Last night's meeting

[Nikki P.]

Hi all,

Just wanted to make one observation about the teacher from Panorama
and the 'skip counting' anecdote from last night's board meeting. She
mention that some children had the idea to memorize these skip
counting patterns without any help on her part. WHAT???? That leaves
maybe 15-20 (wish I knew the real number) kids who are just bored or
frustrated or distracted who might need a suggestion or assignment to
get them to memorize their times tables, who just got left behind.
This is so crazy. Who is telling teachers that they are only good
teachers if they manipulate children to have these ideas on their
own. What ever happened to instructors?

Nikki

[Yuan]

My "WHAT????" came when a teacher (!) said it was OK that we ranked at
bottom in the world for math.
She went on to say it was because we were the most creative thinkers
in the world. Why can't we just aim a little bit higher and be BOTH
knowledgeable and creative. Why does it have to be either this or
that. It doesn't matter if we become the most inefficient creative
thinkers?
She also said calculation was not important because it can be done by
computers -- which summed up the philosophy of this curriculum pretty
well.