Want kids to learn math? START teaching it

Prof. Susan Engel, a psychologist, author and educator, published a controversial article in Bloomberg. The headline was "Want kids to learn math? STOP teaching it."

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-06/want-kids-to-learn-math-stop-teaching-it

My local paper picked it up and I had a very violent reaction: that is the stupidest thing I have ever seen in a newspaper and, as you know, that covers a lot of ground.

Later, when I went to Bloomberg to check on the comments, I was pleased to see many other people reacted as I did.

Independent George wrote: 'This is quite possibly the worst educational advice I've ever read. I don't even know where to start. Math is cumulative. You can't do algebra without mastering arithmetic, you can't skip algebra and go directly to trig, etc….'

Richard screamed: 'I could not disagree more vehemently with the writer of this article. Math SHOULD be a required course EVERY year of elementary & high school, just like English. Math is WAY more important that history, or civics, or any other elective course. Plus...get rid of all those computers...students MUST be able to do the math by hand, without using a calculator or other device.'

However, as I looked more closely at the article and reflected on its many carefully hedged statements, I realized that the author did not say stop teaching math. More exactly, she said, stop requiring the teaching of math. But that's a distinction that wouldn't gain many recruits.

Here is the idea, it seems to me, she was really promoting: stop teaching math as it has been taught for the last 50 years. Oh, in that case, she is making sense. This is something I can celebrate like the Fourth of July. The last 50 years means the tidal wave of stupidity that brought us New Math (circa 1965) / Reform Math (circa 1985) / and Common Core Math (now). All of these are child-abuse, anti-math, and basically what it looks like when the barbarians are in your gates.

It seems to me the psychologist was merely stating obvious wisdom. Let us stop teaching math in the many dumb and counterproductive ways that only ruthless hacks can devise.

Unfortunately, Susan Engel did not come right out and say this obvious wisdom. She successful avoided saying obvious wisdom. She went on a circumlocutionary detour from the obvious, saying things like this: 'Those interested in highly quantitative fields such as technology, finance or research are likely to have a natural inclination for math. They can obtain the knowledge they need later, in a much more effective and profound way, in college or beyond.'

Read that over again. Some have a natural information so they don't need to study it. And if they do not pick it up until after college, that is okay too.

Well, at this point the psychologist entered the realm of the fatuous. She proceeded to give a litany of lame excuses why you would not want to burden kids with learning math in a thorough and systematic way, as has always been done historically. The Education Establishment will enjoy using such excuses to wipe arithmetic right out of the K-12 system. Maybe Susan Engel herself is the first salient in this effort. Maybe she is the trial balloon.

My point is that she did not prove what she set out to prove: that we should not require math. That is a goofy idea. What she proved was that we should not teach math as our exalted experts prefer to teach it. They are all engaged in what some authors have called the 'deliberate dumbing down of America.' They tend to specialize in really bad ideas. If Susan Engel is going to provide ammunition for these people, then we want to call her on it.

If you've never seen 'An Inconvenient Truth,' a somewhat famous video by M J McDermott, please watch it. It is about 16 minutes but then you will know for yourself that the people in charge of math education are what I can best describe as intellectual reprobates.

So, yes, let us get rid of everything that the National Council of Teachers of Math and Arne Duncan want. Let us get rid of everything that Bill Gates and Jeb Bush seem to want.

Let us instead start teaching math in a way that every child can benefit from. Our golden rule should be to lift every child as far as each can be lifted. First step, set that goal. Second step, find the best program available.

There are two major programs available to serious schools: Saxon Math and Singapore Math. Pick one and your days will be blessed. Kids will know how to do basic arithmetic. That could almost fundamentally transform America right there. That and children learning how to read with phonics.

Sensible math instruction is under attack from every direction. Just when you think Common Core is doing a bang-up job of total destruction, along comes a psychologist to suggest, oh no, that's not low enough. Why bother to even try. Let's just give up!!!

I'm still not sure exactly where Susan Engel ended up. But I can promise you there are many in our Education Establishment who want the result just stated. Don't teach anything. Quit now. Whatever smidgen of knowledge they need, they can find it later 'in a much more effective and profound way.'!

The only hope is that every American take a few minutes to study the nonsense that Common Core prefers. You will be disgusted. At that point we will be saved.

Here is a good, very short COMMON CORE EXPOSED video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKXMblyqzx4

Here is another good place to start: PARENTS AGAINST EVERYDAY MATH: https://www.facebook.com/Parents-Against-Everyday-Math-37453309495/

Here's a good general article "COMMON CORE: ANATOMY OF A FAILURE." http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/03/common_core_anatomy_of_a_failure.html

Note: there is a lot of great stuff showing how complicated Common Core is. Hunt around, find your own examples. Search: problems with common core.

