So I’m sitting next to a student Thursday after school, and we’re going over some math questions. STAR testing for Math begins Monday, and this kid is doing his best to be ready. What a trooper! Ms. Ghareeb is smiling at this situation.
And the math isn’t easy, either. “One real estate agent charges 1.2% of a home’s sale price, and the other charges a flat rate of $2,600. Which is the better price if the house sold for. . .” I had to even re-read these problems a few times. Sales Tax. Fractions Exponents. Now I understand why seventh graders are so cranky.
But as we’re working, I notice something that brings me great sadness. It ‘s nothing at first; we do a few of the easier problems, which he gets mostly right. As we tackle harder and more complex problems (and he gets them mostly wrong) I realize: this kid is using some great guessing skills, but he has no idea how the math works. And he tells me so.
“I know A and D can’t be right, because it’s going to be a positive number.”
“But show me how that fraction is going to be reduced.”
“But I don’t have to. I know it’s one of these two.”
“Here, (hands him the pencil) show me how you actually work it out. ”
Nothing. Blank stares. More conversation about how he eliminated some answers and guesses between the other two. I don’t think he crunched a single number the whole time.
So this is what we’ve come to? So focused on passing a multiple choice test that we actually send kids to the next level more prepared to guess correctly that put pencil to paper and do some math? Anyone else want to tell me Standardized testing is a good thing for learning?
Good Luck, kids.
One Comment
Dude. Really? Like, I appreciate that the teacher is teaching test-taking skills (cuz it’s totally a game to be played), but teaching those skills to the exclusion of real math? Or is it that the kid is so far behind, test-taking skills is all he can handle?
Technology is such an interesting thing. It makes so many things easier, but also eliminates the need to truly understand how something works. I have to say that this is why I initially was a non-Mac person (my dad and I used to build our computers together and tweak stuff–Macs are a lot less transparent than Windows used to be), but not even PCs are hard to figure out.
That leads me to ponder Bloom’s Taxonomy, and the most basic level: knowledge. Knowledge is so complex! There’s knowledge about what to click, but there’s knowledge about WHY to click, too! And it’s the why we’re starting to lose.