Math (public school, insensitive parents) Rant
Katie
Can I rant here breifly amongst friends who won't think I'm crazy??
I was at my sisters today and my 7yo first grade public schooled
nephew came home. My sister in law who is neither his mother or in
anyway in charge of him (I was babysitting) demanded that he come
inside immidiatly and do his homework. He didn't want to (hates
school, hides his homework to avoid doing it). So she told him if he
didn't she would call his mom and tell her and that he would be
grounded and not be able to go to the school skating party tomorrow.
He went to his room to get away from her (I would have too) She
followed him and ragged on him them went and got into her backpack
and dragged out his homework and took it to him. When my sister came
home SIL ran out to tell her the punishment she had already set up
and my sis went along with it.
All afternoon his parents halfheartedly demand that he go sit down
and do his homework or else he won't be able to go. This drags on
for more than an hour. Finally I'm tired of it so I finally offer to
sit down with him and help him through it.
First was spelling/vocab. He has 12 words he's supposed to write
them into sentences. I help him come up with sentences. He has no
problems with the words or sentence structure just has a really hard
time deciding on a sentence. he gets very frustrated several times
and screams that he hates it. I tell him I understand. That it's
tedious and boring. As a break we go onto the math homework. he
quicky works the 5 or 6 double diget subtraction problems no prob.
Then there is the 'story problem'. I've helped him with these
before. They suck!! Just going through them makes it very obvious
why kids are so afraid of math...
John picked some apples. His mother gave him 5 apples. Now he has
nine apples. How many apples did John pick?
Simple. 4, and my nephew knew that right off no problem. The catch
here is they have to tell them how they know. The paper looks like
this...
Thought___________
Information_________
Method____________
Solution____________
None of this is clear to me as an adult. I had no idea what they
could possible want in these spaces. Apparently it goes like this.
Thought is the opperation. he chose + which seems appropriate if you
read the problem because no one is taking anything away they are
adding. For 'Info' they put in the numbers. His were 5 and 9.
Method they are supposed to write the problem. So he wrote 5+9.
Then In solution they write the problem and the answer. 5+9=4.
Obviously this is not right. My option here is to either point this
out or let the teacher point it out. Either way someone is pointing
out he's wrong. When in fact the problem is just worded horribly for
a 7 yo. So I asked him "is 5+9 4? He says no 5+9=14. So he decides
the answer must be 14. At this point he's so far from the original
question that this seems correct. So I showed him how to plug 14
back in to see if it was the right answer and he immidiatly saw that
it wasn't. So then he screams some more and throws the paper and is
mad at the world.
No wonder they think it's hard. They took a perfectly logical easy
question that he could do in his head and made it so hard that he
came up with two wrong answers and got so frustrated he 'wouldn't' do
it. The fact is the 'easiest' way to solve this problem is X+5=9. I
pointed this out to my sister and she actually wrote a note to the
teacher on the homework paper asking why her 7yo is expected to know,
understand, and explain algebra. She hates the school and the
teacher. I wish she would wake up and just pull him out. He threw a
fan across the living room the otherday because the teacher called
him Sidney-poo in front of the whole class. Last year they had him
in remidial reading because he didn't like to read in front of
everyone (oh and in remidial reading he had to read in front of
everyone which only made things worse) It's sad to see the schools
crushing this creative, once happy kid.
*sigh*
Thanks for bearing with me through this. I needed to vent.
Kaite
I was at my sisters today and my 7yo first grade public schooled
nephew came home. My sister in law who is neither his mother or in
anyway in charge of him (I was babysitting) demanded that he come
inside immidiatly and do his homework. He didn't want to (hates
school, hides his homework to avoid doing it). So she told him if he
didn't she would call his mom and tell her and that he would be
grounded and not be able to go to the school skating party tomorrow.
He went to his room to get away from her (I would have too) She
followed him and ragged on him them went and got into her backpack
and dragged out his homework and took it to him. When my sister came
home SIL ran out to tell her the punishment she had already set up
and my sis went along with it.
All afternoon his parents halfheartedly demand that he go sit down
and do his homework or else he won't be able to go. This drags on
for more than an hour. Finally I'm tired of it so I finally offer to
sit down with him and help him through it.
First was spelling/vocab. He has 12 words he's supposed to write
them into sentences. I help him come up with sentences. He has no
problems with the words or sentence structure just has a really hard
time deciding on a sentence. he gets very frustrated several times
and screams that he hates it. I tell him I understand. That it's
tedious and boring. As a break we go onto the math homework. he
quicky works the 5 or 6 double diget subtraction problems no prob.
Then there is the 'story problem'. I've helped him with these
before. They suck!! Just going through them makes it very obvious
why kids are so afraid of math...
John picked some apples. His mother gave him 5 apples. Now he has
nine apples. How many apples did John pick?
Simple. 4, and my nephew knew that right off no problem. The catch
here is they have to tell them how they know. The paper looks like
this...
Thought___________
Information_________
Method____________
Solution____________
None of this is clear to me as an adult. I had no idea what they
could possible want in these spaces. Apparently it goes like this.
Thought is the opperation. he chose + which seems appropriate if you
read the problem because no one is taking anything away they are
adding. For 'Info' they put in the numbers. His were 5 and 9.
Method they are supposed to write the problem. So he wrote 5+9.
Then In solution they write the problem and the answer. 5+9=4.
