Why Your Child Can Not Do Basic Math
This YouTube video featuring Seattle area Meteorologist M.J. McDermott, was passed on to me by a Seattle area, not Seattle School District, teacher whose district uses the same TERC textbooks mentioned in the video and confirmed how ineffective they really are. Here is the money quote:
The authors of Everyday Mathematics do not believe it is worth the students' time and effort to fully develop highly efficient paper and pencil algorithms for all possible whole number, fraction and decimal division problems. Mastery of the intricacies of such algorithms is a huge endeavor, one that experience tells us is doomed to failure for many students. It is simply counter productive to invest many hours of precious class time on such algorithms. The mathematical payoff is not worth the cost, particularly because the quotients can be found quickly and accurately with a calculator.
In related news, I hear that most good books are eventually made into movies.
Watch the video.
On February 8, 2007 at 5:08 am, Brian wrote:
Hi, I have watched that video, and as a “guerrilla math” teacher, was upset on many levels. Although the woman’s premise (most basic math instruction in the U.S. basically stinks), her conclusion (the standard algorithm for multiplication is the best, because that’s what they used to teach) is terribly flawed. I hope you will take her suggestion with a pillar or so of salt. I have a website devoted to easy and effective basic math methods, and you can read a fuller discussion of the problem, complete with a lesson on a more effective algorithm than the “standard” one at:
http://mathmojo.com/chronicles/2007/01/27/algorithm/
If every parent and child learned simply that, I think their math-experience would significantly change for the better.
All the best in your teaching/learning endeavors,
Brian