“The right approach is simply stated. Emphasize basic skills, foundational knowledge and mastery. Basics, Knowledge, Mastery. BKM. That’s something we didn’t try for a while.”
I wish they would stick with the basics.
My daughter is doing lattice multiplication. I’ve never seen that stuff before. I thought, “What the hell is that?” when I saw her homework. I agreed with your assessment of this method-that it’s a form of child abuse.
She claims that’s the only way she can understand it but I couldn’t do it. It makes absolutely no sense to me and I want to scream every time I look at it.
Here’s a good explanation of latice multiplication: http://www.coolmath4kids.com/times-tables/times-tables-lesson-lattice-multiplication-1.html
Seems like a hell of a lot of work.
Califreak,
RE the idiocy called lattice multiplication.
Just in case some people don’t know, there’s a great YouTube video called AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH by the wonderful M. J. McDermott.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
Save this for when you have 16 minutes. It’ll make you kind of sick but in a good way. Lattice multiplication is another example of education as neurotoxin. Indeed, I think all of Reform Math is.
Try TheMathPage.com to help undo the damage.
Consider this idiotic exercise I'd never heard of lattice multiplication despite having been a math major in school and something like 70 semester hours of math courses. Assuming a need to multiply 14 by 56 as per the problem, I'd multiply 10 by 56 and get 560 in my head and then 4 x 56 (112 twice) for 224 and add the 560 and 224 to 784, again without having touched a pen or pencil, and generally thus feel no need for implements in multiplying two digit numbers. Anything much worse than that and I'd do the normal multiplication with a pen and paper.
“She claims that’s the only way she can understand it but I couldn’t do it. It makes absolutely no sense to me and I want to scream every time I look at it.”
My four older children went to school in Japan until at least through the eighth grade, so no problems there.
I’ve had to work with my ten-year-old, though, on long division, multiplication of fractions, etc. It wasn’t easy, but I found that I was able to get him up to speed by dropping back a level every time he didn’t understand something, getting that straight, then moving on. Associating numbers with real-world objects helped, too.
“Suppose I give you an allowance, then every time you don’t do your homework I fine you 20 per cent of that allowance. How many times can you screw up before it’s all gone?”
One might call it incentive.
He didn’t start learning to speak English until he was six, but now he’s reading at grade level. He actually seems to be starting to enjoy it (laus Deo). And he may be, finally, the one who appreciates music in the same way that I do.
Now I just have to equip him to see through the left’s attempts to flim-flam him.