Educator states reform math works!

[DartmouthAlum96]

This woman is further evidence that most people who go into "education" are intellectually substandard.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

This woman is giving the Party Line. Written by the same people who devised New Math. Be suspicious, very suspicious!

Here's the correct way. Start with the basics. Make sure kids can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Effortlessly, confidently. THEN you go to more abstract concepts. The lunacy of New Math and Reform Math is that they want to abuse elementary school kids with stuff that used to be taught in high school.

[sleeper2345]

@BruceDeitrickPrice Right, addition is not "abstract." If only you realized how absurd the statement is. What does it mean to abstract? Don't you have to abstract information to call something a "dog"? Of course. However, most adults have no clue what it means to abstract an idea. Unfortunately, children are capable of learning much more than you realize or could imagine. 

[becky50]

Dumb bitch. Math "reform" came about in the last 20yrs and has dumbed down our kids. My child switched schools and had to repeat Algebra 1. Our school is one year behind in math.

[DIFCS]

The United States is a Republic, a Democratic Republic, but definately not a democracy. Since this is just one of those things that people always seem to spout just because they heard it somewhere else, you heard it here. We are a Republic.

[nda340]

I stopped listening when I heard the comment about mathematicians winning Nobel Prizes. It's the Fields Medal, lady. I'd like to know if she's cut her teeth in analysis.

[bathlarper]

Its not just nobel prize winning elite mathmaticians who use simple algorithms. every engineer and scientist in the world uses them every day of their working lives.

At the beginning of the video this woman says she is extremely knowledgeable because she has been a teacher for 34 MONTHS. use your basic math skills to work out that she's only been teaching for less than 3 years. Thats not even long enough to earn full membership of a teaching union!

[benjaminwwe]

My Maths works coursebook,features whole numbers Decimsld Fractions word problems 37+85=122

[whatsit777]

good point--most *real* mathematicians are not from the US.

[jorusfett]

I don't know where she got her data, but if she is looking at the TIMSS report, the best the US has ever done is 12th (in 2003 for 4th Graders). I hear the same line of reasoning that she put forth in my own school district. It's almost as if they are all reading from the same script. And I have to agree with some of the other comments...being a math educator doesn't make you a mathematician. :)

[mgreffin]

I've never in my life met a non-college level mathematics instructor who could honestly be called a mathematician. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but I'll give long odds that this woman never took a course in real analysis, topology, complex analysis... you know, the bedrock basis of advanced mathematics.

[UCSDEngineerDoctor]

This women is a fraud, like solanadoc said!

[fucku2be]

U.S. students also had lower scores than the OECD average scores for each of the four content area subscales. Twenty-four countries outperformed the United States on the space and shape subscale, 21 countries outperformed the United States on the change and relationships subscale, 26 countries outscored the United States on the quantity subscale, and 19 countries outscored the United States on the uncertainty subscale.

NCES 2005-03 published by US DOE

[yourlocalmoth]

This lady is such a dumb idiot. Mathematicians do not win Nobel Prizes as there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics. Also, she claims to be a Mathematician, but I highly doubt she has a real degree in Mathematics (I do not count Math Education as a real degree in Mathematics btw.).

[gmr140]

This Lady has no idea what she is talking about. She should just stick to drinking coffee and talking in the teacher's lounge, and let real math people like engineers do the teaching. There is a reason china and india lead us in math, because they are taught it, not experimented with stupid CA programs like reform math.........2 + 2 is whatever you want it to be........what a joke

[tavary453277]

This so-called educator is exactly why our students are failing so miserably. It is quite obvious that educating our brightest students will dictate our country's future. No child left behind is a joke and has damaged our current generation in their ability to compete in a global economy. Wake up, America!!!

[solanadoc]

These educators are all talk. I was an Engineer student at UCSD and most of them are forgein nationals from Asia! American Students who take reform math all drop out of engineering. Especially when this reform math are taught to inner city kids and minorities which they prasie so much! I have yet to see a black or hispanic(which is sad!), at UCSD in Engineering, or any UC school, because most of them are asians which avoid reform math like the plague.

[CatoQuip]

Right on! It is so ridiculously 1984 in the way they use language to redefine these clearly destructive programs as good for diversity and minorities, when the opposite is always the end result. There people are destroying this country.

[solanadoc]

What is her name? I want to know, so that the school she is teaching or educational board she is on so that she can be fired! She wastes our tax money and put our children's education/future in serious jeopardy!

[solanadoc]

Diversity? Is she on Crack? Trying to bring kids up to Nobel Prize Mathematics(1:45)? When the kids cannot even do simple addition? Trying to teach combinatorics, fractals, or fuzzy math to kids is like teaching Chaos Theory to people that do not even know algebra, that is insane! You must have a strong rudimentary of the basics before you even begin algebra, let alone non-linear Mathematics!

[solanadoc]

This educator is a fraud!!!

[grossgermany]

why aren't parents revolting?

they can just vote these people out.

[CatoQuip]

First, this isn't a "democracy" which we live in, it is a republic by which we elect representatives through a democratic process. It isn't a direct democracy like this speaker seems to believe.

Second, the argument for her belief in this ridiculous constructivist math is to promote diversity? How sick does a person have to be to equate diversification with mathematics.

Finally, it is far past time parents stand up for their children and put people like this out of business.

[jmsokeefe]

This woman consult for Prentice Hall, therefore she has a vested Money interest in CMP2. She teaches CMP2 training courses on a per diem basis. She should not have presented herself as an expert without disclosing that information first. Maybe the Houghton-Mifflin and Saxon Reps should start speaking at our Board of Ed meetings?

[CatoQuip]

I can't believe their isn't an ethical disclosure policy to begin with, but if the paid off school board members didn't have these people come to pull the wool over people's eyes, then how would they have any cover when the people criticize their horrible decisions to use this reform junk.