The way they taught math in the 1930s and 40s was absolutely fine. Use those textbooks. Kids will learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, decimals, fractions, percentages, basic geometry, and algebra. Not even challenging. The curriculum is already laid out.
Ordinary people do use algebra in their daily lives, even if they don’t think of it as “using algebra”. It’s basic stuff and everyone should learn it.
Once kids get into High School, a very small number of them may wish to explore areas that might be considered “higher mathematics” such as trigonometry and calculus. Ordinary people will never need that stuff.
Current math education probably works well for 5% of the population. Go back to the 1930s and 40s and you can serve 95% of the population.
But it’s almost like the education establishment doesn’t want to teach math well.
>But it’s almost like the education establishment doesn’t want to teach math well.
I’d gander a guess that their collective math skills are lacking. You can’t teach what you don’t know.
Current math for third to eighth grade uses all sorts of stupid principles and methods. It is educators stupidity that is ruining our future.
The basic arithmetic and math skills useful to over 95% of the population, and how to teach them, have been well understood for ages. Continuing tried and true methods would serve students very well. The various New Math fads come and go frequently for several reasons:
1) the need to build ed school and public school admin careers by constantly proclaiming reinvention of the wheel;
2) the desire to make money by selling new textbooks for the latest fad;
3) the political refusal to acknowledge that some students can’t learn basic math because they have low IQs, inability to concentrate, no discipline, chaotic lives and homes, no motivation, etc.