reforming math education

[Gabe]

any level of math education, from grade school through college. At each one of these levels I have noticed what seem to me to be pretty obvious ways that math is badly/inneffectively/un-applicably (wait, math is supposed to be usefull?) taught.

I'd like to hear what other people think about this.

[Eileen]

What are your ideas?

I've actually read some stuff lately that claimed that the efforts to make math "practical" have really kind of failed in a massive way. A better way to teach math, claimed this article that I'll have to go looking for now, is to teach it as a kind of game with rules.. ie, basically theoretically.

[Ivy]

This is the math program they use at my daughter's school:

Welcome to Investigations | Home | Investigations in Number, Data, and Space

It's supposed to be more conceptual, less memorization. It's fairly controversial, I understand, because it basically ignores things like times-tables (although my daughter's 3rd grade teacher had them do times-tables this year anyway). IMO, my daughter understands math much better than I did at her age, though. I'm not too concerned about the criticisms. But I'd be curious to see what other folks think about it.

[Lateralus]

This sounds like a shift from the SJ approach to an intuitive approach.

[alicia91]

Our school district has also switched to a more Intuitive approach - University of Chicago School Mathematics Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. My kids have a much better grasp on math than I had growing up and they all have thrived. Two of my three are Ns and one S - but he's doing equally well so I'm pleased.

But it's controversial with parents, and for some kids the spiral nature of the curriculumn doens't seem effective so they supplement with drill and kill work.

[Eileen]

I moved this to Academics and Careers because it seems to fit better.

[Aerithria]

I learned it fine the normal way, but I'm about the biggest math nerd in my province, so who can say. In my opinion, any way that lets kids learn it easier should be used, perhaps not universally so the people who can't learn it that way can attempt to be taught it in the regular way. I don't get the controversy: if it works, why is it questionable?

[millerm277]

I have no idea here...except that I have extreme difficulty with doing "higher math" as it is currently taught. When I was younger, I was advanced the equivilant of 2 years for math, because I was so good at it. Around the end of Algebra 1, that went out the window. Don't know why either. Since then, I've gotten a low C and a high D in Algebra 2 and Geometry. (In the class that is one level below Honors/AP).

[The_Liquid_Laser]

My biggest problem with Math Education today is that a lot of kids are not learning their multiplication tables. I used to teach "developmental" (i.e. remedial) mathematics to college students, and the worst problems I would see would be from kids who never learned their multiplication tables. They had to use their calculator for the simplest calculation, and they had no idea if the answer that came out was reasonable.

Now a lot of kids had a variety of other problems, but those could be cleared up just covering the algebra in the class that I was teaching. But in regards to the kids who could not multiply, they had such a hard time learning anything, because they had absolutely no type of "math literacy". They had no intuition of what a correct or incorrect answer would look like. This is like trying to teach literature to kids who can't read most three letter words. There is a basic level of knowledge that needs to be memorized and multiplications tables fit into that category.

[Eileen]

Yeah, I'm not sure about this business with not memorizing multiplication tables. It seems like a relatively small investment of time for something that will be really helpful later on.