Ana had pre-test for homework over the weekend.

[conuly]

For English, I had to convince her that there is no law saying that paragraphs must have a minimum number of sentences. "You mean that a paragraph can have ONE sentence, Connie???" Yes, Ana, that is what I mean, and please don't insult me by claiming you weren't rolling your eyes at me when you definitely were. I pulled up a random article from CNN to prove the point. I don't know who started that silly story or why people keep lying to kids, but it pisses me off.

For the math portion she had to correctly identify the associative trait of multiplication and explain how she knew that 60 x (3 x 4) is the same as (60 x 3) x 4. And "associative property, duh!" is not an acceptable response. She righteously complained that she HATES those that have one small problem, but then you have to do a whole paragraph of writing, and I concur. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure she needs to be able to regurgitate the phrase "associative property!" on command provided that she understands the concept (which it turns out she didn't, but more on this in a bit). It actually angers me that so much of the test is multiple choice, for MATH, and so her class tests are multiple choice to "prepare them", and her homework is multiple choice, and they cover a number of topics that are utterly useless for her at this age at the very real cost of getting real practice in things she SHOULD be learning. They have too many topics to even test on every one at the end of the year, and the ones they can cram into the test get one or two questions each. Which are multiple guess, or else require an essay.

Ana wasn't sure which property this was, so we looked it up and defined the term. But, oh no! Ana forgot the answer in seconds, and didn't want to think! I told her that since she knew the concept, she could just think it through.

The answer Ana wanted to write then was "the associative property is when you multiply three or more numbers and do reverse psychology". I put the kibosh on that for not making any sense, and also because when you try to define terms on tests with "this thing is when", nine times out of ten you end up babbling and not, well, making any sense. Something about trying to fit a definition into a grammatical sentence with that intro leads to sloppy thinking. I justified it with prescriptive grammar, but that's the problem there. Outside of a poem we wouldn't say "a cat is when it is furry and purrs", and that's just going to apply to thought and representative government and the associative property of multiplication as well.

Ana threw a fit, because she had already written "it is when" and had to erase. The horror. Several tries later, during which I finally screamed that she could NOT write her answer because HER ANSWER WAS WRONG and she might as well write that the associative property is BATMAN because she'd be as likely to be correct if she did!!! (not my best moment, I'll admit, but it saved us from having to wake Eva from her nap) I realized that Ana somehow had gotten the impression that all these properties of addition and multiplication are something you do, some form of mathematical trick, rather than describing essential facts about how numbers work.

Well, of course she had. They should have just told her those facts and given her examples like 2 x (3 x 4) = 24 and (2 x 3) x 4 = 24 rather than giving her a list of names with neatly balanced equations on both sides. The terms could have waited. I can't help but wonder how many of her classmates are laboring under the same strange misapprehension, and the hilarious thing is that there is no way the standardized test is going to catch this! At least I am forewarned for when Eva is in fourth grade. Joy of joys.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

I was in accelerated math, and I'm pretty sure we didn't call it the associative property until at least 6th or 7th grade. It's a really abstract idea. I'm sure some clever curriculum designer thought that it was just some simple vocab to memorize, and vocab is easy, but that is a hard definition. And no one will actually care about the definition until higher math, as long as you can use it correctly.

[conuly]

I know we didn't either, but now it's on the statewide fourth grade test. It's absolutely ridiculous,

[crystalpyramid]

Sigh. And now all the fourth graders will memorize it, but most of them probably don't even have the abstract reasoning skills yet to get it. Which just makes more work for their eventual algebra teacher, who will inherit all these kids who have a mental block about the associative property of multiplication even earlier than they normally do.

Not quite as bad as teaching kids dumbed down versions that are actually wrong, but definitely up there.

[janewilliams20]

But knowing the phrase "associative property" is ESSENTIAL to doing any maths, we all know that... so how come I got through a maths-based degree without ever having heard of it? I understood the principle from the age of about 9 or so, sure, but no buzz word, and I'm not sure I could explain it even now. It's just obvious that that's how multiplication works.

[conuly]

There's four of them to remember, and I passed a test on this in the 7th or 8th grades and have never once thought about them since. Associative, distributive, commutative, and identity, and I bet that you can't place each one with the little factoid until you're told, either.

[conuly]

I've been so careful all this time to not tell them you can NEVER subtract a larger number from a smaller (just that it isn't the level they're at yet), but I didn't see that misunderstanding coming at all.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"I realized that Ana somehow had gotten the impression that all these properties of addition and multiplication are something you do, some form of mathematical trick, rather than describing essential facts about how numbers work."

Ayup. "Associative property", "distributive property", "communicative property".... uh... which is which again? And what do they mean? Do they actually mean anything, or are they just 'New Math jargon from the '60's, that has never made anything clearer to any pupil....?

Oh sure, the terms are labels for descriptions of essential facts about numbers - as you noted, they aren't the descriptions themselves, or else Ana wouldn't have to come up with a paragraph's worth of description, and they certainly aren't the essential facts themselves. I would say, make it easy for everyone; just give Ana a definition she can parrot neatly back and call it good, because never - never - in all the rest of her life will it matter one whit whether she can either define the associative property or understand the definition.

