It would be amazing if kids could start school at age five. A seven or eight-year-old can just lose their temper right in the middle of drawing a sailboat.
Michelle Nelson4 said:They do have workbooks. Oops! Edit—sorry, they don't. I remembered us getting two books, but now I realize they were actually just two parts of the same textbook; it just came back to me. So no, ours don't have separate workbooks either.
If Mad says there used to be actual workbooks, then I assume they just reworked the old ones. I suppose they didn't feel like rewriting everything from scratch just to change the questions so they wouldn't be solved directly in the textbook. I don't know, just a guess. It seemed strange to me too. But her book didn't have many tables; most tasks were more like: Expression B = ____ or Value A + B = ______ where she just rewrites that tiny part and solves it. She did have one table, sort of like a crossword puzzle to check her answers. We told her to just snap a photo of it with her phone and print it out so she could use it to verify her solutions, but the teacher didn't require them to cross out the crossword, just to finish the problems.
And since our kids aren't rewriting anything and are just solving things in their notebooks, I haven't gotten too worked up about that specific issue. I'm more bothered by other aspects of this math curriculum (personally, I think the explanations are poor), but that’s a perennial problem with American textbooks. It feels like everyone is competing to see who can cram in the most definitions and overly complicated explanations. As a layman, I can always think of at least five different ways to explain something using simple words and a clear example, yet the authors just don't. What really gets under my skin is that all these lists aren't presented clearly—you know, with bullet points to make it readable—but are instead buried in these marathon sentences full of commas and endless conjunctions. Even when I know what they're trying to convey, I find myself getting confused. A sentence could be concise, simple, and crystal clear, but it’s as if they’ve taken a vow against being lucid...
It became painfully obvious to me when I was in college and picked up a textbook written by an American author for American students. 😁 For the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed reading educational material like it was a novel—it was smooth, engaging, and straight to the point. It felt like our writers will write a perfectly normal sentence and then immediately try to overcomplicate it just to sound more intelligent. The textbooks here are a mess; they're flooded with random pictures and graphics, yet when you're actually looking for specific information, it's buried so deep in the text that you can barely find it.
That’s exactly why I keep bringing up the need for reform. We're teaching "modern" subjects without any of the practical weight from the old ways, trying to prepare kids for a life where there's apparently no ambition left. Instead, they just end up memorizing things that would be so much easier to learn through actual hands-on experience. 😁
I didn't mean they shouldn't know the material, I just meant they shouldn't try to pass by memorizing everything from their notebooks without actually understanding it 😁
Michelle Nelson4 said:I noticed there’s some programming included, even if they haven't quite reached that part of the curriculum yet. Personally, I think learning to code is such a fantastic idea—and I don't mean that everyone needs to become a software engineer by trade, not even close. It’s more about the mindset. Programming teaches you how to analyze a problem, how to systematically break a massive task down into bite-sized pieces, how to organize steps in the right order, and how to rigorously test your solutions while hunting down bugs. I truly believe it instills a level of analytical thinking and systematic discipline that everyone could benefit from, regardless of their career path. You can apply those problem-solving skills to almost any area of life. There are no shortcuts in coding; you can't skip steps. You simply can't solve a problem until you fully grasp every single aspect of it. It’s actually the total opposite of much of the rest of the schoolwork, where you can often just memorize certain phrases or procedures to pass a test or get an A without having any clue what you're actually doing.
And hey, who knows? Maybe someone will decide to pursue it professionally, start their own tech company in high school, conquer the world with their software, and become a millionaire... honestly, that’s not a bad perspective to have either! :P
I honestly don't have anything against programming, especially not for my little girl—she's practically counting down the days until she can dive into robotics. 😂
But, I feel like learning it strictly through the standard school curriculum isn't the best way. A great teacher might make it engaging, but a lot of what's taught feels tedious and unnecessary. Like these units 😁
I think there’s a massive gap between what Computer Science actually is and what most people expect it to be 😁 It feels like everyone assumes kids just need to learn how to operate a computer—stuff like formatting text, putting together presentations, downloading files, saving things, organizing folders, or using a scanner... basically, just basic digital literacy. 😁 But instead, they're diving into binary systems and actual programming. From everything I’ve seen and heard, that’s where the main disagreement lies.
Yeah, they all claim to have "simplified" things, but honestly, they just made them more complicated.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it pretty ridiculous that fifth graders in Computer Science classes are forced to memorize "input" and "output" units. What's the point, especially for real-world application later on? Wouldn't it be better if they actually had the tools in front of them and learned through hands-on experience? To me, this feels like a perfect example of everything that's wrong with our education system.
Luckily, we don't deal with that kind of nonsense here. The teacher just tells anyone who's interested to make something with the kids, then everyone just dumps their glue sticks on the table and spends the whole day making a mess. 😁 Why don't they just eat the glue sticks and take them home?
I mean, if our history textbooks actually claim that humans created the heavens, then I guess we really shouldn't be surprised by anything at this point.😁
True, it’s the same here in Chicago. My little one only had after-school care during first grade, but now they offer it for both first and second. But when there's an after-school program available, you take it—it gives you a reliable place to leave your kid.
swiftraven17 said:The whole damn class is stuck in after-school care, nobody is actually heading home once 4th period wraps up. It feels like the schedule is rigged so the entire class stays in supervision anyway... Having religion class as the very last period is just pointless.
Plus, there isn't really an option for them to have it first thing in the morning—especially for the first graders. Most of them aren't walking to school alone; they're being dropped off or driven, so they're already on campus by 7:00 AM. 😁 If you look at it that way, putting it at the end might actually be better since they're basically just hanging out at school for an extra hour regardless.😁
Nobody was actually pressuring her; she was the one suggesting she should at least get baptized, but we made our stance incredibly clear and firm about how much we disagreed with that idea.
Honestly, I think discussions about religious education in schools should really be reserved for those who actually have issues with it—whether they're struggling with how it's organized or just have some ideological concerns.