Math Instruction Seems Skillfully Designed NOT To Work

Hubpages.com ^ | August 15, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

For a few years I thought the worst possible gimmick in education was Whole Word, basically a device to make sure kids don't learn to read.

In the last few months, the clamor grew about Core Standards and National Standards, and I started to focus on arithmetic. More and more I’m struck by the parallel with Whole Word. The Education Establishment seems to specialize in coming up with techniques that are almost guaranteed not to work.

I know there are cynics who will say, well, of course, everyone knows this. Even so, the thing that fascinates me is the amount of skill and intelligence needed to create something that is not what it appears to be. I’m still stunned. Did people really go into a room and say: how do we teach math so that nobody learns math??? Well, it sure seems that way.

I think we can see the phenomenon best in New Math. Experts said it was the perfect way to teach math; but it was trashed only a few years later. The flaw was that easy arithmetic was mixed in with advanced concepts so that kids were too confused to learn even the basic stuff. Unfortunately, that central flaw was rolled forward into all the subsequent programs, for example, the many programs within Reform Math.

As so often happens in education, the public has to deal with this weird choice: are the people in charge hopelessly stupid or hopelessly subversive?

For a sense of how bad things are, here is a scary report from C. F. Navarro, PhD (on the excellent site Illinoisloop.org):

“At the George Washington Middle school where I taught eight-grade math in 1998, only a few of my math students were at grade level. The rest were at a fourth-grade level, or lower. Most had not yet learned their multiplication tables and were still counting with their fingers. By the end of the year some had progressed to about a fifth-grade level, a substantial improvement, but far short of the comprehension and skills required for algebra. Nonetheless, all were required to register for algebra the following year.

More troublesome still was my algebra class. The students in that class were all nice kids, mainly from middle-class families and, therefore, on the school's "talented and gifted," program. Yet, with few exceptions, they didn't know how to work with fractions, decimals or integers. They lacked the power of concentration to set up and solve multiple-step problems. They were incapable of manipulating symbols and reasoning in abstract terms. Like most of my general math students, some had not yet learned their multiplication tables and were still counting with their fingers.”

Could things really be that bad if the Education Establishment were sincerely trying to teach math? Hard to imagine.

So what is the answer? Many businesses and parents (with kids in public schools) have to consider tutoring (e.g., Saxon Math, Singapore Math, Math Mammoth, MathUSee). Next, the more I look at the National Standards and Core Standards, the more I hope that states will reject these federal proposals. If you’re curious, go to corestandards.org to read some of these bizarre so-called Standards.

One of the distinguishing traits in the newer Standards is a gimmick called spiraling. Children are moved quickly from topic to topic. Teachers introduce as much variety as possible. Just as a “thought experiment” I wondered, well, what would total simplicity look like?? I wrote a piece for hubpages called “Price’s Easy Arithmetic For First Graders.”

( http://hubpages.com/hub/PricesEasyArithmetic )

For a more studious look at the whole problem, see “53: One Thing We Know For Sure: The Education Establishment Hates Math” on Improve-Education.org.

( www.improve-education.org/id78.html )

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For anyone curious about New Math, here's my review of a book published about 1964 to tell parents how to understand New Math. Funny in a grim way. See the one review of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/teachers-parents-elementary-school-children/dp/B0007DO4K2/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

. .

[wintertime]

I’ve been forbidden to
exhibit the alphabet to people being tutored.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Why would they forbid this? What is their reason?

Also...Are you tutoring government schooled kids or illiterate adults?

[cycjec]

This was orientation for tutoring adults of limited or
no English language literacy. The only reason given was
“these people aren’t *ready* for the alphabet.” Really
and truly.

[petercooper]

bttt

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Please explain this. Forbidden by whom? What people?

You were supposed to use only sight-words, is that it?

I’d love to know more.

Bruce Price

[cycjec]

sight words, reading aloud, “cloze” games (guess the word
that should fill in the blank, context clues (picture of
half a road sign ... that one’s a big scary isn’t it?)
and so forth. But no list of the letters A to Z or any
instruction based on that. Also the head instructor came
outright and said “there’s no sense in English spelling
it’s a crazy language” This is in fact not true. This
was at two different public library systems in the greater
New York city area, and as I said it was 10 years ago or
more. One still needs the alphabet to locate books in the
stacks, although online catalogs (that’s another rant)
have diminished one immediate need to know alphabetical
order. I’m surprised at the surprise here.