Yep. The problem is that if your kid doesn’t solve the problem the way the teacher teaches it now then they don’t get credit. I don’t know how many times I heard, “that’s not the way my teacher does it”. The procedures were so laborious and confusing that, imho, the kids didn’t learn much. They spent too much time crawling around on their hands and knees rather than committing to memory a solid foundation, so when things got more difficult/abstract they had trouble. They weren’t able to get a “feel” for what was going on because they had to keep going back to the basics.
The result: I think every one of my daughter’s friends that were in the accelerated math path dropped out by the middle of the 9th grade. My D16 stuck it out and I’m able to help her appropriately when she runs into trouble now that she’s out of the disastrous ES/MS stuff.
I think that the traditional theory of teaching math was based on the fact that people would actually have to do math by hand for the rest of their lives. Thus, having the procedures be efficient and reliable was a priority because people would have to use them to balance their checkbooks, etc. Many of us remember not knowing or caring about what any of it meant – the top priority was lining up your numbers right so that you would get the right answer.
Today, educators know that kids will never do math by hand in real life. They will pull up a calculator app on their phones (or whatever technology will be in use when they reach adulthood). So it doesn’t matter if the procedures are laborious. The focus now seems to be on having the kids do math in ways that make conceptual sense so that the kids will learn the conceptual basis of the math. I’m not sure whether it works.
Even if you use a calculator, you need to have some “math sense” to have an idea if the answer you get looks correct (rather than incorrect because you keyed something incorrectly on the calculator).
Here’s what I know…
We sent men to the moon and back with the equivalency of a 64K calculator that you can buy for under 5 bucks today.
We got men back from the moon on one disastrous trip with pencil, paper and a slide rule.
“Today educators know that kids will never do math by hand in real life.”
But what if they need to? Calculators are not magic. Nor handy. They don’t give magic answers.
They give answers that you should already know how to obtain with pencil and paper and brain.
I always hated math because it was rote and efficient. Back when I took it, it wasn’t conceptual at all. Then I absolutely loved the Singapore and Chicago math that my kids took. Yes, I had to supplement the early drill em, skill em, and kill em stuff with online programs and placemats, but they had such a great sense of problem definition, relationship, and math meaning, that I didn’t care. Hurray for the newest math!!
Marian, it is so true that it is more important to know what math does when armed with a calculator than to simply plug in numbers. Learning concepts helps people know what to I put.
I can’t be the only parent on here who’s child went from remedial reading to being a very accomplished reader. We never pushed our kids to learn school stuff before kindergarten. They learned to run and jump and play with other kids instead. They learned to hike and swim and climb trees. Being comfortable in the natural world was our primary goal.
We live in a pretty good school district, though, so were not worried about either nature or nurture.
I was raised by two Ph.D. psychologists (or wolves, I’m still trying to figure it out). My father, who was primarily interested in developmental issues, detested educational standardization. He believed that children should learn to play (and other pursuits) and develop academic skills when they show interest. By second grade, I still wasn’t reading. Apparently, my teacher conferenced my parents and told them that I would “never learn to read.” I still remember him calling her an “idiot” as they stormed out of the meeting. I continued in remedial reading groups until my sister gave me her Trixie Belden books in 6th grade.
I feel in love with Trixie. And in love with reading.
By the end of that year, I was testing at the 12 grade level and later scored a perfect score on the MCAT reading section. I’ve since moved on from Trixie. But I still love reading. It is a large part of my work life and recreation.
I’ve followed this approach with both of my kids. I don’t worry about educational standards and benchmarks. I just try to support their intellectual and emotional growth the best I can. Its worked well for us.
Family lore was that I “taught myself to read at age 4”. I never believed it. When I was 4 my brothers were 6 and 7 and learning to read ( no preschool for us!) and I always guessed that I just followed along when my parents were helping them.
And then …D turned 4 and just started reading. S did ,too. I did not teach either of them to read , they just did. I admit that I read books to them every single night from the time they were infants until they went into middle school. It simply never occurred to me not to. I love to read , so I read a lot to my kids.