Common Core Math

In my post just prior to this I made a humorous one concerning the old way of doing math compared to the "new" way of doing math. This post is for those who are serious about learning so-called "new math". If so, this is for you.


As for me, I'm old school. I see no reason to go out my front door then go around the block to get to my garage out back. It's just who I am.

Course most of the older kids (and many adults) these days prefer asking Apple's all knowing "Siri" then even bothering to use a calculator. "Notebook computers" have replaced pencils. GPS has replaced street and highway paper maps. Many of our grandparents parents knew most of this basic stuff by 9th grade including how to write longhand.

This is all fine and dandy but heaven help us if a major power grid should fail us for more then a week. It would make this Coronavirus look like a minor inconvenience....


Not to be a doomsayer, but we never should become so dependent on robots and electronic devices that we become unable to function without them. This is why it's imperative that we learn the basics in the most efficient way possible without the need for electronics to solve each and every problem. This is not the direction our educational institutions are headed with these overly complicated methods of teaching simple basic math. Those which one should be able to do in their heads w/o need for pencil nor paper.

I'll give you one practical example.
I worked in a food plant where I had to put together a bunch of ingredients for separate batches every 20 minutes. It took about 15 or more minutes to put one together. While this kid was still figuring out what we needed to put together I already started on it. If I waited for his calculations we would have had to shut down the line. This would have required over a half hour of downtime to restart the line. Totally unacceptable. I did it in my head the old fashion way w/o pencil, paper not having the benefit of a computer nor calculator provided by the company because it wasn't really all that complicated. Each time I had to log what ingredients I added. If I was wrong or not in time it would have been on me. Incidentally his final calculations nearly always came in too late to be of use.