I agree completely.


I failed due to one thing. Tests.

Why tests?
I had to show my work.


And sure... I could have shown you how I arrived at my answer, but Im sure your not interested in how the Blue Ranger got beat up last episode!

I hated showing my work. If I got the right answer, but got the answer from a different method, my teacher counted it wrong. B.S

And they wonder about Columbine or VA tech...

Well I question the point of schools altogether, but you raise an interesting point. I've though about it before. It seems some people just simply don't understand, and only outgoing teachers really help.

I think the people don't do well get shoved into special programs or dumbass schools for the sake of making them think that is what they are.

An acting coach I only worked with for one group session told me something I really took to heart. She says she doesn't like the way schools work, because they grade you on the way they state something is done, when we are all individuals who have and SHOULD have different ways of seeing things.

Originally posted by FlySolo

Exactly. So why the drawn out solution of subtracting 70 minutes, adding 120 minutes blah blah. Who thinks like that?

Yeah, I understand what you are saying. Supposedly the mathematics is used to sharpen reasoning skills. I suppose that's why they do it. I took a philosophy in logic course in college and did quite well, but they did similar things. They would take sentences and you would have to translate them into specific symbols and such, or vice versa.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth

Originally posted by FlySolo

Exactly. So why the drawn out solution of subtracting 70 minutes, adding 120 minutes blah blah. Who thinks like that?

Yeah, I understand what you are saying. Supposedly the mathematics is used to sharpen reasoning skills. I suppose that's why they do it. I took a philosophy in logic course in college and did quite well, but they did similar things. They would take sentences and you would have to translate them into specific symbols and such, or vice versa.

Sure, I agree math helps you develop your reasoning skills, but I think what is missing is reasoning/logic development studies. I eventually went back to school to take computer programming. C++, java, visual basics. The hardest language of the three is C++ and this was the first programming language we took before the easier last two. (Java 2nd hardest).

Prior to actually taking the classes and learning the code, we had to take programming logic. This class was designed to get your mind into the right head space. It takes training to think out step by step on how something actually works.

WOW.

OK first off, your concept of adding the digits on the face of the clock and dividing by three won't work. The problem IS a reasoning problem. You have to TRY and find the correct layout of the lines to get the answer. The mathematical equations required to actually solve the problem, without trial and error, are a little too complicated for your average 5ht grader. Hell, if someone tried to push that on my when I was in 5th grade I would have ran screaming into the woods!!! Look at a clock, don't over analyze just put look. you have a lot of small numbers (1 digit) and only a few larger numbers (2 digits).

In your second problem, the idea is not to calculate time, but to learn how to convert fractions to simplify the problem solving act. Its obvious from the answer that you showed, 2 hours were converted into minutes to make the math the subject of the problem for the 5th grade student.

Maybe when you were in school you just didn't want to learn like most little kids and that's why you had a problem picking things up. I know that was my problem.

Not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy folks.........

Originally posted by Mr No One

OK first off, your concept of adding the digits on the face of the clock and dividing by three won't work.

You must add and divide the sum of all the numbers on a clock by 3 first before you can find three equal amounts. 78/3 = 26. How else will you begin to know what number you are looking for prior to drawing the line? The math isn't that hard for a 5th grader but its the reasoning their aiming at. The hint provided suggests purely guessing.

I don't know if it's done on purpose, but I've always felt the educational system was designed to weed out smart people. I've always considered myself a fairly smart person, and my grades were always top of the class or very close.

About the time I started high school was roughly the time I started to question... well, pretty much everything, but one of the first things was the school system. I had no idea why I was in school and resented the fact that the teaching moved at a snail's pace, at least in my mind. If it were not for the one single fact that I knew I didn't stand a chance of getting a decent job without education, I'd have dropped out.

I ended up going on to get a univeristy degree, and was near the top of my class there, too, though the pace of teaching was at an appropriate level in most courses. I certainly wasn't sitting in math class reading novels like I had been in high school :p

As a Rockefeller once said... "I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." Especially at the grade school level, that is what the system is designed to do. I have had too many jobs where every time I suggested an original thought, it was shut down by more senior people because "we can't change that; we've always done it this other way," even when the other way is less efficient.

It's already been said, but the schools are just teaching fact regurgitation, not thinking. If you want to learn thinking, you have to do it somewhere other than the public school system.