I believe that Americans are wired to learn as much as possible, in as little time as possible. Our society is always in a rush. GO GO GO. However, when we rush through things and learn them before we are really ready, they may not sink in and we might not understand the subject entirely. Before completing this blog, I went back to the article we read the first week in class, "A Coherent Curriculumn." The A+ countries did not introduce Basic Geomtry until 3rd grade or later, where US introduces it in 1st grade. A+ countries do not intrucide 3D Geometry until 7th grade or later, but it is instroduced to 1st graders in the US. Geometry transformations is not introduced until 6th grade or later in A+ countries and the US introduces it in 1st grade. I think that we should try to mimick these A+ countries because their method is obviously working; just look at their ranking.
I think that we should wait until 9th grade to introduce Geometry. Obviously, students should know geometric shapes, well before 9th grade, but anything beyond that can wait. We need to slow down and take our time when teaching our students.. learning is not a race.
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I so agree with "learning is not a race" I feel that is how the US works, and looks at things. Our childrens education matters, and the more we push on them the faster things get forgoten.
Megan – you make such a good point about the US rushing through education. I think we are in some ways just pushing information on the students. How much are they really retaining? We hosted a German teacher a few years ago and she could not believe how fast paced our society was along with our education system. They value down time so much more than we do. I do agree with you that students do need to know geometric shapes, but how in depth do we need to get with them? It is very interesting that the A+ schools do not start geometry until much later. If it is working for them, why doesn’t the United States look to do the same thing?
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