In the 1990s, the Math Wars pitted two philosophies against each other. One side argued for content-based standards — that elementary school students must memorize multiplication tables by third grade. The other side argued for students to discover math, unfettered by "drill and kill" exercises.
When the new 1994 California Learning Assessment Test trained test graders to award a higher score to a child with a wrong answer (but good essay) than to a student who successfully solved a math problem, but without a cute explanation, the battle was on. New-new math was quickly dubbed "fuzzy crap." By the end of the decade, repentant educators passed solid math standards.
Yet the Math Wars continue in California, as well as in New Jersey, Oregon and elsewhere. In Palo Alto, parent and former Bush education official Ze'ev Wurman is one of a group of parents who oppose the Palo Alto Unified School District Board's April 14 vote to use "Everyday Mathematics" in grades K-5. Wurman recognizes that the "fuzzies" aren't as fuzzy as they used to be, but also believes that state educators who approve math texts "fell asleep at the switch" when they approved the "Everyday" series in 2007.
The "Everyday" approach supports "spiraling" what students learn over as long as two or more years. As an "Everyday" teacher guide explained, "If we can, as a matter of principle and practice, avoid anxiety about children 'getting' something the first time around , then children will be more relaxed and pick up part or all of what they need. They may not initially remember it, but with appropriate reminders, they will very likely recall, recognize, and get a better grip on the skill or concept when it comes around again in a new format or application — as it will!" Those are my italics — to highlight the "fuzzies'" performance anxiety.
Becki Cohn-Vargas of the Palo Alto schools told me that a majority of a district committee recommended "Everyday Math" after "a very extensive process." "Spiraling" helps students because "it goes deeper each time." Also, the district will closely observe where the new series needs to be supplemented.
"We have a lot of confidence in our teachers," she added and the district's high test scores support that.
"Everyday" dissenters object to the program's emphasis on teaching different algorithms to solve equations. A fourth-grade manual supports "low-stress" partial-quotients algorithm, which demonstrates a longer way to divide 158 by 12, by noting that 10 is a partial quotient that yields the number 120, and then encourages students to use other partial quotients — 2 or 3 — to find the answer.
"Partial-sums addition" tells students to add 6,802 plus 453 by adding 6,000 and 1,200 (which is 800 plus 400) plus 50 plus 5. Why? Because: "One way is not better than another."
Now, I understand why a teacher would demonstrate these methods to students — even the ultra-complicated "lattice" method of multiplication (which is even more tedious to explain, so I will spare you). Different approaches can provide students with other ways to understand why 6 times 9 equals 54.
But making students use slow, labor-intensive algorithms is, to me, the sort of mind-numbing exercise likely to instill hatred of math in students. So you see the dividing line in the Math Wars: The fuzzies think that children will crumble and turn on math if you make them memorize math facts in early grades, while traditionalists think students will fall behind in math if they don't learn basics thoroughly and early. Besides, elongating and verbalizing math exercises is the classroom equivalent of getting your teeth drilled.
E-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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Ma'am;...Just because math is logical does not mean there is a logical way to teach it... People do not, and never did learn logic by learning logic; but rather, it is nature that teaches logic, and out of nature people have formulated an understanding of logical behavior...Now, it is one thing to teach kids math; but to demand an exactness of calculation or understanding of them to be found no where but in science is stupid... Do you think our economy adds up???If so, why all the necessity of credit??? Does any household budget, or national budget hold up??? Not exactly... Governments inflate the currency to avoid taxing the rich, while inflation robs from everyone, and from the respect we should have in our money, and adds insecurity of the future to our many other problems...Is this the proper role of government; to run from problems, and spread them far and wide in its wake??? Let me give you another example...No one working for a living ever makes enough in wages to buy back all that he will produce in value...Okay... The government gets some, and the employer gets some and waste takes much; but it is expected that the excess will be sold overseas as exports...This inequalities of values, what the worker has, and what all those who do not work have, means they have an edge; more money...Fine, for them, because more money in fact means they can buy up the common wealth, and that is the ultimate meaning of all those numbers: Property...So; if the worker has any property, the family farm, or the like, he can live for a time making up his short wages by selling all his real wealth... Eventually, the situation should reach the point where the rich have spent all their excess, and must go through the cycle of employment, production, and selling to get more profit for more purchase of the commonwealth...What has happened, is that math has been discarded, and money has been put into the hands of the rich to buy ever more of the commonwealth, or what is better still, to give a mortgage on the commonwealth so that people will bleed themselves dry to have it , and have enough money to get by...The rich control the country because they control the math... You can sell the family farm for 200k, and wake up tomorrow finding your money is worth190k...Is the land not worth as much as it always was???But liquidity, added at the top, and when necessary to all parts of society -robs value from what should be a fixed value....Rather than doing this government might better tax property, and force it to produce value, or be thrown onto the market at a rate people can afford... What it does with numbers defies logic, and will end in ruin, and has resulted in ruin...It is easy enough to say that capitalism does not work...If it does not work in one land it will not work better expanded to the whole world.....The numbers do not add up, and can only be made to work, short term, by fuzzy math, and fuzzy logic...The problem is that the people cannot live without their land, and that even in private hands the country's property must still support the population... The rich seem determined to find what minimum subsistence this people will settle for...Will we be third world, or fourth??? Rich people require a poor nation... Rich people require a poor government...There is no point in saying we have the numbers...They have the tanks and the machine guns... We have let ourselves be mastered by math... We have let numbers, and those who count them turn us into a nation of slaves...Of such people are dark ages made, hopeless, ignorant, believing...If we will be free, it will be because we have found the means to make numbers do as we please, instead of trading in our lives, and all our wealth by the day, the hour, and the minute for a dollar having no certain value...There seem to be little point of having a whole nation jump through its anus for a buck when the government can just print them up as they desire, to conceal their want of will, and of nerve...Look at how numbers are used... They first short us of wages, and then force us to cover our shorts with credit which makes us shorter still of the necessities of life...And the government facilitates such injustice...It is time for us to face the real problem...Thanks... .Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Apr 9, 2009 6:20 AM
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