excellent new math example

As a veteran public school teacher, I have witnessed the "dumbing down" of our nation's children at an alarming rate. I was told by my principal that I should never tell a child that he/she had the wrong answer. For example, if a child answered 5 to the question, what is 2+2, I could say only, "you're getting close or try again." I finally couldn't take what was happening and left a job that I had loved for many years. If you have children in the public schools, get them out now.

I finally gave up teaching when most of my college freshman students were functionally illiterate. It's difficult to teach physics or astronomy to students that That can barely read or construct an intelligible sentence.

I asked three of my friends what they thought of this policy and they both agreed it's a good idea.

More or less harmful/dangerous than the "educator" who told us 24 years ago that it's "wrong and unfair to pin a child down to only one correct answer on a math problem."?
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They're doing this in China, India and Russia, right?

After some google digging I found that several scales exist in this system, not just the one that hands out C's for doing nothing. Nonetheless, They are making it easier to get an A and it lets each teacher choose a scale. Essentially a teacher can choose to give a C to a student who does nothing. Why give out grades at all at this point?

Even more importantly, grades aren't the best motivator for learning. Children have plenty of motivation to learn if we let them take on the responsibility of their own education, given adequate resources. In the end we can't force them to put anything inside their brain but the consequences of not learning are more than enough to ensure that they prepare themselves for life.

Congratulations on pulling him out & getting him independent of the school indoctrination.

OMG. I scanned this earlier today and dismissed it as one of those parodies that are going around.

This time I tracked it back to the original paper and it's not. Clearly the policy was put in place by people who can't do math so that other people who can't do math can succeed too!

Once, perhaps 4-5 years ago, I received a call from my sons high school math teacher. The teacher was pleased to tell me that my son was receiving a "C" in his class.Despite knowing that my son has had great difficulty in math since Junior High school, I exploded on this teacher asking by what measure he considers a "C" good enough to call home about. Needless to say my son received a private tutor within a few days, the teacher never called my home again, and I eventually enrolled him in self-paced on-line high school (ended up graduating with a 3.7 GPA - still not so great with math but functional).