Author Topic: Math Wars -- Old vs New  (Read 6571 times)

Ben

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Math Wars -- Old vs New
« on: July 21, 2008, 05:27:50 AM »
Thoughts on the article? I'm all for learning new and different ways to do things, but there is logic to at the very least, teaching the more mundane "operational" methods along with theory.

The whole "multiply 88 by 5" thing sounds good when you're dealing with easy multiples, but how do you use that method to multiply 88 by 3, or 56,789.764 by 6.2?

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/07/18/renegade.math.parents.ap/index.html

Frustrated parents sneak 'old math' to kids

    * Story Highlights
    * Parents sometimes struggle with kids' concept-based math curricula
    * Method teach the ideas behind mathematics, rather than rote procedures
    * Parents don't understand the new methods; can't help with homework
    * Rebel parents teach kids the old -fashioned math methods

NEW YORK (AP) -- On an occasional evening at the kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York, Victoria Morey has been known to sit down with her 9-year-old son and do something she's not supposed to.

"I am a rebel," confessed this mother of two.

And just what is this subversive act in which Morey engages -- with a child, yet?

Long division.

Yes, Morey teaches her son, who'll enter fifth grade in the fall, how to divide the old-fashioned way -- you know, with descending columns of numbers, subtracting all the way down. It's a formula that works, and she finds it quick, reliable, even soothing. So, she says, does her son.

But in his fourth-grade class, long division wasn't on the agenda. As many parents across the country know, this and some other familiar formulas have been supplanted in an increasing number of schools by concept-based curricula aiming to teach the ideas behind mathematics rather than rote procedures.

They call it the Math Wars: The debate, at times acrimonious, over which way is best to teach kids math. In its most black-and-white form, it pits schools hoping to prepare kids for a new world against reluctant parents who feel that the traditional way is best and that their kids are being shortchanged.

But there are lots of parents who fall into a grayer area: They're willing to accept that their kids are learning things differently. They just want to be able to help them with their homework. And very often, they can't.

"Sometimes I'll meet up with another parent, and we'll say, 'What WAS that homework last night?' " said Birgitta Stone, whose daughter, Gillian, is entering third grade in Ridgefield, Connecticut, next month. "Sometimes I can't even understand the instructions."

Funny, perhaps, but also a little sad. "It's frustrating," Stone said. "You want to help them. And sometimes I can't help her at all."

Still, Stone agrees that kids should be thinking differently about math. And so she doesn't interfere by teaching her kid the old ways. "I don't want to confuse her," she said.

Morey, on the other hand, feels no guilt. She says her son was relieved to learn long division. "He wants a quick and easy way to get the right answer," she said. "Luckily, he had a fabulous teacher who said long division wasn't in her plan, but we were free to do what we wanted at home."

And as for the concepts-before-procedure argument, she quipped: "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?' "

Such reasoning is not unfamiliar to Pat Cooney. As the math coordinator for six public schools in Ridgefield, which over the past two years have implemented the Growing in Math curriculum, she's seen a lot of angry parents.

"I had one parent who was probably as angry as a parent could be," Cooney said. "I've had irate phone calls. Some think we're giving the kids misinformation. They think we're not doing our jobs."

One problem, Cooney says, is that parents remember math as offering only one way to solve a problem.

"We're saying that there's more than one way," Cooney said. "The outcome will be the same, but how we get there will be different."

Thus, when a parent is asked to multiply 88 by 5, we'll do it with pen and paper, multiplying 8 by 5 and carrying over the 4, etc. But a child today might reason that 5 is half of 10, and 88 times 10 is 880, so 88 times 5 is half of that, 440 -- poof, no pen, no paper.

"The traditional way is really a shortcut," Cooney said. "We want kids to be so confident with numbers that it becomes intuitive."

As for parents, Cooney hopes that if they're teaching kids at home, at least it won't be "let me show you how you really do it," she said. She's spending the rest of her summer working on plans for more family nights at school, to better explain the system.

The "Math Wars" have been playing out since at least 1989, when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued a document recommending concept-based teaching -- which was, the group says, distorted by critics and "exaggerated in every direction."

"Our position is that math ought to be reasonable and kids ought to be able to make sense of it," saidHank Kepner, president of the council and a teacher for the past 45 years.

The problem, he says, is that "a lot of adults view math as a cut-and-dried thing, not a method of reasoning." As for parents enforcing their own methods on kids, "You don't want a kid pitted between parent and teacher," he said. "I would hope there would be an open conversation, involving the teacher." But ultimately, "the more adults a kid sees talking about math, the better."

