When it comes to math, mental tricks are often a useful tool. You don't always have a calculator or precise measuring tools. You go to a store and pick out eight items. You figure those items will come to "about" $16 and the $20 you have in your wallet is enough to pay for it. You do not need to calculate that it will come to $16.38 after tax.
As much as I appreciate being able to figure out what I can afford based on the money in my wallet, that is a life skill that should be taught by parents (and perhaps in school). But it's not the same as rigorous math needed for engineering etc.
I disagree
I think that estimating, using math to think on your feet and using the level of complexity a problem requires are essential math skills and more valuable to most people than learning Calculus
Forcing kids to think that 8+5=10 is not "thinking on your feet..blah blah blah". It's crap.
Without knowing the purpose of the exercise or the skills they are trying to teach, it is hard to draw a conclusion . I am sure that students learning common core do not come out believing that 8 + 5 = 10
That is the problem with rightwing hysteria. They give you one example, totally out of context and then use it as a justification to condemn all of common core
The problem is the teaching program is lousy and doesn't result in an effective education.
Exactly right. A pedagogy needs to be validated against results. Does is perform better? I posted upthread on Alberta's roll-out of this form of math instruction. The plummeted down the international math rankings as a result.
I don't know WHY Alberta implemented this nonsense but I can guess - they saw that it was popular here and so they too wanted to be "progressive." What they failed to understand is that Missions #1 for the education system in Canada is different from the US. In Canada the prime mission is to educate their children as best they can while Mission #1 in the US is to close the racial achievement gap. This math pedagogy was designed to fulfill the American mission so it;'s utterly useless in Canada.
This math nonsense goes back a long way. Here is a
report from 14 years ago:
Last fall the U.S. Department of Education (DoEd) endorsed a Top 10 list of elementary and secondary mathematics programs favored by its own Mathematics and Science Expert Panel. Five programs received “exemplary” status, and five others were named “promising.”
In write-ups of the programs on the government Web site, the panelists said this about the “promising” Everyday Mathematics for K-6:
“This enriched curriculum includes such features as problem-solving about everyday situations; linking past experiences to new concepts; sharing ideas through discussion; developing concept readiness through hands-on activities and explorations; cooperative learning through partner and small-group activities; and enhancing home-school partnerships.”
To which San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders responded: “Sounds more like marriage counseling than math class.”
Indeed, virtually all of the DoEd-blessed curricula extol the merits of “real world” or “real life” applications of math, with lots of group work, partner quizzes, student role-playing, journals with children’s entries on how they feel about math, copious use of calculators, and group estimating. That’s according to the official descriptions.
In general, the federal government’s Top 10 are from what is called the ‘Whole Math’ genre — a kissing cousin of Whole Language — where basic skills and teacher-directed instruction are played down in favor of pupil-led discovery, or constructivism.
The Dept. Of Education's expert panel didn't have any mathematician sitting on it, just lefty ideologues. This is a top-down invention and has been pushed from the Feds down tot he States.
The constructivist approach to mathematics has its fans, notably the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). This is the group that spurred the Whole Math movement with its 1989 standards, to which DoEd’s Top 10 adhere. . . .
But DoEd’s unqualified embrace of the constructivist approach–sometimes called the “New-New Math” — prompted a counterattack by the heaviest artillery yet in the Math Wars. On November 18, 1999, Secretary Richard Riley and staff spilled their morning coffee over a full-page Washington Post advertisement signed by 200 mathematicians, scientists, and other experts calling on Riley to withdraw the federal endorsement of the 10 math programs. Among the signers were four Nobel laureates in physics and two winners of the Fields Medal, the highest honor for mathematicians.
The high-powered group protested the absence of active research mathematicians from DoEd’s Expert Panel. They also objected that DoEd’s Top-10 programs omitted basic skills, such as multiplying multi-digit numbers and dividing fractions.
“These programs [the Top 10] are among the worst in existence,” said Cal State/Northridge math professor David Klein, who helped draft the letter. “It would be a joke except for the damaging effect it has on children.”
And notice the Leftest whiny quality of the response:
Some of the panelists fought back. For example, Steven Leinwand accused the 200 scholars of being interested in “math for the elite” alone. Leinwand, math consultant for Connecticut’s education department, said the NCTM and DoEd believe “math needs to empower all students.” However, it was Leinwand who in 1994 wrote in Education Week that continuing to teach children multi-digit computational algorithms was “downright dangerous.”
Although a statutory prohibition prevents DoEd from dictating curricula, Congress provided a way around that restriction in 1994 when it passed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Title IX called on DoEd’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement to set up Expert Panels to endorse top programs in gender equity, safe and drug-free schools, technology, and math and science. Title IX, like Goals 2000 itself, stressed the idea of equalizing academic outcomes for all sub-groups in the student population.
Secretary Riley commented that NCTM has published “the prevailing standards in the country, so we thought that would make sense.” But critics see a deliberate integration of ideological agendas. The architects of NCTM’s 1989 standards declared that social injustices had given white males an advantage over women and minorities in math, and they promised NCTM’s reinvented math would equalize scores. Equality would be achieved by eliminating the “computational gate.”
Klein argues this Whole Math approach “hurts the students with the least resources the most” by depriving them of the computational basics they need as a foundation for higher math. “If kids get a good, solid program in arithmetic, they have a good chance of learning algebra,” he explained, “and algebra’s one of the main gates into colleges.” The Whole Math programs are based on the assumption that “minorities and women are too dumb to learn real mathematics,” he said.
