This is what they call homeschooling for parents who remain in denial about gov’t schools! Reality always reverts to God’s order for things in much the same way that an elastic band cannot remain in tension forever. Gov’t schools will always collapse under the weight of the burden of expectation placed upon them because only that which God has created to shoulder such a burden can do so.Read the complete article here.

Maclean’s – March 13, 2012
Why is it your job to teach your kid math?
Parents are being forced to hit the books and help tutor their kids through a confusing curriculum.
By Cynthia Reynolds

When mother of two Anna Stokke began digging into the elementary school math curriculum last year, she was ?abbergasted by what she found. Instead of teaching the standard methods of arithmetic, the emphasis had shifted to a wide range of alternative methods, such as using grids, blocks, or strips of paper to multiply. Stokke is a professor of math at the University of Winnipeg, but even she found the methods confusing. “It was shocking,” she recalls. “We’re talking about adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. It shouldn’t be so overly complicated that even parents can’t understand it. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Stokke began speaking out and soon parents from all over Canada were sending her similar stories of discontent: kids who couldn’t do their homework without help, parents who couldn’t make heads or tails of the assignments so they were hiring tutors, or spending hours looking up math sites on the Internet because the textbooks are so vague. She heard from teachers who felt pressured not to teach the traditional methods. Stokke and her husband, Ross – who is also a math professor at the University of Winnipeg – started up a biweekly math club for their daughter and 11 of her friends to pick up the educational slack. Out of concern for math education in general, Stokke, along with three colleagues, also co-founded the Western Initiative for Strengthening Education in Math (WISE Math), a coalition lobbying to improve K-12 math education. Parents (and teachers) from all over Canada have flooded their online petition with support. “I don’t have a problem with alternate strategies,” Stokke says. “But I fear they’re learning so many, that in the end they’re not mastering any.” …

Spending 20 minutes on math would qualify as a really great night for Jane Snider, a Saskatoon mother who asked to use a pseudonym for her daughter’s sake. When her daughter entered Grade 7, she began asking for help with homework. Snider tried to step in, but was blindsided by the methods they were supposed to employ, such as using graph paper to show how you can divide fractions and strips of paper to demonstrate ways to multiply them. “I never expected to run into problems at this grade level, and I knew I was making a mess of it,” says Snider, so she turned things over to her husband, an engineer. Accustomed to solving equations with formulas, her husband was spending up to two hours after work learning the new strategies and terminology himself, then teaching them to his daughter. There were times, says Snider, when he couldn’t understand the assignment at all. “It just became a blur of stress and frustration,” she says, adding that her daughter has lost all confidence with math and now professes to hate it. “We’ve had to spend so many nights dealing with this mess when we could be doing other things. It makes me so angry.” …

Nathalie Foy of Toronto has enrolled her Grade 5 son in the program. “I wish I didn’t have to supplement their education,” says Foy, “For one, it’s expensive. But this is a safety net – and now he knows his math facts cold.” At more than $1,800 per school year, it’s a pricey measure, but with more than 30 per cent of Canadians supplementing their children’s education, it’s one that more parents are investing in, especially as their kids move up the grades. …

Read the complete article here.