California's New Math Curriculum Is A Fast Track To Ignorance

California has more problems than you'd think possible. They have a booming homeless population and Forestry mismanagement that has caused wildfires and that us barely scratching the surface. California Educators are introducing a new math curriculum that is sure to hurt students more than it helps them. The new way of teaching math is just unfathomable. The students are supposed to argue why they have the right answer, causing mayhem in the classroom and if that were not enough this new method also prevents more gifted children from being properly nurtured.

"California’s new “inclusive” math curriculum promises “equity” in math. Its goal is to provide “equitable education” by “making sure all students receive the attention, respect, and resources they need to achieve their potential.”

But the state’s math curriculum is full of inefficient practices, poor standards, and an absolute revulsion for the pursuit of truth.

The curriculum serves as a guide to the rest of the state for how to teach math. The California State Board of Education developed it for the specific purpose of attracting “black, Latinx, and Multilingual” people to math, in which they are “historically underrepresented.”

But the state school board goes about this in the entirely wrong way.

First, the curriculum asks teachers to reconsider “preconceived biases” about math, particularly the idea of “one right answer” to math problems. The curriculum looks derisively at the idea that “a student can work on a question such as 18 x 5 in a textbook question, or in response to a teacher question, with the expectation that one answer is the goal.”

It suggests instead a “number talk,” where “teachers ask the class of students to work out the answer to 18 x 5 … then ask the class for the different answers that students may have found, and write them on the board,” and then ask students to defend their answers."

But that's not even the worst of it. Their new program also prevents students from being divided out to other classes by their ability, thereby hindering smarter children. I understand what is intended here as they are trying to understand where students are going wrong with their answers. But it is a waste of time. The professor should instead go over the problems they have the wrong step by step which would teach the students the correct method and give them the right answer. I guess this is almost to be expected from Newsom-led California.