Obviously this is not right. My option here is to either point this
out or let the teacher point it out. Either way someone is pointing
out he's wrong. When in fact the problem is just worded horribly for
a 7 yo. So I asked him "is 5+9 4? He says no 5+9=14. So he decides
the answer must be 14. At this point he's so far from the original
question that this seems correct. So I showed him how to plug 14
back in to see if it was the right answer and he immidiatly saw that
it wasn't. So then he screams some more and throws the paper and is
mad at the world.
No wonder they think it's hard. They took a perfectly logical easy
question that he could do in his head and made it so hard that he
came up with two wrong answers and got so frustrated he 'wouldn't' do
it. The fact is the 'easiest' way to solve this problem is X+5=9. I
pointed this out to my sister and she actually wrote a note to the
teacher on the homework paper asking why her 7yo is expected to know,
understand, and explain algebra. She hates the school and the
teacher. I wish she would wake up and just pull him out. He threw a
fan across the living room the otherday because the teacher called
him Sidney-poo in front of the whole class. Last year they had him
in remidial reading because he didn't like to read in front of
everyone (oh and in remidial reading he had to read in front of
everyone which only made things worse) It's sad to see the schools
crushing this creative, once happy kid.
*sigh*
Thanks for bearing with me through this. I needed to vent.
Kaite
Joylyn
i feel so bad for this kid and all the other kids in this situation....
a few homeschooling friend's children tried school this year. none of
them stayed more than a week. lexie says she wants nothing to do with
it. good for her. however, she has asked me to teach her long
division. ok... what ever you wish. so i found mathbook and we will
work towards long division. she doesn't want to learn subtraction with
carrying and doesn't understand why she has to do that first, so i tried
to explain it. i think she understood and is keen to get started so we
did the chapter test at the end of the first chapter and she got them
all right. so now we move on to chapter two. we aren't going to do
every page, but just do the test at the end to see what things in that
chapter she needs to know, and then go back and do that and then go
forward. it'll be interesting...
joylyn
a few homeschooling friend's children tried school this year. none of
them stayed more than a week. lexie says she wants nothing to do with
it. good for her. however, she has asked me to teach her long
division. ok... what ever you wish. so i found mathbook and we will
work towards long division. she doesn't want to learn subtraction with
carrying and doesn't understand why she has to do that first, so i tried
to explain it. i think she understood and is keen to get started so we
did the chapter test at the end of the first chapter and she got them
all right. so now we move on to chapter two. we aren't going to do
every page, but just do the test at the end to see what things in that
chapter she needs to know, and then go back and do that and then go
forward. it'll be interesting...
joylyn
> It's sad to see the schools
> crushing this creative, once happy kid.
>
> *sigh*
>
> Thanks for bearing with me through this. I needed to vent.
>
> Kaite
Dawn Falbe
I used to go out to dinner on a regular basis with 3 other women. Our
kids had known each other since they were 1 and had grown up together.
When they all hit 5 I was the only one unschooling. When we would go
out to dinner we would be in a restaurant for 3 hours and I would sit
and listen to these women complain about teachers, homework, the school
district, clothing, bullies, homework, homework, homework... I once
even said "if you don't like all these things about school why are you
sending them"... 2 of these people were teachers and so they looked at
me in horror as to what else they could do....
I never had any intention of Zak doing homework regardless of whether he
went to school or not. I remember being in school in England and in the
5th year (which translates to age 16 here, not sure what Grade that is
because as I unschool I've never bothered to learn what grades meant) I
decided that it was a waste of time to do homework. I went from a
student that got A's and B's to D's and E's just because I wouldn't do
any homework and my parents didn't make me..
I think of homework as more busywork except instead of doing it at
school, you are bringing that busywork home now and invading that safe
place.
Zak loves Math problems for about 1 hour and then he's bored and wants
to play....Right now his favorite show is Stanley on Disney as they are
doing the alphabet of animals and he loves things in sequence.
Dawn
Tucson, AZ
From: "Katie" <katguts@...>
Subject: Math (public school, insensitive parents) Rant
.....All afternoon his parents halfheartedly demand that he go sit down
and do his homework or else he won't be able to go......
kids had known each other since they were 1 and had grown up together.
When they all hit 5 I was the only one unschooling. When we would go
out to dinner we would be in a restaurant for 3 hours and I would sit
and listen to these women complain about teachers, homework, the school
district, clothing, bullies, homework, homework, homework... I once
even said "if you don't like all these things about school why are you
sending them"... 2 of these people were teachers and so they looked at
me in horror as to what else they could do....
I never had any intention of Zak doing homework regardless of whether he
went to school or not. I remember being in school in England and in the
5th year (which translates to age 16 here, not sure what Grade that is
because as I unschool I've never bothered to learn what grades meant) I
decided that it was a waste of time to do homework. I went from a
student that got A's and B's to D's and E's just because I wouldn't do
any homework and my parents didn't make me..
I think of homework as more busywork except instead of doing it at
school, you are bringing that busywork home now and invading that safe
place.
Zak loves Math problems for about 1 hour and then he's bored and wants
to play....Right now his favorite show is Stanley on Disney as they are
doing the alphabet of animals and he loves things in sequence.
Dawn
Tucson, AZ
From: "Katie" <katguts@...>
Subject: Math (public school, insensitive parents) Rant
.....All afternoon his parents halfheartedly demand that he go sit down
and do his homework or else he won't be able to go......