STRAIGHT OUT OF A SOVIET COMMUNIST TEXTBOOK!

“The kids who come to us are a clean slate.…
It’s the adults who have to be retrained.”

Read the fol­low­ing arti­cle and learn how par­ents are being retrained — but not just in math skills! “Com­mon Core math can be a mys­tery, and par­ents are going to school to under­stand it,” The Wash­ing­ton Post, Novem­ber 1, 2014:

Most U.S. pub­lic school stu­dents are learn­ing math very dif­fer­ent­ly than their par­ents did, due to Com­mon Core State Stan­dards, nation­al K‑12 math and read­ing bench­marks that have been adopt­ed by 43 states and the Dis­trict of Columbia.…

Rochester is one of many school dis­tricts across the coun­try teach­ing par­ents the new Com­mon Core math in addi­tion to their chil­dren. From New York to Cal­i­for­nia, school dis­tricts are hold­ing spe­cial math ses­sions for par­ents and care­givers, send­ing home “cheat sheets” and offer­ing home­work hot­lines answered by math teach­ers, all in an effort to explain and demys­ti­fy the new approach.

“The kids who come to us are a clean slate,” said Jen­nifer Patanel­la, an instruc­tion­al coach with the Rochester pub­lic schools. “It’s the adults who have to be retrained.”

In April, come­di­an Stephen Col­bert ripped into an exam­ple of a math prob­lem that had lit up the Web after it was post­ed on Face­book by a frus­trat­ed North Car­oli­na father. The home­work prob­lem showed a hor­i­zon­tal num­ber line with a series of half domes scrib­bled on top and said “Jack used a num­ber line below to solve 427–316. Find his error. Then write a let­ter to Jack explain­ing what he did right and what he should do to fix his mistake.”…

The par­ent who post­ed the math prob­lem, Jeff Sev­ert, wrote the note required by the prob­lem: “Dear Jack, Don’t feel bad. I have a bach­e­lor of sci­ence degree in engi­neer­ing which includ­ed exten­sive study in dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions and oth­er high­er math appli­ca­tions. Even I can­not explain the Com­mon Core math­e­mat­ics approach, nor get the cor­rect answer. In the real world, sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is favored over complication.”

Then, he solved the prob­lem using sim­ple sub­trac­tion, which he said took less than five sec­onds, to come up with the answer: 111. [all emphases added]

Be sure to watch this Khan Acad­e­my instruc­tion­al video linked to above! It is embed­ded in The Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle. Many of us recall heat­ed dis­cus­sions with our chil­dren at the din­ner table in the 70s. “Heat­ed” since our chil­dren were get­ting the New Math and teach­ers were not allow­ing them to do math the way we old­sters learned it. Is this not a form of “men­tal cru­el­ty” or what? Here’s what a few of my fel­low researchers have to say:

Maybe they are psy­chopaths who delight in humil­i­at­ing oth­ers, and/or maybe they just take per­verse sat­is­fac­tion in see­ing how far they can go manip­u­lat­ing par­ents who put their blind trust and even their chil­dren in their care? Yes, I’d describe it as cru­el; it might also be very sick. ~Martha

These kids will NEVER get, and or hold jobs!!! If they bring that crap into my busi­ness to waste my valu­able resources and time, and worst of all mon­ey, they would­n’t last the day before they were look­ing for anoth­er job.… It’s bad enough that I have such a ter­ri­ble time find­ing good atti­tudes and behav­iors. Now I won’t be able to teach them skills either because they will be unteach­able by the time they get to me.~Jake

A lot of peo­ple are charg­ing ‘men­tal cru­el­ty’ as even peo­ple with advanced engi­neer­ing degrees are decry­ing the non­sense meth­ods being used to con­fuse the kids when sim­ple math would do the trick.~Jane

This delib­er­ate math dumb­down is not new. Pre­vi­ous posts have been writ­ten on this blog about it:

• DELIBERATE MATH DUMBDOWN: THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF MATH SINCE 1928!
• A Delib­er­ate Math Dumb Down? The Influ­ence of Thorndike Lives On.…
• Com­mon Core 86 years old!

