<story><title>In Math Cram Sessions, Solving for Why</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/well/family/in-math-cram-sessions-solving-for-why.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unpythonic</author><text>As much as the Common Core standards are criticized here in California, I have to say that the emphasis on the &amp;quot;why&amp;quot; behind every operation is really fantastic.  It&amp;#x27;s usually in the last section of each homework, but it provides a good discussion point when going over the homework each night.&lt;p&gt;Asking students to answer questions like the following are easy to zip through, but they provide a good place to pause and find a way to connect the physical mechanics of a solution to the reasoning behind it: &amp;quot;How would you explain to someone else why the fraction 1&amp;#x2F;2 greater than 1&amp;#x2F;4?&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Why doesn&amp;#x27;t angle-angle-angle show congruence but angle-side-angle does?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also noticed that the Common Core brings in advanced topics earlier without announcing to the student that it is an advanced topic.  Ideas from algebra are brought in at natural points of the discussion rather than making a big deal of it.  By the time that they realize they&amp;#x27;re learning algebra, they are already into many of the &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; that would have otherwise been taught by rote.  If you understand why you have to multiply both sides 5 to find out x&amp;#x2F;5 = 30, it feels much less arbitrary when the rules are made more explicit later.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sdenton4</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t worked in an american classroom, but as a math educator, thought the CommonCore looked great when it was first rolling out.&lt;p&gt;Math education is (kind of strangely) a bit of a battlefield in the US (maybe not so strangely, when everything else seems to be, too)... I think a big part of it is prevalent math anxiety - perhaps embarrassment at seeing unfamiliar things on the kid&amp;#x27;s homework. Along with this, there&amp;#x27;s still lingering bad PR from the &amp;#x27;New Math&amp;#x27; of the seventies, which made it somehow acceptable to make the argument that we should stick to teaching math the same way forever. (Especially for people who believe that math hasn&amp;#x27;t changed since Newton.)</text></comment>
<story><title>In Math Cram Sessions, Solving for Why</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/well/family/in-math-cram-sessions-solving-for-why.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unpythonic</author><text>As much as the Common Core standards are criticized here in California, I have to say that the emphasis on the &amp;quot;why&amp;quot; behind every operation is really fantastic.  It&amp;#x27;s usually in the last section of each homework, but it provides a good discussion point when going over the homework each night.&lt;p&gt;Asking students to answer questions like the following are easy to zip through, but they provide a good place to pause and find a way to connect the physical mechanics of a solution to the reasoning behind it: &amp;quot;How would you explain to someone else why the fraction 1&amp;#x2F;2 greater than 1&amp;#x2F;4?&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Why doesn&amp;#x27;t angle-angle-angle show congruence but angle-side-angle does?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also noticed that the Common Core brings in advanced topics earlier without announcing to the student that it is an advanced topic.  Ideas from algebra are brought in at natural points of the discussion rather than making a big deal of it.  By the time that they realize they&amp;#x27;re learning algebra, they are already into many of the &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; that would have otherwise been taught by rote.  If you understand why you have to multiply both sides 5 to find out x&amp;#x2F;5 = 30, it feels much less arbitrary when the rules are made more explicit later.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>threatofrain</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s so much misinformation on the Common Core that many people don&amp;#x27;t realize how much of a modest adjustment it was from before. Another way of summarizing the changes made by the Common Core, aside from your note that it focuses more on why, is that it advances the math curriculum by about half a year.</text></comment>