Sam Pennell, 10, of Brooklyn, hears about math a lot: His dad, Mark, is an architect, and father and son have been known to discuss the volumes of cylinders to be filled with concrete. "He understands the concept of pi," Mark Pennell said of his son. "He doesn't question it too much."

Since Sam is good at math, his father supplements his classroom work with, for example, the old way of multiplying 175 times 142. "I'm doing this to broaden his perspective, to keep him from getting bored," Pennell said. He thinks Sam could be challenged more at school but otherwise isn't hugely bothered by the concept-based curriculum.

His wife, though, finds it mystifying. A writer with degrees from Barnard and Stanford, she still finds herself flummoxed by her son's schoolwork.

"There never seems to be any explanation in the workbooks," Allison Pennell said. "And there's no textbook to refer to." Her son doesn't usually need her help, but when he does, she said, "I'm such a numbskull. I don't think I could pass fourth-grade math."

For teacher Melissa Hedges, a longtime elementary school teacher in Milwaukee, the key is to keep the lines of communication open.

"I'll ask parents to sit down and really have their child walk through what they're doing and why they're doing it," Hedges said. "Even if it's messy. The beauty in math comes from getting involved, knowing what you're doing and why, exploring big ideas."

Remember, Hedges said, "in the end, we're all after the same thing. Sometimes it's easy to lose that focus."
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Balog

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2008, 05:47:33 AM »
Quote
Thus, when a parent is asked to multiply 88 by 5, we'll do it with pen and paper, multiplying 8 by 5 and carrying over the 4, etc. But a child today might reason that 5 is half of 10, and 88 times 10 is 880, so 88 times 5 is half of that, 440 -- poof, no pen, no paper.

I learned math the "traditional" way. I also learned how to reason it out. If I'd never learned the proper way it would've crippled me at the higher levels. This is more feel good crap from the perpetually wrongheaded NEA.
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41magsnub

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2008, 06:03:38 AM »
Reasoning is how I do big math problems in my head rather than writing them out.  I can't mentally do the traditional way with the carrying numbers in my head.  If the problem is more than I can reason in my head (the size of the problem gets smaller each year) I do it the traditional way on paper.  I do not recall being taught math reasoning or even called it anything, I just did it.

If both ways are taught that would be fine with me, but just reasoning would be less effective IMHO.

Manedwolf

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2008, 06:06:30 AM »
Didn't they already try "new math" long ago when they also tried stuff like open classrooms and renaming libraries into media centers?

ilbob

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2008, 06:09:28 AM »
some of the reasoning makes sense, but it actually only works very well if you ave learned the basic facts by rote.

the sad part is the schools have known for several decades that rote is the only means by which arithmetic can be taught that actually works, yet they refuse to admit it.
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Leatherneck

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2008, 06:11:38 AM »
This concept-based math is a new form of cancer on the schools of our country. One co-worker--an Air Force Colonel--was so angry about it he took the county school board to court. It seems there's no way out except violating the school's directions and teaching your kids yourself. He's convinced that the new approach will make his kids non-competitive for college. Can't say as I disagree with him.

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cordex

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2008, 06:16:44 AM »
Both techniques are just tools in the toolbox.  Never hurts to know and understand both.

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2008, 06:17:09 AM »
I am very intuitive with math, and I can do math problems in my head with a speed that BrokenMa can't grasp.  But I got to that point by learning math the "hard way", and by reasoning from there to understand the relationships among numbers.

I liken this "new math" stuff (and I've struggled with it, in helping the BrokenKid with homework) to the difference between figure art that is based upon an understanding of actual anatomy, and the "just draw what's in your heart" approach.

Someone with an in-depth knowledge of the skeletal and muscular structure of the body can, over time, draw a person so effortlessly that it seems as if they are "just drawing".  It's because the knowledge is so deeply ingrained that they don't have to think about it.  And their drawings come out very realistic.  I don't believe it's possible to do the other way; a person who draws from the heart may be able to draw very well, but will never (wihtout study) come to grasp the underlying anatomy, and will therefore be at a loss to draw a human figure, if it's necessary to pay attention to musculature and so forth.

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2008, 06:49:42 AM »
Reason 4,568 to support vouchers/end the public school death-grip.

Yeah, I do the "math reasoning" thing a lot.  Without a foundation in the rote basics it is worthless.

