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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Beware of Procedural Knowledge

I'm embarrassed to say that I just learned the State of Virginia is in the process of revising its math standards. I will provide updates as I learn more, but apparently they've already taken comments online from parents, teachers and others. There may be other opportunities to comment however.

I learned about it when I approached my school board representative about the possibility of using Singapore Math in Fairfax County where I live. She seems interested in it and passed on my note to the Assistant Superintendent's office. In the reply back which covered several different items, the following sentence leaped out at me:


"We have not looked at the Singapore curriculum in a couple of years; the last time we did it focused on procedural knowledge and was not as aligned to the POS as other texts."

Uh, excuse me? Could you explain why procedural knowledge is a bad thing?

On the other hand, please don't.


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5 comments:

  1. Catherine JohnsonFebruary 19, 2009 at 9:17 AM

    On the other hand, please don't.

    ditto that

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 19, 2009 at 10:37 AM

    Hi Barry:

    What's POS? I have a candidate but....

    Is the POS your state standards?

    By the way, procedural knowledge is just code for those discredited 20th century skills. You know the ones; multiplication, addition, subtraction, division, fraction ops, etc.

    My kids don't need no stinkin' procedures. They know that 24/3 = .125 and they know 3/24 = 8. What more is there to know?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Barry GarelickFebruary 19, 2009 at 11:49 AM

    POS is Program of Studies. There are the standards, and then there is the implementation of same. POS is the specifics; similar to California's "Frameworks".

    ReplyDelete
  4. Independent GeorgeFebruary 20, 2009 at 6:16 AM

    I'm really glad you explained that. In my world, POS has two different meanings in my world: Point of Sale, and a much, much funnier (and perhaps more appropriate) one which I shouldn't repeat on an education blog.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Independent GeorgeFebruary 20, 2009 at 6:18 AM

    Ack. Always hit 'preview' before 'submit.

    ReplyDelete