One Parent’s Response to “Why 5 x 3 = 5 + 5 + 5 Was Marked Wrong”
As a parent of three children who have been impacted by nonsense such as the correct answer being marked wrong with absolutely no logical explanation given to my child or to me, both pre- and post-common core, I think Brett Berry’s explanation, however reasonable, is not the actual reason the answer was marked wrong. Why do I feel this way?
1) In my interactions with teachers and administrators in the magnet programs my children have attended over the last decade, it is evident that few of them are operating at the high a level of reasoning Mr. Berry is expressing in his post. If they were, they would be able to articulate that as he has in his post. If they had articulated this line of reasoning to the child and to parent, the 5 * 3 = 5 + 5 + 5 issue probably would never have hit the Internet.
2) Specifically as it relates to the curriculum, I doubt most teachers are consciously teaching anything related to computer programming. Nor do I believe the teachers and administrators have any notion of how what they teach and how they teach it relates to higher math or programming. In our district, even the “high performing schools” are teaching less computer programming than I learned in high school more than 30 years ago. The vice-principal at my son’s school insists they are teaching programming in Business Ed, but he has been unwilling or unable to tell me what programming language my son has been learning. I have become convinced that most public school teachers think that teaching a child to use PowerPoint is equivalent to teaching Java or C#, if they even know what those are. It is evident from the conversations and interactions I have had with teachers and administrators over the years that their own knowledge in these areas is decidedly weak. You cannot teach what you do not know.
A former coworker of mine graduated with a degree in Mathematics and went on to teach in DeKalb County Georgia schools directly out of college. When I expressed my concerns to him, he told me that he believes the issue is that most math teachers are teachers of math, not mathematicians who teach. In other words, they did not go to school to learn the advanced mathematical concepts behind what they are teaching. They went to school to learn how to teach a subject they did not fully understand themselves.
I would love to believe that the reason the question was marked wrong was because of the difference between equal and equivalent as Mr. Berry states; however, based on my experience, I expect that the answer was marked wrong because the teacher’s correction sheet said the answer was wrong and the teacher didn’t have the faintest idea why. If this question went viral, it’s likely because that teacher and his/her administrator could not or would not give the parent a reasonable explanation as to why it was marked wrong. If they had, the issue would have been squashed.
Contrary to popular belief among many teachers and administrators, parents are reasonable people who simply want logical explanations for what’s happening with their children in school. If the teachers and administrators fail to communicate effectively and then double down on incorrect answers or go silent rather than admit that they are wrong or don’t know the answer, they lose the respect and trust of the parents and the students.
Image: The Independent
