“That there has been a steep decline in basic math skills during the same time period is no secret to anyone who has taught classes to young adults and quietly gasped upon seeing many of them reach for their calculators so they could perform a division as easy as 72 by 9. Many of them literally cower in fear at the thought of completing a math ‘word problem.’”
my kid’s school here in Illinois allows students to use calculators as early as the 3rd grade. I told my kids that I will not allow them to use a calculator until they reach high school. I was also stunned to see that the school teaches “estimation” in math instead of calculating for the correct answers. “estimation,” as my kids put it, is simpy guessing, now kids correlate guessing with math – in math, it’s ok to guess instead of working for the correct answer.
when the school districts starts allowing calculators instead of making teachers teach the math tables in their class then it is to be expected that students will not have math skills.
when the schools stop teaching phonics then it is to be expected that children will not have reading skills…and without reading skills, there goes the enthusiasm for reading.
the learning of basic knowledge includes the technical aspects of the subject being learned and in reading the technical system for it is phonics, in math, it’s the arithmetic tables. skip those two and children will never catch up with what they need to learn at every grade level the school bumps them up to.
I and my wife literally FORCED our kids to read by learning phonics. we go to the library every week and have them pick out up to five books that they would like to read. we force them to practice phonics, reading, and math tables during the summer vacation and it works wonders. those who think that memorization shouldn’t be a part of learning are totally mistaken. learning the basics starts with memorization – learning the alphabet is memorization, learning the phonetic sounds of the alphabet is memorization, and it’s the same with numbers and arithmetic. if memorization is taken out, you have kids with slow dull minds as a result.
I grew up in a different country where education (at least during that time) was taken seriously. where calculators are banned in primary education and only allowed in high school, where kids learn phonics (in both english and our native language) as early as kindergarten, and where school hours are much longer than what we have here in the US.
The education system in the US is a failure, sadly though, I doubt that the people as a whole has the will to fix what needs fixing. I often hear parents complain that their children have too many homeworks (my kids’ school only give maybe a half hour’s worth of homework and does not give homework during the weekends, compare that to my old school where we’re given multiple chapters and problems that would take a full day during the weekend to complete) and not enough playtime (good grief). I also hear parents complain that the school (my kids’ school) is mean since they make the children line up in front of the school doors so they can come into school in an orderly way (imagine that).
Parents and their complaints factor into the failure of the school system as well as the teachers’ union and the lack of government resolve to fix school funding, may it be lack of money or simply lack of insight on how to use funds properly – frankly, I don’t believe that all schools are underfunded, I believe that schools are inefficient.
