Bobcat, part the third...

Posted on 6/30/09

On 6/28/09, DSF/NJ wrote:
> They may be entering school able to 'point and click' but the
> ability to sequence events and strategize is often lacking. This
> was something I learned playing board and card games - before I
> even went to kindergarten. Checkers, rummy, casino, ... kids
> don't play board games anymore --- and they don't read!

There is a point where having technology does help, and another
time when it hurts. I always wondered how valuable I would have
been if that horrible Y2K event had happened. After all, I can
calculate a square root by hand!

> I just wonder if 'pushing down' the concepts is a set of lessons
> in futility - can children's brains even handle this information?
> I mean, if we start teaching concepts of area starting in
> kindergarten, and continue teaching it on a slightly deeper level
> each year - then why can't my kids understand area in grade 8?
> Surely after 8 years they should have absorbed something? Yet
> when they get to grade 8, I find myself starting from scratch.

I'm going to go back to my english comparison again. No one asks
kids to start over learning the alphabet in a high school english
class, or how to read. Yet, we teach, and I mean teach, systems of
equations every year from algebra through pre-calculus. When do we
expect kids to actually have learned (and by my definition,
remember) a topic that they have been taught? I also think that
what one district is trying here makes a lot of sense (although I
fear the implementation), and that is getting rid of grade levels,
and putting kids in the appropriate class. I hate to think of our
pre-algebra kids in the same class as 5th graders.

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