Education is too important to be left to educrats.
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Tallpine

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2008, 06:59:00 AM »
Who cares what the answer is as long as it makes us feel good about ourselves ?
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #10 on: July 21, 2008, 07:23:36 AM »
Who cares what the answer is as long as it makes us feel good about ourselves ?
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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #11 on: July 21, 2008, 07:24:34 AM »
But what about fuzzy math?

HankB

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #12 on: July 21, 2008, 08:12:07 AM »
It seems there's no way out except violating the school's directions and teaching your kids yourself.
So you're saying the schools are directing parents not to teach their kids?  shocked

Well, it shouldn't surprise me . . . when Sesame Street first went on the air, teacher's unions in, IIRC, NYC were telling parents NOT to let their pre-schoolers watch it. Why? Well, if they already knew their ABC's and how to count when they started school, it gave them an unfair advantage over kids who didn't watch the show.

They had similar arguments against getting kids personal computers with internet connections at home - the whole unfair advantage nonsense again.
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Manedwolf

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #13 on: July 21, 2008, 08:15:52 AM »
It seems there's no way out except violating the school's directions and teaching your kids yourself.
So you're saying the schools are directing parents not to teach their kids?  shocked

Well, it shouldn't surprise me . . . when Sesame Street first went on the air, teacher's unions in, IIRC, NYC were telling parents NOT to let their pre-schoolers watch it. Why? Well, if they already knew their ABC's and how to count when they started school, it gave them an unfair advantage over kids who didn't watch the show.

They had similar arguments against getting kids personal computers with internet connections at home - the whole unfair advantage nonsense again.

Oh, I had that. Even though it was a private school, one or two teachers in grade 4 or 5 thought it was "unfair" that I did my homework papers on Atariwriter and printed them on a letter-quality printer.

Tallpine

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #14 on: July 21, 2008, 08:32:59 AM »
This is all part of the "No Child Gets Ahead" program  rolleyes
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #15 on: July 21, 2008, 08:51:37 AM »
Quote
Thus, when a parent is asked to multiply 88 by 5, we'll do it with pen and paper, multiplying 8 by 5 and carrying over the 4, etc. But a child today might reason that 5 is half of 10, and 88 times 10 is 880, so 88 times 5 is half of that, 440 -- poof, no pen, no paper.

This intuitive method is only valid if you know how to mechanically do your math in the first place.  It is an augmentation of your multiplication tables. 

Another similar way to accomplish the same result would be to realize that 88*5 is the same as (80 + 8 ) * 5, resulting in 400 + 40.  Either way, it's manipulation of the source numbers and results in the same answer based upon intelligent application of simple fundamentals.

It DOESN'T however, teach those fundamentals.

There's absolutely nothing WRONG with whipping out a piece of paper and deriving your answer.  I remember in high school calculus, I forgot a particular formula and drew a complete blank.  I sat down with 3-4 pieces of paper during this particular test and re-proved the Quadratic Formula on the fly and then smacked myself on the head for not remembering it... my calc teacher just smiled and laughed.

I don't think I would have been capable of doing that had I been educated 10-15 years later.  I know my brother can't, and he's only 7 years behind me.
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BlueStarLizzard

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2008, 12:26:36 PM »
well, speaking as someone who can't do basic math well, i doubt the new way would work better then the old way. to be honest it sounds more difficult. i am not impressed by the example. its 5's and 10's. what about the 7's (my worst) and 8's?

if they want to teach both thats fine, but i don't see how they can elimanate all memorization from the curricualum. there are some things you just have to know.
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MicroBalrog

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #17 on: July 21, 2008, 12:37:29 PM »
Both techniques are just tools in the toolbox.  Never hurts to know and understand both.

Cordex wins the thread.

By the way, what's an 'open classroom'?
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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #18 on: July 21, 2008, 12:47:48 PM »
Both techniques are just tools in the toolbox.  Never hurts to know and understand both.

Cordex wins the thread.

By the way, what's an 'open classroom'?

Well, even tho a Mommy and Daddy classroom love each other very much, sometimes they want to see other classrooms....
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Rocketman56

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #19 on: July 21, 2008, 01:26:29 PM »
Regarding open classrooms..

My sister went to Hanna Woods Elementary School in St. Louis (Manchester, actually) when it first opened..
It was the first open classroom school in St. Louis, as I remember..

There were no full height walls in the classrooms.. (except exterior..)

