Posted on 07/18/2008 6:28:41 AM PDT by wintertime
This article is about parents who are teaching traditional math at home on the sly to their children.
The previous article was pulled. Perhaps it was due to quoting Fox. I hope this thread is not pulled, the topic deserves discussion.
Wintertime
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
We’ve done so. My son said of the old math, “Well Dad that makes more sense to me.”
Guess teachers have never read novels...
It’s an AP story. Excerpts of AP stories are shot on sight.
The article was fairly covered in re the subject matter.
However, I'll cite an anology I've seen zillions of times in the non-school world.
At the cash register of any retail business. Amount due is $20.61. Customer forks out 40.11. -- The change due the customer would be $19.50 -- an even amount, less change to trot out and around.
Some customers are very arrogant about this.
They shouldn't be. It was due how they were taught math; not that they are necessarily "smarter" at math.
Really a bad example. Most people would submit $40.61. They want that $20.00 bill.
Is this one going to be pulled too, since it’s also written by an AP writer?
I pinged the Public School ping list to the last one, but I’m waiting your determination on this one.
The article quotes a mother of a 10-year-old, she has “degrees” plural, from Stanford and Barnard, but “I’m such a numbskull!” She can’t cope with the math taught to a public school child aged 10.
We’ve moved toward using Gannett rules regarding AP material. Headline and link only, regardless of source.
I’ve had cashiers get confused when I hand them $20.10 for an item that cost $5.05. It’s because I don’t have a nickel, but I’d rather have a ten, a five and a nickel than a ten, four ones and 95 cents change.
If they had 61 cents in change, most people would just submit $20.61 rather than handing the clerk an extra $20 just to have it handed back to them.
Both methods have purpose and meaning contingent upon what they are to be used for, in application. Some jobs require attention to detail; some require a faster processing time.
I think the schools are trying to "process" the children up to a par in math as a standard; this is good.
I've been through the hellacious math wars in CA. I do mean hell.
Imagine junior high. Where as many as 5 to 10 k-5(or 6's) feed into the junior high. Each of those k-5 schools used different forms of math. Now entering the same classrooms. Egads, I saw it. It was a mess. And that's not even to take into account slower/fast students; math ability.
I felt for the teachers, to be sure; as well as the students.
So, no. I would never refer to these parents teaching their children traditional division at home as "renegades". If their child has not been exposed to traditional division, this is an additional learning for them, an important one. Contrariwise, the parents might try to learn some of the newer methods being taught.
My hat is off to those parents working with their children at home. And to those teachers struggling to find the parity line of which method to use in a classroom full of students whose background to date in math has been more than likely all over the map.
Folks whose math education was purely long add/div, won't tend to do this. Their synapses have been trained a specific way. It's not necessarily that the person at the cash register is "dumb" at math. They were trained to a longer process in doing math.
Thanks. That’s helpful to know. I didn’t think we were accepting anything from AP, period.
If you do not want to be contacted *please** let me know, and I will remove your name. I surely wouldn’t wish to bother you, but I don’t want you to miss these education articles, either.
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“At the cash register of any retail business. Amount due is $20.61. Customer forks out 40.11. — The change due the customer would be $19.50 — an even amount, less change to trot out and around.”
I do that sort of thing all the time to avoid pennies, or to receive quarters instead of smaller change.
I often get odd looks, but since most all cash registers figure the change, all the cashier has to do is correctly input the amount a customer gave them.
If today’s population had to actually figure change, the entire nation would grind to a halt as everyone stood in line waiting for their change, and arguing over the correct amount.
Gee! Amelia, I see that you have changed your policy of not pinging my threads. How nice of you! ( Really)
In my area, students aren’t required to learn times-tables anymore. We spent a lot of time drilling our youngest on those, because they weren’t emphasized in school anymore...someone had decided that students didn’t need to know math facts anymore because calculators are so readily available.
What I’ve found with my students is that since they don’t really have a good grasp on basic math facts, (1) they can’t readily tell when they’ve put the numbers in the calculator incorrectly, and (2) they are unable or unwilling to attempt calculations without a calculator.
Not true. I was taught Saxon math - pure long division, multiplication, etcetera - but I can figure out how much change to give a clerk to get quarters back. And unlike too many math victims, I can figure out what my change should be.
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