Posted on 07/18/2008 6:28:41 AM PDT by wintertime
see your FReepmail
It was worth it.
While we were at it, another customer and his wife approached us and said that what we were doing was GREAT. They said that kids in skrool these days do not learn such skills (how many times have you stumped a cashier by offering additional coins after they have already keyed-in the bill amount that you gave previously? They know they need to do something different than what the machine is telling them - but they are clueless.).
The couple admired what we were doing (and our patience) then added, "We are both public skrool teachers - mathematics - by the way."
One minor point - manipulitives are great for someone who learns in that manner. We are all different.
I wish to make a distinction in terminology: first, there are some new math methods which are simply superb. There's newer math, and then there's rainforest math. Rainforest math is what we, then, referred to as those "newer math means" involving the social sciences. Using children as guinea pigs for social sciences, culling taxpayer dollars on the program and calling it "math". Newer math is, IME, meaningless unless the traditional forms have been taught first.
Teaching traditional, moving to the newer math means... creates a streamlined cranial pathway, which is the basis for later totally grokking geometry and algebra, calculus, and the like. Should the student have an "abrupted" pathway, being able to comprehend geometry and algebra and calculus is near impossible. Certainly, overly stressful.
In CA, during the "condoms not crayons" period of time, feminists had pushed for "all girl math classrooms". These girls were getting traditional as well as newer math instruction.
The same was not true for general classrooms comprised of boys and girls.
And of course, if one goes back and studies, as I did, the entire track of so-called math education in CA over the past 40 years, there is something awful.
Boys, traditionally better at math were getting duller and duller at math.
So when the "immigration reformists" began screaming silly over CA hiring engineers with visas from India to do "jobs Americans should be doing", I could only shake my head. Americans WOULD be doing these jobs had Americans not been so badly shortchanged in the schools. The work still needed to be done.
What's to do...
My .02
That’s one reason why when I have kids, we’re homeschooling.
Just horrifying.
I was in elementary school in the sixties. I got a curious mix of old and new in math and reading - in my opinion, this is the way it should still be taught. The basic memorization came first, tables and phonics. Then the theory based newer systems were laid on top of that. I came out of that system understanding numbers and their relationship to one another on an intuitive level. My reading skills continued to grow. I believe the librarian pointed out two books to me in my sixth grade year that were the only ones of the thousands in the library that I had not checked out. Practice does help :D
However, I know what you mean about wiring. My daughter just cannot seem to grasp numbers this way. My son did. I know of other homeschoolers where the genders are reversed, so don’t take this as a “boys are better at math.”
He was surprised to hear that (in 1970) using a slide rule was mandatory in my physics classes - even though calculators were available. Today, calculators are mandatory and laptops are excluded (still, in some places)...
When have you ever seen a “New Math” kid who was able to make change in their head?
“Cooney is an idiot and has it backwards. The traditional way works for any pair of operands, and takes a consistent time, it’s not a short cut. The trick he suggested is a short cut, that works only for 5 times something.”
LOl, as I was reading the copied quote in your post I was thinking what you concluded on down. Yes, if Cooney thinks this method that works only with 5 is some great example to cite, then he is an idiot.
And a bit of common sense I’m sure he’d never arrive at: math is simply harder than other subjects for many people. Maybe it’s best to teach basic math in the traditional way to give as many people as possible an every day, working knowledge of math. Few people (of the total population) will ever study and utilize advanced math, and playing around with numerous methods in basic math is a waste of time. Only a few students will grasp most of it.
My philosophy was different.
In my homeschool I used manipulatives exclusively until the child was 5. Before the age of 5 my children could add, subtract, multiply, and divide using manipulatives. At 5 I began doing traditional first grade math using manipulatives and pencil and paper. By the time the child was 9 they had all their math facts down cold! They could give any answer within 3 seconds. Then after age 9 I would use manipulatives as needed if they made an error in their work.
All three finished college Calculus III at our local community college by the age of 15.
For later reading.
I worked at Del Taco during college (anything to pay the bills, right?) Our Drive Thru register didn’t make change, and it had to be counted out by hand. All of our cashiers were highschool graduates, but that register was off by at least $8 every shift. How is it that the average California highschool graduate cannot count change?
Even with a calculator available, these kids couldn’t make change. It was sad.
My biggest difficulty is the fundamentals, when do the kids get to work on learning the basic math facts. It always seemed to me that they just started asking us for the answers and gave us this little table with the answers to study. After complaining to missus infool7 she came up with a math game that we have been promoting but so far there isn’t much interest. I think teaching math is no longer a priority.
If I had been off $8 per shift, I would have been working for free at $1 per hour. I was never off by more than $1 per shift and seldom off at all.
DING! DING! DING! Give this poster a prize!
Realistically, given the Bell Curve, how many students can really ever be able to understand the concepts underlying the basic operations of arithmetic? What percentage, realistically, will ever be able to understand and pass Algebra I or II????
“Give as many people as possible an every day, working knowledge of math.” Yes! Yes! Yes! Both the slow students and the bright!
There is now a movement to push Algebra down into the middle school years. I predict that the slower students will now be far less prepared for basic living, and the brighter students will be less prepared for success in higher level math. Why? Because the time previously spent hammering down basic operations in math ( addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, FRACTIONS and DECIMALS) will be robbed for teaching pre-Algebra.
I wonder what happened to them. /sarc
Our local McDonalds employs most of their window staff with young people who speak Spanish as a first language; very minimal English. It usually takes at least three personas to calculate my correct change when I pass them more coins than es necessario. I’ve actually had them hand me a dollar bill while shorting their register because they couldn’t comprende the transaction.
When I worked after high school, that $8 would have been taken out of my pay.
I was paid #1/hr and was rarely off even a penny.
The same thing happened with reading. My kids were taught phonics. My second daughter got "benched" (no, I'm not kidding) for using phonics in a classroom where "guessing at the word" was the method. She'd be warned. But the teacher's aide caughter her moving her lips, sounding out the word on the card the teacher had held up.
She, along with my other "peer teacher" daughter were pulled from school at the same time by me to homeschool. There was not a civil nor intelligent discussion to be had with either teacher nor the principal.
Mine didn't quite reach the levels of math by age as yours. About one level lower in math by the same age.
We never used manipulatives after those early years.
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