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Your child and NCTM
Posted:
Nov 13, 1999 2:59 PM
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While a can only sympathize with your child, my question is, "What
does NCTM have to do with your child?" Your subject line implies a
direct relation between what NCTM does and what goes on in your
child's classroom. Unfortunately, this link is tenuous at best.
Ultimately, the responsibility to teach lies with each teacher and the
responsibility to make children want to learn with each parent. NCTM
or any other organization cannot do that.
Despite claims by most curricular programs, textbook publishers and
local department heads and superintendants, there are very few
programs that in any way comply even with the original NCTM standards.
Most of these programs likely were in compliance even before the idea
of the standards existed. Why? Because we are producing thousands of
badly trained semi-professionals and call them "teachers". The better
teachers will always find a way to reach the children, no matter what
the institutional control is. The rest will produce worksheets and
teach to the standardized tests.
At the same time, the term "word problems" has been used so much in
derogatory manner that I would like to see exactly what YOU mean by
word problems that your child has been doing in the classroom. The
traditional word problems will indeed make paint peel by itself out of
boredom. But what has recently been referred to as "word problems" is
not always the nonsense of this kind and, occasionally, they are what
kids should be learning. Would you please post some sapmles.
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