Note the title of this pub­li­ca­tion: SOVIET EDUCATION PROGRAMS: FOUNDATIONS, CURRICULUMS, TEACHER PREPARATION, which was pub­lished in 1960 under the aus­pices of U.S. Depart­ment of Health, Edu­ca­tion and Welfare.[1]

The Unit­ed States is adopt­ing the Sovi­et poly­tech­nic system.[2] The con­trolled “Pavlov­ian con­di­tioned reflex the­o­ry” being dis­cussed is the Skin­ner­ian mas­tery learning/direct instruc­tion method required in order to imple­ment out­come-based edu­ca­tion and school-to-work (See Octo­ber 2014 on my blog under the “Skin­ner Hor­ror Files.”) Here are a few excerpts from the Sovi­et Edu­ca­tion Pro­grams publication:

HIGHLIGHTS In the school class­room and work­shop, in the machine build­ing plant, at the coun­try­side, and wher­ev­er we went, we felt the pulse of the Sovi­et Government’s dri­ve to edu­cate and train a new gen­er­a­tion of tech­ni­cal­ly skilled and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate cit­i­zens. Such is the con­sen­sus of the three spe­cial­ists who are authors of this vol­ume. The ideas and prac­tices of Sovi­et edu­ca­tion form a phi­los­o­phy of edu­ca­tion in which the author­i­tar­i­an con­cept pre­dom­i­nates.…

The cur­ricu­lum is uni­fied and is the same for all schools through­out the U.S.S.R.….

Major efforts of U.S.S.R. schools dur­ing the past 30 years have been to train young­sters for the Government’s planned eco­nom­ic pro­grams and to incul­cate devo­tion to its polit­i­cal and social sys­tem.…

U.S.S.R. plans are to bring all sec­ondary school chil­dren into labor edu­ca­tion and train­ing expe­ri­ences through the reg­u­lar school pro­gram. The “school of gen­er­al edu­ca­tion” is now named the “labor-poly­tech­nic school of gen­er­al education.”…

The authors con­sid­er the poly­tech­nic pro­gram in the Sovi­et ele­men­tary-sec­ondary schools “as an inte­gral part of the Sovi­et phi­los­o­phy of edu­ca­tion.” It is not a sub­ject but in fact a type [empha­sis in the orig­i­nal] of edu­ca­tion, and oth­er sub­jects… con­tribute to the poly­tech­nic area.

Sovi­et patriotism—fidelity to the Sovi­et land and to the ideas of communism—occupies a lead­ing place in this edu­ca­tion­al con­di­tion­ing, and in this sense gives the school a polit­i­cal char­ac­ter as well as a moral one. Employ­ing pri­mar­i­ly the con­di­tioned reflex the­o­ry as elab­o­rat­ed by Pavlov (1849–1936), Sovi­etpsy­chol­o­gists have worked out a sys­tem of didac­tics which are strict and fixed in their con­cep­tion and appli­ca­tion; one might even use the term “nar­row” to dis­tin­guish them from the broad scope of meth­ods employed, for exam­ple, in most U.S. schools. Sovi­et psy­chol­o­gists main­tain that fun­da­men­tal­ly all (except phys­i­cal­ly dis­turbed or hand­i­capped) chil­dren can learn the stan­dard­ized sub­ject mat­ter through the teach­ing meth­ods devised for all schools.… This sys­tem­at­ic approach to edu­ca­tion tends to give Sovi­et teach­ers a class­room con­trol that appears com­plete.… Sovi­et edu­ca­tors define their sys­tem as an all-round train­ing where­by youth can par­tic­i­pate in cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for a social­ist, and ulti­mate­ly, Com­mu­nist soci­ety. Such par­tic­i­pa­tion can become pos­si­ble, they hold, only as stu­dents cul­ti­vate all the basic dis­ci­plines and only through a “steady rise in the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of labor”… which is linked close­ly with the educa­tive process. School chil­dren and stu­dents are engaged in a total edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram which aims to teach all the same basic sub­jects, morals and habits in order to pro­vide soci­ety with future work­ers and employ­ees whose gen­er­al edu­ca­tion will make them social­ist (Com­mu­nist) cit­i­zens and con­tribute to their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty upon learn­ing a voca­tion (pro­fes­sion). (pp. 10–11) [all empha­sis added. Excerpt­ed from page p. 57–58 of my book the delib­er­ate dumb­ing down of amer­i­ca. Read the entire entry for a real eye-opener!] 

End­note:
1. By William K. Medlin (spe­cial­ist in Com­par­a­tive Edu­ca­tion for East­ern Europe, Divi­sion of Inter­na­tion­al Edu­ca­tion), Clarence B. Lindquist (chief of Nat­ur­al Sci­ences and Math­e­mat­ics, Divi­sion of High­er Edu­ca­tion), and Mar­shall L. Schmitt (spe­cial­ist for Indus­tri­al Arts, Divi­sion of State and Local School Sys­tems). Pub­lished under the aus­pices of Sec­re­tary Arthur S. Flem­ming and Office of Edu­ca­tion Com­mis­sion­er Lawrence G. Derthick (OE–14037, Bul­letin 1960, No. 17).
2. Graph­ics of Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_Soviet_Union