One for the Old Schoolers, Dept.

In an article about a private Christian school that maintains teaching cursive and math facts, was this paragraph:

Learning cursive and strict memorization of fast math were dropped from Common Core educational standards around 2010 and 2014, respectively, but states and individual school districts still have the option of teaching them. Cursive writing was removed because of its declining use and the increase in technological communication. Focus on math memorization was discouraged because Common Core began placing emphasis on deep understanding of mathematics concepts, instead.

This is fairly accurate. Although CC doesn’t call for “strict memorization” of math facts, it does call for fluency with them, which of course is subject to interpretation.  Current implementation has students learning “strategies” for multiplication/addition facts, and a rather neurotic insistence that students “understand” what 2 + 3 is rather than just memorize it–as if such connection was never there and students just memorized blindly for years without knowing what addition and multiplication represented.

I would say that St. John’s School is in fact implementing Common Core. In fact, CC can be implemented in many different ways, including those that are deprecatingly referred to as “old school”.  Or maybe even “traditional”.

Don’t tell anyone. It’ll be our little secret.

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