One of the joys, freedoms, responsibilities, and perils of homeschooling is deciding what should the students learn? Should your family follow a set of defined educational standards? Lets assume that you do and that you would like to follow existing educational standards. What standards? And starting this year, you have a whole new choice of standards to teach to…The Common Core Standards.
The common core is a fascinating new approach. Previously, the Federal Dept of Education would ask a group, like the National Council of Teachers of Math, to develop standards which were then shared with all the states to use, or not, as a reference when they set their standards. In some areas, there are different groups with different standards such as science with the NRC standards and the AAAS standards.
The common core standards were developed by the state’s senior educational officer requests. It was helped along by some groups including funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The new standards which exist for language arts and math, are very different from the old ones and represent a real shift in education. I’m trying to understand what’s involved.
The new math standards, for instance, emphasize understanding math concepts and applying them to real-world problems, rather than simply memorizing formulas. I wonder how far this really goes and whether it’s just a shift in emphasis or a real shift in content. I’m sure it doesn’t go far enough for me.
My view: I’m a huge believer in making math more relevant and less esoteric. For instance, if you asked me, I don’t know why students should spend years of middle and high school solving quadratic equations or dealing with calculus. I’ve worked now for 30 years and never had to solve a calculus or even quadratic equation for work. And I’m a knowledge worker. On the other hand, there’s lots of quantitative and logical areas where I feel my preparation was inadequate. I deal with statistics and sampling everyday in both my professional and personal life. How can it be that statistics is supplementary but algebra is core? I deal with logic problems everyday but boolean algebra and logic have totally disappeared from the curriculum. We all deal with software and it is a huge part of the future, yet students seems able to graduate from high school without having taken a single programming course! And why isn’t accounting and finance part of high school math? It’s relevant and intellectually demanding and much more useful than quadratic math or calculus. I would retain basic algebra dealing with variables; do more with measurement, data analysis, and estimation; and really go to town with advanced geometry and trigonometry bringing it into the realm of civil and structural engineering.
Stay tuned and I’ll tell you soon what I do with language arts and science!
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