AMAIRIKUHN EDGYKAYSHUN: PEARSON, THE GED, AND THE REAL PROBLEM
It's been a while since I've ranted on the state of Amerikuhn edgykayshun, that beacon of mediocrity, edubabble, and pedagogiblither to the rest of the Western world. It's so bad now, that even British edubabble giant Pearson, has glommed on to the situation. Now, I have to warn you, though, before I link this article, that I don't think the story here is exactly what the article says it is. It's that, of course, but so much more. Many teachers shared this one with me, and most of them, including my friend Dr. Scott de Hart, were seeing the same thing. I read the article, and I think I see the same thing they do, but this is one of those "you tell me" situations:
Now, in case you missed it, since Pearson took over the GED, and "adjusted" it to the Common (Rotten) Core, there has been an astonishing though not surprising:
“The city Department of Education touts its $47 million-a-year adult-education program as the biggest in the state and second-biggest nationwide, but last school year it awarded just 299 high-school equivalency diplomas, The Post has learned.
Now, this is so blatant and simple, that even a Dummycrook or a Republithug running for president could understand it... no, I take that back, that's just wishful thinking. But for the rest of us, the implications are painfully obvious. As Ms. Ravitch notes in her comment on this development:
The New York Post blames the program’s leadership, but in light of the national data, the test itself might be flawed. Still, $47 million to produce 299 graduates. Wow.
(Emphasis added)
Now, using my Common Core matrix method of proto-linear algreba to construct a rectangular matrix array, and employing the latest mathematical edublither to come out of the teacher certification pedagogibaloney schools, I "partnered" my forty-seven million dollars in the form of lines on my (very large) paper(in order to show how I had arrived at my answer) with two hundred and ninety-nine students, represented by dots (trust me folks, it took MOST of two days to draw the array to solve this arithmetic problem, but I was determined to do it by using the New Common Core Proto-Matrix-Linear Algebra Array Method...if you're wondering why there were no blogs for two days, I was busy drawing lines and dots to solve this problem. This isn't the way Descartes did it, but I guess we're not supposed to be too fussy.).Anyway, it worked out to one hundred sixty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-nine lines/dollars and sixty cents being partnered with every graduating dot/student(notice the gender neutrality of the lines and dots), accompanied by a headache, severe hand cramp, and several felled trees(I had to redraw my array several times, and hence, needed many trips to the store to buy boxes of paper, and lots of scotch tape to tape the sheets together to form a paper large enough to draw my array in order to show my teacher how I derived my answer). With luck, the IRS, Wall Street, and major banks will adopt this method, and we'll never have to worry again.
While I was involved in deriving this answer using the New and Improved Methods, a neighbor happened to knock at my door wanting to borrow a cube of butter. She is an elderly woman, and, seeing the wreckage of my living room, office, and kitchen(as I said, the paper and space needed to draw the array to solve this arithmetic problem using The New Methods was rather large), she asked me if I was getting ready to paint my apartment. I had to tell her no, that I was merely doing a long division problem, and tried to show her how it worked. (I think I lost her at the part about partnering the number 49,000,000 with the number 299. She blushed, and departed quickly.)
Of course, I could just as easily have plugged in my calculator, punched in a few numbers, and done it the old fashioned way, or simply written 49,000,000/299 and done it the really old fashioned way with a pencil and piece of paper. It would have taken a few more seconds, but it would have saved me a lot of money, paper, scotch tape, and time as opposed to the New and Improved Method.
Now, before you laugh all this off as exaggeration, recall my blog of a few weeks ago where this is exactly the sort of method - and goofy language - being promoted by this Common Core quackery in the teaching of arithmetic. And you'll recall, while I thought it was "nice" that some people thought of this whole array business as a cool way to introduce concepts early on that will pay off big time later one when it comes time to learn things like linear algebra or differential calculus, using it to solve multiplication problems and division problems is a bit cumbersome, (To say the least! and remember, this is just what math teachers have to put up with. Can you imagine history? literature? Physics? Chemistry?)
