Common Core vs. Common Knowledge

There is no love lost between me and the educational system in this country. So when I see these posts of “common core” mathematics, and stories of crying children and frustrated, educated parents, I am reduced to monologuing my long-suffering partner with one of my epic rants. I will spare you the same. I don’t need to tell anyone how or what to think. (Although, if asked, I will expound upon my own ideas should you care to take them into consideration. Be prepared.) 

However, when I’ve kicked my soapbox back under the sink, and my blood pressure returns to normal, and my partner returns to his regularly unscheduled life, what I have left is the debris field of my energetic verbal vomit. Now what? What I’m becoming adept at these days, and that’s transferring my mental energy from the “What” to the “Why?” Not the bemoaning, whining “why”, but the inquiring “why”, that is a quest for understanding in a situation that seems to make no sense. 

So, now that all but one of my children are done with school, and I can afford to be completely emotionally objective about it, it’s time to seek out the other side of the story. Whose idea was this? Can’t tell…my sledgehammer shattered the picture so well I can’t read the autograph. Enter Google. Common Core math. Jo Boaler, Stanford University. Conrad Wolfram. Sebastian Thurm. The rabbit trail continues. 

Less than an hour in, I’m sitting in a “holy shit” moment. Kind of embarrassed, really, at what I might have looked like delivering my bitter diatribe to these people in person. Objectively speaking, these people are making a lot of sense, and are coming from a place of sincerely wanting to better the human mind. And their ideas have merit, and they warrant some clear-headed consideration. 

What they are really talking about is a paradigm shift in the way we think about math. And they are spot on. The majority of people have a bad taste in their mouth about math. The idea is that we’ve been teaching not math, but manual calculation, which is a drudgery to be sure. Now that we have entered the computer age, it’s time to let the computer do the calculating so that we can engage in the math. Math does NOT, in fact, equal calculating. If this makes no sense to you, then I would suggest the TED talk by Conrad Wolfram. The long and the short of it is, we need to redefine math here in America. And that will take a paradigm shift. 

After spending more time than I really wanted to, I’ve taken the info walk around all 360 degrees of this one, and come to the same conclusion as Cool Hand Luke: What we have here is a failure to communicate. 

These two ways of defining math are so far apart, and have so little in common, that to even carry the same name seems ludicrous. The concept at one end is creative, brilliant and progressive. At the other is pencil-wielding, number-crunching performance with little practicality. And then there’s me, stumping to keep things the same-same. Yes…the math I hated? Keep doing that, dammit, so I can help my kid do their homework. It’s the math I know. It’s COMMON KNOWLEDGE!  Ding! Ding! Ding! 

Math (as we know it here) IS common knowledge. You know, add, subtract, multiply and divide. Fractions. Percents. You’re good. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We are talking about a NEW knowledge altogether. That’s not “common” on any level. The word common here is oxymoronic, because the “new math” is a complete reframing of math, and has about as much similarity to the “old math” as the butterfly resembles the caterpillar from which is emanated. 

Here’s another metaphor for you: "Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved." 

We are asking teachers, whose common knowledge of mathematics is the “old math”, to teach a subject that has far less to do with the calculations that make up their training and more to do with creative, critical thinking. It’s like asking the most left-brained person you know to teach a class in transcendental meditation. The concepts of what have been mislabeled “common core” cannot be taught with the same methods as the times-table calculations we all memorized and hated. It’s not a memorize-and-regurgitate-pop-quiz kind of material, and we cannot hope to teach it that way. The poor little wineskins are exploding, and all the good stuff is falling on the floor. And we are rightfully panicking about the damage control, because the kids are caught in the maelstrom. 

The world is, in fact changing. In my lifetime along we’ve gone from dial telephones to Skype. That was Sci-Fi stuff when I was in high school, and I’m only 50. Perhaps we need to consider making room for additional changes, and not snubbing the new ideas with our memories of the way things used to be. Those schools are full of the future of our species. If there is a new and better way to educate them – that intensifies their creativity and learning capabilities, it’s probably a good idea to look at it. 

Now, the fastest way to ruin any chance of common anything is to toss an issue into the political arena, smothered in dollar bills. Observe the melee. Heavy sigh. 

Here’s the part where the temptation to pull out my soap-box can get overwhelming…but I shall stand strong. My point is not to continue the debate, but to push for knowledge, because knowledge will lead to understanding, and understanding leads to appropriate action for you, your kids, your school, your community, your life. 

There are not two sides to every story. There are at least 360. And I believe it was David Bender who said it best, “Those who do not know their opponent’s arguments do not completely understand their own.”  If we all apply a little due diligence, perhaps we can indeed find the Common core. 

http://youtu.be/60OVlfAUPJg