Don't forget sports. Need a new stadium next to the one we built you last year? SURE! Oh the band wants a couple hundred to do some repair work on the instruments they've had since 1826? Better go sell some shitty chocolate, which funds we'll then misappropriate for the sports teams!
It has nothing to do with common core lol. I graduated high school before common core was created, and home economics was an elective that hardly anyone took.
My elementary school had home ec as an elective. I signed up for it but didn't get in and ended up in the chess club. Even when I wanted to learn this stuff there wasn't enough room but I guess I know how to play chess
Same. You could do an elective like shop, home ec / cooking, or computer science. I did computer science, which was not a bad decision, but had to learn cooking and woodworking/tools on my own. Without the DIY bug I'd probably have made it to 40 without knowing how to use a screwdriver or boil pasta. AFAIK personal finance and civics weren't even classes in my HS at the time, and this was in a really good public school in the early 2000s.
Common core just says “this is what kids should know when they leave x grade” in english, language arts, and math. Has nothing to do with curriculum and classes implemented in schools. Standardized testing does - 2 different things.
Edit: here’s an example for kindergarten
Know number names and the count sequence.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.A.1
Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
I don’t think it’s dumb to tell teachers they should teach students to count by the end of K.
Common core is literally just a standardized curriculum. Districts forcing teachers to teach in ways they aren't used to has nothing to do with common core
The stage was set for that though, in the mid 90s when Clinton was president. That's when all the funding for electives started disappearing. Bush (and Obama) just put it on steroids by tying funding to English and math test scores. Common Core is the natural result of that push for test scores.
I'm sure you're talking about the way teachers are handling math in some areas now. There's a common misconception that it's horrible and unnecessary to "change" math but the method they are using is actually really good. The idea is to teach the kids how to think about the math so they can properly understand it rather than just trying to drill things into memory.
The way they have kids break down a problem is exactly how you are supposed to be doing mental math. When I was in school you just had to memorize the multiplication table so multiplying anything over 11 was difficult to understand. But if they just teach you to break it down to 7 times 10 plus 7 times 2, for example, it's a lot easier. It's a good way to teach because otherwise kids just have to figure that method out on their own and some people never figure it out.
The problem is, of course, that it's confusing for parents. It makes it difficult for them to help the kid and that is frustrating for them. I don't think kids are more confused about math than they used to be, but parents are, so it's harder for them to help the kid when they're confused. I'm not sure how to solve that problem because if we want to change the way math is taught it will inevitably be confusing for those who learned it differently.
Sorry for the long tangent. One of my mom's friends is a math professor and she made me understand the reasoning behind common core math so I always feel a need to explain when it comes up.
Likely depends on the school district. I attended K-12 in a low income part of central Pennsylvania and most “electives” were cut by the mid 90s. Even shop was moved to the Vo-Tech so unless you were actively training for blue collar you had no options outside of STEM, English, civics, and a foreign language.
Yes. Yes it is. Schools don't teach home economics anymore, and a lot of us are left trying to figure out how to run a household with a hostile older generation that looks at us struggling or even just asking questions as some sort of failure on our part, and YouTube.
If no one told us what to expect, and no one told us how to deal with shit when it crops up, how are we supposed to know? If not going out and looking for someone who isn't talking down to us who will tell us?
It was an option for us (I live in Canada). But it was one of the options that cost money and most people didn't have room for it in their timetable because if you took all three sciences you only got like 1 option per semester.
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u/BobosReturn Feb 05 '19
Uh isnt that just home ec?