Debate Over Teaching Math Based on Faulty Variables

“There’s increasing understanding that the math situation in the United States is a complete disaster.”
– R. James Milgram, a math professor at Stanford University

When I was about 8-years-old, I asked my dad for help with some math word problems. Now, my dad was a complete whiz with numbers – he did computations in his head with remarkable speed and clarity.

But when I gave him my schoolbook, which had some creative name like “The New Math,” he flung out a few answers. I explained that didn’t help; my teachers wanted to know how I got to the answer.

Dad looked through the book for a while and then handed it back to me frustrated and angry. He didn’t seem to understand the “method” being used in my 3rd grade math class; we were speaking two different languages.

As I’ve grown older, I realized that my dad had memorized almost everything from addition to division to factors. On the other hand, I had learned math “process” with much less memorization.

Since then, math has morphed into a creative-based system that is disparagingly called “fuzzy math.” The end result is a further weakening of our children’s ability to compete in modern society and on the international playing field, reports The New York Times.

Concerned families, who highly value math education, are privately tutoring their children. Here’s why:

“When my oldest child, an A-plus stellar student, was in sixth grade, I realized he had no idea, no idea at all, how to do long division,” Shalimar Backman tells the Times. “So I went to school and talked to the teacher, who said, ‘We don’t teach long division; it stifles their creativity,’ ” Backman, who lives in the Seattle area, was so frustrated, she began a parents’ group called Where’s the Math?

Now there are budding movements around the nation seeking a return to back-to-basics math. Even the very organization that pushed the fuzzy math concept, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, is leading the back-to-basics charge.

Personally, I don’t understand this debate, much like my dad didn’t understand my math book years ago. The way to teach skills and concepts is through using math.

My son has been doing addition and subtraction since before turning 4 because I simply use fingers and toy cars to represent numbers. I put them together, then take some away, showing Seth how to add and subtract.

We do drills when in the car, at the store or in his room. As a result, he’s memorizing his numbers while understanding how he got there.

The method works like magic. That’s why math has to be taught as a useful life tool, rather than through an ideological lens.

It’s simple to come up with ways of doing this: For young kids, try using food, toys or marbles.

For older kids, use equations in a fun, but realistic setting: have them calculate dimensions for building something in shop. Race toy cars or launch water-pressure rockets and calculate velocity. Even measuring ingredients in cooking can be used to teach math.

Kids won’t even realize they’re learning a discipline if it’s done in a way that makes it fun and memorable. It sure beats shoving a book in a kid’s face and saying, “here, solve the problem.”

So why don’t we discard ideological claptrap, and implement a real solution to math problems?

Comments

[Phil]

My 3rd grade son is learning math by figuring out the basics and then applying those lessons to real world examples. I want him to memorize stuff, sure, but I also want him to see how 4x3=12 or 45/5=9.

We group numbers together, break them apart, whatever it takes so that he sees the parts of the whole. I tell him that he won't alway have to do this kind of nuts and bolts process because his brain will memorize things. Already I see that he's memorizing the times table even though we don't spend very much time actually doing that. Memorizing just for memorizing's sake doesn't always lead to an understanding of how a sum or product is reached.

[brettdl]

A perfect explanation of what I'm talking about.

[Phil]

Perfect in a POSITIVE way, though, right? Right?

Can you tell I'm not always so confident of my teaching skills?

[brettdl]

Yes! In a positive way!!!

[Tisha]

GREAT post!

[brettdl]

Thanks!

[Autumn]

I wonder where the balance is?

I went to a couple different schools as a kid. I learned the multiplication tables and such and were quized weekly stating in first grade. We had sheets we did with addition and subtraction, multiplication and division being added as we advanced in grades.

Then, in 5th grade we moved to a new school where we were taught math very differently. I bounced around a couple schools in middle school along with homeschooling. I took the lecture and math section of a college Chem class my mom was tutroing when I was 12 and being homeschooled. I got a B+. The next year I went back to public school for 8th grade. I struggled so much in Algebra that I got a C-. Which meant I had to take it again my Freshman year. Where I aced it without batting an eyelash. I was tutoring the other kids...

[Autumn]

as an added note: My 8th grade year was at a school in WV and my 9th was split between Texas and PA.

(we moved around a lot for a while)

[brettdl]

That's a point I left out: quality of teaching matters, too, regardless of the method.

[William Hallowell]

You're right. We need to do something. Math scores are dropping, but parents aren't flinching. Overall, parental concern over math and science education has fallen since 1994, with 64% stating that math and science education is not a problem in their public school systems. In addition, 70% of those parents surveyed believe that their child's high school is teaching the right amount of math and science. For more information on "Reality Check 2006," go to http://www.publicagenda.org/research/pdfs/rc0601.pdf.

[brettdl]

Yes, I have a story today about how much worse science education is in this nation.

[Jody]

This is another of those stories that I wish the Times had cited in that article about Unschooling.

It's just FRUSTRATING to read a paper that doesn't seem to know what it's writing from day to day. Don't write a story about letting kids figure out their own academic agenda just days after writing a story about the possiblity that we're falling behind because of lack of basic skills, without at least indicating you recognize the tension between the two reports!

ARGH.

[brettdl]

As someone who worked at newspapers most of his life, I can say that this situation is most common.