To me the biggest problem with teaching math today is that few teachers know math themselves. Past the basics/early elementary school, it appears that most people who know math have opted for something other than teaching as a career; by high school qualified math teachers are few and far between. People who can teach high school math can usually command a much higher salary doing something else in the private sector, and as long as union work rules require the math teachers be paid on the same scale as gym teachers makes it unattractive indeed.

I say the parents are better off with no education, then having their kids indoctrinated.

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then or than?

See # 21; many teaching “methods” today are designed to accommodate the teachers who primarily come from the bottom of their college classes. In my experience, parents are expected to teach their children today because teachers are ignorant/uneducated. When children routinely are assigned homework that hasn’t been covered yet in class, and steered towards websites for extra help, it is very clear that the teachers don’t know the material - the parents or a website will provide the teaching.

I’ve posted on other threads that if your child is not in an “honors” track (”average” from thirty years ago), then he/she has already been written off and will receive no education at all. The schools determine who has involved parents, and focus on those students.

lol than.

Typing too fast! Believe it or not, I used to tutor, developed my own reading and spelling (phonics) program. I’m blaming old age as well lol.

I’ve found khan academy a great resource in understanding math. As a youth I found calculus hard to get but now I’m determined to understand it. Learning algebra again now. Makes thinking clearly easier. Maybe thats why liberal educators don’t want young people to learn math...logical thinking will make them question liberal ideas

Math should be taught by rote. Kids in the first or second grade should have to memorize addition tables up to 100. By third or fourth grade, it should be multiplication tables. By memory. No more of this “memorization is bad” nonsense. Start with the basics and build on them. And quit trying to be so clever about how you teach the basics.

^ This. You don’t learn how to play the piano by visualizing it, you learn by rote memorization and muscle memory. I amaze people with my ability to do math in my head, why can I do this? I can do this because my fourth grade teach made us do our tables until we wanted to puke. I still see those tables in my head to this day but now I see the elegance in those numbers. I’m 58.

I teach 4th grade math to 61 kids in a rural district. The kids are split between 3 classes. I used to teach in an urban district for 10 years. From the first day of school, I have my students learning their multiplication facts. When they complain that it is too hard, I tell them that I had to learn them in the third grade. I don’t teach any of the “gimmicks” that I have seen, such as the lattice method for double digit multiplication, I always stick to the traditional algorithms. That way, when they move on to middle and high school, they can understand how the formulas and patterns ought to work together, and not rely on trying to remember some trick that they were taught several years before. What’s amazing is that my students’ grandparents can help them with their homework, but their parents have a difficult time because of all of the quacky methods that were taught to them when they were in school. Very few parents can help their kids with fractions, measurement conversations, or elapsed time.

As far as standardized testing goes, I always tell parents and my students that the people that are making the tests aren’t trying to see if the student knows the material, they are trying to see if they can trick the student into choosing the wrong answer. This leads to teachers having to spend valuable instruction time teaching students what kind of tricks to look for, instead of actually teaching them the math skill. As a teacher, this is what disgusts me the most about the educational system.

The only goal in math education should be to teach kids to get the right answer, the quickest and most efficient way possible. The world doesn’t give a flying flip if they enjoy it or it makes them feel good or if they come up with creative ways to get the wrong answer. All that matters is getting it right.

If I had kids in elementary school today (assuming I can’t afford private school or homeschooling) I would buy a Saxon math program and drill them at home. Teach them basic math facts and make them memorize them.

I worked for a while on the side for one of the tutoring companies, helping kids to improve ACT scores. I saw some intelligent high school kids that couldn’t multiply 6 x 7 or estimate 10% of something without a calculator. If a kid doesn’t know that 6 x 7 = 42 without thinking about it or using a calculator by the time they are in middle school they will never be proficient in math.

New math came about because of the National Defense Education Act. It was directly related to the Russians launching Sputnik. Our government was alarmed at the technological progress that the Russians were making, and wanted to create as many mathematicians, scientist, and engineers in our country as possible. It worked.

New math was a more analytical approach to mathematics which focused less on traditional process approach of the past. New math was a great success for me, I loved the new math approach. The new math approach was much more rigorous, and many students and parents could not handle the change. In old math you learned how to find the square root of 1.732, in new math you learned to develop a method to find the square root of 1.732. The problem with new math is that not everyone is cut out to be a mathematician, scientist, and/or an engineer.

RE: “to see if they can trick the student into choosing the wrong answer.”

This is a great insight, that the Education Establishment wants to trick kids into picking the wrong answer.

For me, Common Core is systemically perverse and that’s why it should be eliminated.

students should be allowed to discover the beauty and patterns of math on their own

My mom taught piano.

You did not "discover the beauty or patterns of music" on your own because left on your own, you won't do it.

But if you do your drills and practice then one day you will "see" the beauty of the music. She used to call it "the click" and few things made her happier then when she could say that one of her students had heard the click.

Math is very much related to music. While those teachers like to think they would have discovered the joy of math on their own almost none of them would have. They had to do the drills, learn the patterns and then one day they heard the click.

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