Smash It With a Hammer?

During this weekend’s Elementary Principals Math and Science Leadership Academy, I came across a quote that intrigued me quite a bit.  This is by Phil Daro, Bill McCallum, and Jason Zimba,

You have just purchased an expensive Grecian urn and asked the dealer to ship it to your house. He picks up a hammer, shatters it into pieces, and explains that he will send one piece a day in an envelope for the next year. You object; he says “don’t worry, I’ll make sure that you get every single piece, and the markings are clear, so you’ll be able to glue them all back together. I’ve got it covered.” Absurd, no? But this is the way many school systems require teachers to deliver mathematics to their students; one piece (i.e. one standard) at a time. They promise their customers (the taxpayers) that by the end of the year they will have “covered” the standards.

I’ve often described how humorous the bored student’s common refrain of, “When are we ever going to use this?” really is. The truth is . . . never!  We don’t ever use our mathematic or scientific reasoning in an isolated, controlled setting.  Knowledge becomes the most powerful when it is highly integrated and authentic.

Just as we would never want to receive a newly purchased Grecian urn in a pile of fragmented pieces, we should not present the Utah Core Standards in an artificial, disconnected way and expect students to value what they’ve received.