

So now we have a great portion the people who hated math in school getting upset because the point of teaching math has shifted to include and actually emphasize the "why" of the answer. The level at which most of us engage math is, in the math world, kind of kindergarten. Similarly, a semester in high school band isn't comparable to Horowitz' playing the piece Tchaikovsky compose for him. though the rules really are the same. The core approach is to understand principles and be able to distribute that understanding over the rest of experience. Back again to the Music analogy, kids who learn especially keyboard early on test up to 30% higher IQs because the patterns inherent in Music are universally inherent in nearly everything. It isn't so much about "music," as it is consciously, or even unconsciously, experiencing patterns and relationships 

So from here, the reaction to the core approach to math is more a reflection of the vast misunderstanding the public owns of what math isn't about, or is. And like anyone who doesn't know something, the ignorance of it includes its actual usefulness as experience. Many hold knowledge of math to be the equivalent of being human. Heinlein was so convinced that math was of paramount pattern importance to the brain that he had a character say "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make a mess in the house." As a corollary, "One man's magic is another man's engineering." 

This isn't question of human value, really as such, but an indictment of the ordinary person's lack of living up to potential due to imposed ignorance through the tools of politics and "education." I mean consider any one of your cameras or lenses. While you have a phenomenal ability use them as tools to produce wonders of aesthetic creation, have you any clue as to the volumes of mathematical and engineering understanding that went into every tiny part of it? We dismiss vast libraries of human experience in the casual act of picking up and using something like a camera, drive a car, or cook a dinner. We might appreciate, intuitively, the wonder of such things, but our appreciation is incompetent of the complexity of what we are using. Often it might be compared to the innocence of a puppy accepting a bowl of milk. 

Consider that most people cannot comprehend the simple and deadly hoax of how our monetary system works, or the deadly implications to civilization at this point of having no clue about the working of logarithmic functions as applied to population, resources, and what is naively passed off by the ridiculously oversimplified epithet "pollution." If these were as emotionally understood as the plight of Kim K or the Housewives of, there would be blood on the streets, and banks along with capital buildings burned to the ground. 

So for my part, I'm for it, regardless of some degree of squawking of many who both haven't read the common core guidelines before exploding their assumptions on the public, or who simply haven't a clue to start with, the rightful defensive stance of parents notwithstanding. The intentions are usually good, but very unconsidered and from standpoints not up to an actual understanding of what's going on.