So what's the point of this humorous little excursion? Well, look at Ms. Ravitch's other statement in the quotation above:
The New York Post blames the program's leadership, but in light of the national data, the test itself might be flawed.... (Emphasis added)
It is important to understand what Ms. Ravitch is really saying here, and why it is so significant. Before Pearson and the application of the Common Core "methods and assessment process" the success rate was much higher in New York City's programs. There are two possible explanations for the sudden decline: either the standards were made much tougher, which is possible. But given the state of Amairikuhn edgykayshun, I rather doubt it. The other possibility is that the failure rate is really measuring not failure to learn a subject, but failure to conform to certain methods of learning it, and adhering to those methods during the assessment process.
It is in short, the same problem that has dogged the standardized test from the beginning.
Rant over... see you on the flip side...
23 Comments
Help the Community Grow
Please understand a donation is a gift and does not confer membership or license to audiobooks. To become a paid member, visit member registration.
I just viewed a interview of Jim Maars on Dark Journalist and one of the first comments below. Was pimping the Flat Earth and the Geocentric Universe looks like the Dark ages is on schedule to return Worldwide this time.
It’s all kabuki baby
As I was jotting down my thought in reading your blog I had written: Like the lead-in to the Iraq war – the intelligence was fixed to achieved the desired outcome. The test, itself, is highly suspect. Testing for? Not intelligence, but compliance; not thinking, but rote behavior.
Also, when reading about your addressing this absolutely fundamental subject[a high-value target of empire]; I thought I wanted to remark on an education that is becoming as much despised as our so-called health system. The only bottom line they’re concerned about are not about our health or our education – NO! They’re ONLY bottom line/PROFIT$$$.
How prophetically profane to become so easily gamed by Empire. An Empire whose two pillars are the military and the market.
But not all gamers are being gamed. Many are not accepting the dominion terms – MIME-NET – the military-industrial-media-entertainment network.
As Neil Armstrong said with a smile,
Good luck Mr. Gorsky!
Joseph, the ‘old ways’ were what worked in our growth up to now. Tried and tested ‘in combat’, so to speak.
The ‘new ways’ seem to me to be a combination of two things: First, to teach humans to think like a computer program. Second, to totally ignore intuition (right brain) and focus solely on logic (left brain). Together, they are tailor-made to minimize our human potential. Mass-producing worker bees, not enlightened beings.
The Anunnaki tried this approach way-back-when. It succeeded for a while. Then, something happened, and the ‘supervisors’ were no longer supervising (at least openly). We grew our own culture and methods. Including psi…
If I stepped-back and looked at the overall ‘scheme’, it sure seems like what the Anunnaki would do…
Dr j, you act as though you didn’t know the whole thing was rigged.
There is so much we can just set aside as “known” and move forward. Energy spent on the ins and outrages cant be good for you.
This system is rigged and that system is rigged and of course the whole show is a scam. All these things are “knowns” and I applaud the continuation of commentary to comment on yet I yearn for the “doing”.
Can we begin a “now what” conversation?
What are our options here?
Obviously conflict with the system doesn’t work.
Could it be that our only sane course of action is a widespread withdrawal of participation?
No shouting and marching and tear gas just a slow and steady stream drop outs.
Whole bunches of people at a time just wandering off and doing their own thing. Self reliance and independence quietly ignoring the paradym.
You may say I’m a dreamer…
If I had kids I would home school them and I guarantee they would know more and how to do more than most college graduates by age 10. Of course I can just imagine what would happen to society if the zombies were left to educate their own kids.
ive a 10yo . I home school him and he also attends school to socialise.
We all know the whole show is a scam and so we must base our actions on that knowledge.
That is a problem with home schooling yet i believe it’s possible even a zombie can do it because kids are geared to learn they just need the resources. Self directed learning gets great results.
Also it takes a village to raise a kid so breaking down western neighbourhood social paranoia opens up opportunities for the kids to interact with, for example, the clever old ladynext door or the retired engineer down the road… Etc
Dan, I want to recommend Joseph Chilton Pierce’s “Magical Child” to you. A very enlightened book, especially-geared towards parents. Pierce went around the globe and found ‘best practices’ out of native cultures (circa 1977, so before current madness) for raising children.
One of the main things he found was that Nature has a clear agenda. Each child will go through ‘phases’ that come from the inside out. When a parent notices the signs of a particular phase starting, THAT is when to start teaching the material of that phase. Too early shuts the process down.
