I haven’t read the editorial that inspired this letter, but I’m in full agreement with the author. He begins…
Ah yes. More hand-wringing over what to do about the train wreck called “public education.” Lots of rhetoric and zero results.
I teach math in the community college system and we have high school “graduates” who do not know their times tables. What were they doing for 12 years?
To which I ask again, “What the hell were they doing for the last 12 years?”. They were at least sorta learning what their teacher were teaching them, which was NOT the multiplcation tables. A few years ago, when my older daughter was in 8th grade I volunteered to test the students on their multiplcation tables. I worked with one student at a time and had “multiplication cards” that went from 1 x 1 through 12 x 12. The best students were always from outside our school district. We had 8th graders that were simply didn’t have a clue about multiplication facts, but they sure could skip count. Unfortunately, skip counting is error prone, not to mention SLOW, when your under pressure.
The 12x were very interesting. Take 12 x 5. Of course, skip counting is either very long if you counting by 5’s are a difficult if your adding by 12’s. I would ask the students “Do you khow what 10 * 5 is, and they would say “yes”. How about 2 x 5, and they would respond in the affirmative again. Then I would ask them to add the answers together and they would say 60! For more than 1/2 the students who were having difficulty you could see a light bulb turn “on” inside their heads. They were then able to attack the rest of the 12x tables with very improved results. Still, for 8th grade, that was pathetic. The issue is the 8th grade teachers are trying to teach Algebra or whatever it is, not the multiplication tables. This particular problem resided in the elementary school, that is if you decide NOT to blame the school board.
The letter writer goes on to suggest…
I can give you some suggestions for improving public schools. In the movie “Stand By Me,” on the very first day of school, the new principal got rid of all the troublemakers. Sent them home to their parents since they are the parents’ problem.
Get public schools out of the psychiatry business. If a child has severe emotional issues, it is the parents’ responsibility to deliver to the front door a fully functional human being ready to learn.
Get public schools out of the health care business. If a child has serious medical problems, it is the parents’ responsibility to find remedies and again deliver to the school a fully functional human being ready to learn.
Prohibit cellphones, iPods, calculators and laptop computers on school property. The school is supported by the taxpayers as a learning environment, not a social gathering.
Implement real academic standards. If you fail, you fail. No more social promotion.
Implement a dress code. If a student wants to dress like a circus clown, send her home or to the circus. A teacher that dresses like a slob does not impart the image that education should impart.
(bold and text enlargment is mine)
Can’t say that I disagree. No doubt our school system would do a much better job of teaching. That won’t necessarily fix the multiplcation problems unfortunately.
