Common core curse out

I honestly don't understand how all this common core material is going to help students. Especially for students that aren't great at handling school stress to start with. My sister is 9 and is coming home and asking me for help with her math homework. Other kids aren't so lucky to have an older sibling that can sit down and explain this material to them. I babysit kids that have been held inside from recess due to receiving bad grades on their math homework because they haven't even learned the material yet. How are children suppose to perform well on these tests when they are just stressing over them? Plus studying for these tests is now isolating them from their classmates by not being able to participate in recess or playing with the kids in the neighborhood after school.

Thanks to this, mathophobia is probably going to become an even bigger problem as well. Since children are learning more advanced math at a younger age, guess what they are probably going to be able to use! You probably guessed right!! A calculator! Now these children will most likely become little monkeys that push what buttons we tell them too without actually understanding why. Math will just become a process for the next generation, not so much an explanation as to why a theory is proven true.

On top of that, how do we really study for math? Well, the old way used to be to just practice PrAcTiCe PRACTICE! However, with the new common core, reading skills is a major part if the testing as well. So now we need to review with the children how to read the question as well as how to answer it. That also takes away from the time we have to teach the actual math and the concept as to why and how the math works.

I've watched kids have terrible emotions that I don't remeber having as a kid because of all the new math tests. Frustration, anger, guilt, and low self-esteem. These are emotions that children shouldn't experience along with math. It's going to add to this idea of math as being an "evil" subject.

So how is this common core actually helping the students? In my eyes, it just seems to be a way to make the U.S. look smarter and therefore inferior to other countries. However,  how is that truly going to benefit this country if its not in the best interest for the students, and only the students. I think it would be more beneficial to slow things down and to not cram everything that I've learned the past three years in math into a 1st graders brain in one class. It's just too much too fast for them to handle.

Sadly, the only thing these kids are going to learn from the common core is how to funcion a graphing calculator 10 years too early. Oh, just kidding, they are also going to understand what being stressed out feels like well before their middle school years. Today I look back and wish I could be a kid again. None of these children are going to have a childhood they'll want to look back on.