The "concept" was that will all the teaching going on, the students would learn something,
even if it was from a different "classroom"..  Trying to help all of those of us who finished early,
I guess..

My sister HATED it..  She said there were so many distractions, she couldn't focus on her teacher or work as well..

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #20 on: July 21, 2008, 02:25:27 PM »
Thank God we didn't have open classrooms....

Public schools want to do anything EXCEPT actually teach stuff that matters...real math, history, geography, grammar, etc...

My public school education screwed up in a big way by not properly teaching me grammar and such...my teachers in elementary schools did well in teaching the basics (nouns, verbs, subjects, etc), but I got to middle school (6th grade) and they didn't continue the grammar education, in the advanced parts of grammar such as prepositional phrases, participles and other stuff. Instead, they chose to try to make us write papers and do book reports. I thought that we had learned all there was to know about grammar. Got to 11th grade in high school and learned that that wasn't so. Then, they tried to teach us advanced grammar. Of course, by this time, I had forgotten the basics, and had no idea what the hell was going on...I knew at that moment that college was going to bite. I also discovered that instead of actually teaching us how to write papers, they would just give easy grades based on effort, so the teachers did not know how to do their jobs.

Thankfully, I did a lot of reading on my own (primarily about history and aviation). I learned how to recognize what a correct sentence was, and now I know if a sentence is not grammatically correct because it doesn't "sound right".

About history...all throughout elementary and middle school, the only history we were taught was that "The Civil war was caused by slavery" Not a word about WWII, Vietnam, the Revolution, War of 1812, or anything else actually important. History class should have been renamed "White Guilt 101".

People, if you can, homeschool your kids. If you can't, at least teach them the correct way so they actually know something. Hire a tutor if you have too. Today's public schools think that it is more important to learn about diversity than the basics that matter.



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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #21 on: July 21, 2008, 02:32:20 PM »

People, if you can, homeschool your kids. If you can't, at least teach them the correct way so they actually know something. Hire a tutor if you have too. Today's public schools think that it is more important to learn about diversity than the basics that matter.

I was at a "family get-together" over the weekend.  Everyone there, old or young, liberal or conservative, parent or childless, agreed that public schools today should be avoided at all costs.  The new parents were the most adamant that their children not end up in public schools. 

Leatherneck

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #22 on: July 21, 2008, 02:52:46 PM »
Right on, HTG. My daughter just finished a year of home-schooling her boys in Hawaii, where Dad is stationed. It was hard. But the local middle school had a bad reputation and she wouldn't subject her sons to it. She finished the school year in six months and the boys passed the standardized exams with 98% and 90% respectively. They competed for a place under a 20% quota for Haolis in a local very good school for next year. Although it will stretch us, it will be a good investment.

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Hawkmoon

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #23 on: July 21, 2008, 06:31:12 PM »
I'm eleven years older than my little sister, and I was always fairly good in math. Somewhere back when she was in grammar school (probably around 4th or 5th grade), she was being taught what was at THAT time the "new math." It was equally as unintelligible as the current new math. I was still in college (as a math/physics/engineering major), so my mother asked me to come home one evening to attend a conference the school was putting on to explain this "new math" to the parents.

Hoo, boy.

Ever hear of Cuisinier Rods? (No, not "Cuisinarts.") Me neither. They are (or were) sticks of wood, maybe two or three inches long, about a quarter of an inch square, and colored. The latter is important, because they (the teachers) were somehow trying to make us dunderhead adults understand that the mere fact this stick was red and that one was blue meant something, mathematically. Being somewhat predisposed to ask "Why?" in response to things that make no sense whatsoever, I stuck my hand up and asked, "Why?"

I wish I had a video or even an audio recording of the "response." As you might imagine, it made no sense at all, and the teacher could see that with every word out of her mouth she was just digging the hole deeper. But she kept right on. Ultimately, my mother and I went home and we informed my father (also an engineer) that since the teacher couldn't explain why two blue rods combined with a green rod equaled an orange rod, he should continue teaching my sister "mathematics" (as in "arithmetic"). Not unlike, in fact, the parents in the article above. The episode with my sister was over 40 years ago. It's a bit depressing to discover that, while the form and format for "new math" has changed in the interim, the resistance to simply teaching kids what works hasn't lessened.
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wmenorr67

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Re: Math Wars -- Old vs New
« Reply #24 on: July 21, 2008, 07:50:26 PM »
But how many of you have made their child's teacher cry? shocked rolleyes grin
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