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.
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.
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The thing that really frosts me about this story is the attitude - professional teachers know best, if fearful parents are going to teach their kids outdated stuff they’d better check with the teacher, most parents are too stupid to teach fourth grade math.
Scary!
Teaching Math In 1950:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
Teaching Math In 1960:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
Teaching Math In 1970:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?
Teaching Math In 1980:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
Teaching Math In 1990:
By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees. (There are no wrong answers.)
Teaching Math In 2005:
El hachero vende un camion carga por $100. La cuesta de production es.............
I tutor Middle School math — pre-algebra, algebra, 6th grade math. I ALWAYS teach the kids the old-fashioned way — “It has to make sense. It is binary, right or wrong.” These are liberating concepts. The parents hate the ‘new’ math, no one can help their kids. AND it is absolutely imperative that our kids learn how to do math.
One could think there was a conspiracy behind it.
That's actually how I handle simple multiplication. I do this with tips, especially- divide the bill by ten then multiply by two to get a 20% tip. I don't actually see anything wrong with teaching kids these types of shortcuts.
"The traditional way is really a shortcut," Cooney says. "We want kids to be so confident with numbers that it becomes intuitive."
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. You'd have to come up with different trick for other operands. And what trick would he suggest for 357 x 482?
You teach the traditional method as it works, and works for all operands - then you teach the speed-up tricks for common operands.
It's a real good thing when the 'one way' solves the problem correctly everytime, and everybody else knows the one way, and can check your work.
When have you ever seen a “New Math” kid who was able to make change in their head?
For later reading.
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.
My high schooler does not perform any math in school without a calculator (since 5th grade - Connected Math is the publisher), therefore, she has forgotten her math facts - including how to draw a division sign and which number 'goes where.' She qualified as gifted in math in elementary school. Yes, I am using an "-ed" at the end of the word qualify.
Indoctrination, educrats not wanting parents to help the kids, "it's not fair" if some accel, etc. seems to all point toward a socialist/communist education system.
The State of Georgia BOE has restructured the entire HS curriculum to an integrated (reform, constructivist) math. Our students will no longer graduate from high school with Trigonometry, Algebra I, etc. written on their transcript. The courses are Math 1, Math 2, etc - where each year is a combination of classes -that terrific "spiraling" approach the educrats are so fond of using. It begins with the 2008-2009 freshmen.
Anytime the subject of math education in the US is discussed, it always brings to mind the reported results of international math rankings. When ranking US students internationally, they score #1 in confidence in their math ability, and #17 in math ability demonstrated on standardized tests.
I think most interpret this to mean that our schools are successfully building our students self-esteem.
Most of what kids learn is at home or on their own, those that care about it. Why don’t thesefamilies that are enough to teach “old math”- read Real Math - at home go ahead and homeschool?
If we start in the 1950s and 1960s and call the teaching of long division and memorizing multiplication tables as method #1, I wonder how many “New Maths” been foisted on students since that period? What we can conclude is that our educators really don’t yet know the best way to teach math, or maybe the best method was abandoned in the 1970s and too many “theoreticians” and multiculturalists have gotten into the act since.
From the article: “And as for the concepts-before-procedure argument, she quips: “Would you want to go to a doctor who’s learned about the concepts but never done the surgery? Would you want your doctor to say I had the right IDEA when I removed your appendix, though I took out the wrong one.”
Wrong example. Without concepts, someone who is a wizard with a knife, might take out the wrong organ, for example.