My church had a pizza party after services today, in honor of my
pastor’s birthday. A topic of conversation that came up more than once
at the party was the new Common Core educational standards. There was a
couple whose daughter is in kindergarten, and they were saying that
their daughter had spelling tests and was learning number patterns
(i.e., 2, 4, 6, 9, etc.) at school. A lady who has a degree in
education and teacher’s certification, and who works as a tutor for many
at-risk youth, had problems with the new Common Core standards.
Essentially, she believed that the instructions were too complicated for
the teachers, and that the standards were too high for the students.
She noted that first-graders were required under the new standards to
know about probability, and she had problems with how Common Core math
requires students to show their work, for why should they have to show
their work after they gained enough proficiency to do certain steps in
their heads? She was also talking about circles in one of the Common
Core books that she was reading, and the circles were intended to appeal
to visual learners. She thought that the circles were complicating
matters.
I talked with my Mom after the pizza party. My Mom was enrolled in a
master’s program in education years ago, and she supports the new
Common Core standards. She said that students should know about
probability and spelling at a young age in order to compete with other
countries, and she thought that little kids who knew how to use I-Pads
can learn how to spell and do math problems. She also stated that
requiring students to show their work would discourage them from
cheating (i.e., getting the answer off the Internet). My Mom also
referred to a teacher she knew who supported the Common Core standards,
stating that kids should know this stuff, anyway.
The problems that people at my church were expressing about Common
Core differed from the right-wing critiques that I have read of the
program. The right-wingers I read online argue that Common Core is not
academically rigorous enough, whereas people at my church seemed to be
saying that it was too advanced and rigorous for kindergartners and
first-graders. The two groups would probably agree, however, that
Common Core is an example of the government imposing a bunch of
inflexible rules and standards.
I did not know enough about Common Core to offer an opinion. I had
read about it, but I myself never had any interaction with it. It does
seem to me that Common Core requires kindergartners and first-graders to
learn more than I had to learn when I was a kindergartner and
first-grader. I didn’t have spelling tests in kindergarten, and I
didn’t know what probability was as a first-grader! I am not absolutely
sure if previous generations learned those things as kindergartners and
first-graders, but I am doubtful. Hopefully, teachers will be able to
impart this knowledge, in a manner that is accessible and understandable
to their students.