As for her forgetting the answer in seconds - srsly, some time check out the definitions for 'buzzwords' used in, say, post-modernist literary criticism or Hegelian philosophy or speculative physics. It's very hard to memorize stuff that doesn't make any damn sense unless you already understand all the concepts behind it. It's also very hard to want to think about stuff that doesn't make any damn sense.

LOL, the girl's just going to have to learn Academese, and then it will be easier for her, as well as more fun: constructing elegant labyrinths of vague but grammatical sesquipedalian bosh to obscure the fact that one has no clue what one is talking about. Post-modernist literary criticism is an easier subject than arithmetic in which to get away with that, of course, but if arithmetic has to have these bosh terms stuck into it, one might as well have a go with them. The 'reverse psychology' metaphor showed promise there, I thought.
'

[conuly]

I have this funny idea that when they give out homework it is cheating to simply give Ana the answers. You should hear me when they ask to spell a word, I never ever ever give them the letters, I always insist on them sounding it out. So even if it makes sense to just hand over the answer, it's not likely to occur to me in the moment.

[conuly]

On the subject of homework, the school is insane, and I ought to make Jenn write a note. Ana is supposed to read for 35 minutes a night, AND write a response AND a journal entry AND do spelling AND do math AND do whatever her art or science teacher assigned. Which is bad enough, but next year they apparently are doing an hour of reading, which is where I put my foot down. Ana could read that much without complaining or fussing, she would be glad to, but I think she should have time to bathe, clean her room, and, oh, incidentally, play.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Cheating whom, though? The object of the schooling-process is supposed to be to facilitate learning, not to frustrate it. Therefore, if the "rules of the game" are set up so that following them leads to frustration rather than learning, following them is cheating the child.

Why do they still ask you how to spell words, if you'll never tell them? Do you do that 'leading question' thing to help them guess their way? If they've figured out the mechanics of phonics, at this point you might find it facilitates their learning more if you do spell the words for them, and have them spell them back to you.

[conuly]

Why do they still ask you how to spell words, if you'll never tell them?

Because it doesn't seem to bother them when I do this, and it mostly works. I chunk it up sound by sound, and they go "oh, right". I have no idea why it works, and I kinda wish it worked to chase them towards the dictionary instead, but they both can spell once I divide up the sound by phonemes. I'm fair and spell really tricky words like phlegm (a word my sister taunted me with for years), though when I spelled it for Ana the other day I told her why that g is there.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Holy moly, that IS insane - she's got six homework assignments a night?!? Is it assigned reading, or her own choice, and what's the response she has to write?

If it's her own choice, an hour of reading sounds perfectly reasonable. I don't think my kid ever read less than an hour a day from the time she learned to read; I used to read aloud to her several hours every day - it was less time than most kids spend watching TV, which we didn't have.

It's all the other junk - spelling AND writing AND math AND art and/or science - sheesh, what are they doing for all those hours in school every day, that that's not enough time to teach these subjects? Kids have other things to do after school than more schoolwork. I hope Jenn does write a note.

[conuly]

It's self selected reading, but I think it's unreasonable to everybody else in the grade who might not like to read that much. Twenty minutes is fine, or the hour if there is nothing else at all, but it just seems like a lot for kids who don't love to read. And the response is largely a mini book report. Actually, that isn't daily, but it still seems ridiculous on top of the journal. (That same stupid journal that the entire school does. Do you remember that? Same assignment every stinking day, write about your day? The teacher agreed to back off on that, but again, I think it's unreasonable for all the other kids, and I KNOW none of them like it, I've asked their parents.)

Her spelling list is 16 to 20 words. The good thing about it is that this year it seems to be set up logically, every word reviewing the same one or two rules, but it still seems pretty long when she has to do half her words as sentences on Tuesday and on Wednesday. At least this teacher doesn't ask for triangle writing, which I think I actually did for her at least once. The stupidest assignment I have ever seen in any subject, including during my own childhood.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

True indeed - requiring an hour of reading from a kid who doesn't like to read is only going to make them hate it more.

When I was in school, the whole 'journaling' fad hadn't yet come to pass, nor the idea of forcing kids to read for 'pleasure'. I kept my own diary from second grade on; started keeping a notebook like Harriet the Spy in 4th grade - nobody regarded this as a positive thing, nor the fact that I had my nose in my self-selected reading all the time; I got shit for it all through school.

Of course, this was not effective in stopping me from wanting to read my books and write in my notebook. So it seems like now they've come up with a new strategy to discourage self-selected reading for pleasure: make it compulsory, put it on the time-clock, and make them regurgitate a 'response'. And in order to discourage writing for oneself, make that compulsory too; take all the privacy out of keeping a journal, and grade children on it. Very clever; I'm sure it will be effective on a great many students.

It's nice that the spelling words are arranged logically, but still, 16 to 20 words per week is a lot at her age, and that tired old "write the word in a sentence" assignment doesn't actually help them learn it. What is 'triangle writing'? I've never heard of that, and Google doesn't seem to know either.

.

[conuly]

Oh, god, you will scream. Take the word scream. In triangle writing poor Ana would have to write

S
Sc
Scr
Scre
Screa
Scream

Ad then draw a triangle around it, like some form of medieval magic spell. Once for every word on her list, many of which were pretty darn long.