Posted on 05/26/2006 6:09:10 PM PDT by saquin
Modern methods of teaching maths which have mystified parents and confused many pupils are to be abandoned six years after the Government forced them on primary schools.
The same unit at the Department for Education which devised the strategy now wants teachers to go back to the "standard written method" it abolished.
The decision has prompted a backlash from some primary teachers and maths advisers who say children are better able to understand the concept of arithmetic when they break sums down into a series of units.
They say the "back to basics" approach heralds a return to the "dark ages" of adding up, subtracting, multiplying and dividing in vertical rows without understanding what they are doing.
But evidence has shown that many pupils are arriving at secondary school unable to do long division and multiplication and reliant on columns of workings out which take longer and are more prone to errors along the way.
The proposed change, put out to consultation yesterday, has already won support from many teachers on the website of The Times Educational Supplement, who say it is better for pupils to master one, simple, standard method than struggle with many.
Primary schools were inundated with complaints from parents when the new method came in and some organised meetings to explain the technique.
However, many parents who gave it the benefit of the doubt began to panic when their children entered the teenage years unable, for example, to divide 196 by six or multiply 56 by 27 with speed and accuracy.
The lesson plan for the numeracy hour introduced in 1999 instructs teachers to use the "grid" method for multiplication. Numbers are split into tens and units which are multiplied by each other in turn to give four totals which are then added together.
In division pupils are taught to subtract multiples of the divisor until they end up with a number less than the divisor. They then add up the number of times they have multiplied the divisor and express the number less than the divisor as the remainder. Children are not allowed to "carry" numbers or put figures in vertical lines, such as 56 with x27 beneath it. They are also strongly discouraged from using the bracket form of dividing each number in turn with the answer above the line and the remainder placed before the next digit.
The proposed new framework says the techniques of the last six years may still be used with younger children, especially to help with mental maths, but that by the time they reach the age of 11, pupils should be able to use the "standard written method", by which they mean the way parents were taught.
In a joint statement, five leaders of the Mathematical Association opposed the change. "Don't let us go back to the bad old days with books full of pages of vertical sums when only a minute percentage of pupils understood what they were doing and only a third could carry out calculations," they said. National statistics for maths show that 25 per cent of 11-year-olds failed to reach the basic standard expected for their age last year rising to 26 per cent of 14-year-olds.
The decision to return to the old methods will come as a relief to many parents.
Christine Turno says she dreads the twice-weekly homework with her nine-year-old daughter.
"She goes ballistic," she said. "We have massive rows because she says I'm doing it wrong and she has to do it the way the school says. But she can't understand what they want and it's a complete mystery to me."
A 20-minute homework session turns into an hour.
Mrs Turno, of west London, said: "The teachers say it is the new way and if the answer is wrong it doesn't matter as long as she is using the right method. It's quite bizarre."
Of 30 in the class, 10 get private tuition.
ping for my math wiz :)
That is a telling statement. These 'educators' perspective is from that of an idiot who could not perform simple arithmetic. 'Only a minute percentage' was more like 90%, they were just in the 10% who could not do it.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
(from his Introduction to Mathematics, first published in 1911)
"Mrs Turno, of west London, said: "The teachers say it is the new way and if the answer is wrong it doesn't matter as long as she is using the right method. It's quite bizarre."
Telling isn't it? The annointed ones test their absurd theories on the rest of us and when you raise an entire generation of idiots they'll blame everything and everybody (except themselves)
Actually, the grid and chunking methods are the ones I use when doing it without the benefit of having a pen at hand. Seems kind of wasteful to have children struggle with extra steps.
In some cases, a modified version of Booth's algorithm can be handy for multiplication. For example, 99x23 = (100-1)x23 = 2300-23 = 2277.
The grid method is interesting!
huked on foniks werked for me
i've never really considered myself a math person, although i've never shyed away from it... language is more my thing... however, i am having the best time teaching my boys math as i homeschool them... i've never let them know that i don't consider myself a "math person." we do 90 minutes of math a day, no matter what... my boys do 30 minutes of fun math games, practical math and math puzzles before we go into the new lesson... we spend about an hour learning the new concept and then doing the written work...
some days i'll do a timed drill on basic math facts... the success for us has been having my boys learn those basic math facts down cold during the first three years of school...
Do kids still memorize the multiplication tables? This was one of the things we did in the third grade.
Go to any engineering school...you'll see the same thing, with very good reason. It's quite easy when doing complex calculations to miss a decimal point or transcribe a 1 into a 7 (depending on your personal printing). The point is that as long as the process is correct, experience will tell if the answer makes sense or not. If the process is correct and the same every time, the answers will generally be correct, if an answer doesn't make sense, commonly off by a factor of 2 or 10, you can go back through your steps and see where the error was made.
Now the specific methods, I learned multiplication the correct way, long division, etc. I whole-heartedly endorse those methods and on many of my class notes you will find long division or multiplication calculations scribbled into the margins when I'm too lazy to pull out a calculator. These algorithms are meant as shortcuts for experienced mathematicians (or students) not as a way of teaching the fundamentals.
Just use Saxon Math and wrap up the basics in a few years.
It is amazing to see that England is at least able to admit a mistake when it comes to teaching math. In this country, we're well into our second decade of making sure that our kids don't learn math, at least at public schools (not counting the prior 24 years of degraded math teaching). And there is no end in sight, thanks to the teachers.
The other thing is that even with the Brits having this debate, they never once mention calculators, whereas in New Jersey they have (or at least had) kids starting with calculators in Kindergarten (for math). Apparently, the Brits still have some common sense.
The teaching of basic traditional mathematics are true tested methods. All the great mathematical minds have been taught through proven traditional teaching methods. In India they teach traditional math and the esults are astounding.
Applying advanced teaching methods to young minds who do not have a set foundation is leading them astray. My nephiew was so utterly frustrated that he would simply tune out. I showed him a boring 'long division' like textbook and showed him how the old school of math worked and since he 'got it' right away, he felt liberated and would proudly display his homework when he accomplished it. I spoke to his teacher and she went on that Michael should stick to the teaching method that they were teaching and I said to her: Weren't you schooled in the trad method? Isn't the most important thing that a 10 yr old boy can make sense and is enthusiastic of the math he asked to do?
Michael never again did that 'new math' until he applied new techniques as a carpenter. (A good one at that!)
cheers!
Distributive property in action... an early algebra concept useful in real life and in polynomial operations....
interesting indeed!
As well, emphasizing the distributive property as they are doing in the "grid" multiplication method isn't a bad thing in my estimation.
The problems that I see generally aren't the methods presented in arithmetic. Most usually the problem that I see is that the teachers themselves often don't understand what they are presenting, even at this truly elementary level of mathematics. They instead will present a method out of any context and if a child makes a connection between the grid method and, say, a traditional "carry" method, then the teacher is unable to make the same connection.
However, I would suggest that teachers teaching the "chunking" method for division emphasize that similarly multiplication is merely repeated addition, rather than simultaneously teaching the "grid" multiplication method, which does not reinforce that concept.
Also, I didn't realize that the Brits are using radical "
" notation to indicate division. I would have read their notation in the division examples as taking the sixth root of 196 rather than as dividing 196 by six.
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