This book is in the top half-dozen I have ever read, and I recommend it to everyone – especially parents.
Joseph, have you read this book?
thank you gosh. will find it. sounds like the thought version of weston price’s nutrition and physical degeneration.
btw has anyone noticed it’s illegal to home school in sweden. nasty stuff afoot.
Dan, home schooling added to a regular education sounds like the simple genius that need brings. glad you have the time and skills.
agreed dan. how do we move forward? how to let the zoligarchs (zombie oligarchs) fall how and where ever they need to so the rest of us who live by what comes around goes around can get on with good living?
doc?
anyone?
zendogbreath home schooling was simple when I was in school you could use the school library and the public library to educate yourself. And paperbacks were affordable and there were used bookshops to buy hardbacks and paperbacks to put together your own private library try that today.
“but failure to conform to certain methods of learning it”
But, how else are you going to keep them from discovering new things,
deal with the world in the inept way that we have been dogged with since people like Oliver Heaviside corrupted James Clerk Maxwell’s equations?
Come to think of it, isn’t that a model for what’s happening in education now?
Goodness knows a computer centered teaching system, where the computer grades the work done, even up to and including college level, cannot go off the reservation and understand when someone comes up with a new way of solving a problem. So the bottom line is not if you got the problem right, but if you didn’t do it a certain way, it’s still wrong.
Money is involved because money is made selling these programs to institutions. Then teachers and professors, some reluctantly, are made to use them.
Nothing new will come of a highly regimented system. And that may be the exact point of it all, that and dollars. Cripple the education system and profit from it at the same time.
Imposing convergent methods in “learning”..sounds like machine processing to me.
Looking back, there’s a part of me that’s relatively glad to have practically missed a lot on “schooling”. It felt mostly like regurgitating.
I know I am very bad at math I even make mistakes with a computer. But this sounds ridiculous the adult students are being deliberately being setup to fail. A plan for our nefarious elites to declare most of us as useless eaters dare fore fit for culling.
Correction I make mistakes with a electronic calculator not cumputer
On the physics side of edumacation consider this….Remember what they taught you in school, about how the moon reflects the light of the sun?
Really? These are the type of “scientific truths” we are supposed to just accept from “the experts” and move on. It’s BS. The light the moon emits has nothing to do with the sun and is a cold light. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZ9B_iMG5k
I checked out the link you posted but I found his argument very confusing. It appears to stumble over his definition of light. Correct me if I’m wrong, but light is not just electro-magnetic energy. It is a particular configuration of electro-magnetic energy whose frequency is visible to the human eye. So it is quite a stretch to say that electro-magnetic energy represents the energy and frequency of photons. Whether it does or not depends on its vibrational properties. If a radio wave was a form of photonic energy it would be visible to the human eye. It does not seem true that a photon is a particle with zero resting mass, zero spin, and energy equal to its frequency anyway. This is one of these definitions scientists employ to convince themselves that they know what a photon is. In truth however, no one has ever seen a particle of light. Its just a postulate designed to account for the behavior of light under certain conditions.
Yet isn’t it intimately related,
according to Einstein?
E=MC2
That is correct romanmel and that is just 1 of the discrepencies with their so called science, th moon is its own light source
“Are you stupid or something?” says my grandchild to me as I attempt to help him with his math problems. “That’s not how you solve the problem.”
“Yes, it is, if you have at least half of a working brain.”; I reply. “It’s the way I was taught to do it; and the way your father was taught to do it.”
“Well that’s not how it works any more…”; the argument goes on…
I don’t “help” my grandson any more; he may just devolve into a puddle of goo. Now, my homeschooled niece is another matter entirely; she actually understood what I was trying to teach the boy.
And we wonder just why Amerika has fallen to the bottom of the education ladder worldwide.
Anyone else have a similar experience?
Yes, WD. Our kids were born with the capacity for genius and were on a trajectory targeting Montessori education and then other schooling. The destruction of our family business and our transformation from middle to working poor class put a stop to the plan. Public education and electronic media (gaming and social)polished the kids’ minds off. They’re adults now, and beneath the wheel themselves … for now.
The sistem of edgykayshun in these forcibly united states seeks to major in minors.
Asteroid minors.
Well said.