Understanding by Design

I think I am feeling a little bit frustrated.

On the one hand, I really like the idea of backwards design. I can definitely see how this applies to education, business, and life in general. Any time you venture out to do something without a plan, you end up haphazardly getting nowhere specific. The more I look around, the more I see examples of this everywhere. In all areas of my life (family, personal, educational, etc.) I would like to employ this idea more often.

On the other hand, when I read the article and looked at the sample pages they showed, my reaction was "no WAY . . . I would NEVER have time to do this for every lesson!!" And besides the worksheets, I have been thinking about the reality of teaching this way. When I do teach, I am a math teacher, usually in algebra, geometry, trig, or calculus. I know firsthand how many kids struggle with math because they can't relate to it; it seems like something they will never, ever use. And as a math tutor, I have the luxury of trying to address that concern. But as a teacher, life is different. You don't decide your curriculum; it is mandated by the federal government, state government, or district. You have no choice but to cover the book, which takes all of the time you have available in class. And as great as it would be to teach each lesson with an eye towards what will be useful for the student to know, it is just not realistic. Those students who eventually study in the scientific fields will need advanced mathematics to solve physics, chemistry, and engineering problems. Those who will go into social fields will use mathematics in statistics. And any of them who are college-bound will simply need to "get through" calculus to get their degree (and whether or not that is a good idea is outside of my realm of influence). But the thing is that kids who are learning algebra simply don't have the skill set to comprehend what algebra is useful for! Yes, there are "smaller" applications -- they are called story problems! But when you teach with lots of those, you loose lots of students.

In the end, I am left wondering if there are some subjects that just need to be taught the way they are, with no specific application in mind. It's like long division. Is it important to be able to do? Yep. But although I can tell you why you need to divide things, I can't tell a child specifically why they need to be able to do it longhand. There are reasons -- preparing for standard testing, exercising your mind, learning the logical rules of mathematics, and just being able to follow your teacher, for example. But are these reasons that matter to a fourth-grader?? I hate to say it, but in the end, they just have to learn the algorithm, step by step, just like we did when we were their age. Without it, they will be handicapped.