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Not Adding Up

As regards school, one thing I was curious to see about this year was the math lessons. Particularly where the boy is concerned. Judging from the news and the political machinations, a lot has gone on in the field of teaching math since I was a kid. I was curious to get a first hand account.

I’ve considered commenting on this before, but I held my tongue because it was still early in the school year and it seemed premature to judge things. Now, with somewhere around 2 months to go, the die has been cast and my verdict is in.

I don’t like what’s been done.

I have a couple of qualms with how they’ve taught the subject. One, I don’t think they’ve been adequately aggressive. They haven’t had much practice with subtraction (quizzes I’ve seen concentrate on addition) and they’ve done little with adding multi digit numbers and subtracting multi-digit numbers. Two, the techniques they’ve taught for adding and subtracting I think are error prone and don’t scale well.

Regarding techniques, they appear to have abandoned teaching borrowing and carrying. Rather, they have the kids rearrange numbers to make the addition easier. For instance, when calculating 17+6, the kids have been taught to turn the 17 into a 20, and then adjust 6 to 3, thus making the equation 20+3, which is easier to add. Which I agree it is, but only if that what was asked in the first place. As near as I can tell, similar gymnastics are used with subtraction.

The first problem is there are 3 steps, meaning more opportunity for error. The second problem is it become cumbersome real fast when adding multi-digit numbers. What do you do when calculating 137+286? Turn the 137 into 140 and the 286 into 283? They still have a carry to handle. Similarly, they haven’t learned a thing about borrowing in subtraction.

The Wife and I asked about this at the last parent-teacher conference. We got some boiler-plate response about wanting the kids to really understand how the math works or some such. It’s not like we’re talking about complex numbers or imaginary numbers. This is just simple addition and subtraction.

I’m not sure what to do about it either. Sure, I can try to teach him how to carry and borrow, but when? After he’s been in school all day and is sick of learning? On the weekends when all he wants to do is play on his DS or Wii? Frankly, we send him to school to learn that stuff.

But it seems to be too much to expect.

2 replies on “Not Adding Up”

Have you checked out ‘home school’ programs?
Have you asked to see the curriculum plan for math objectives ? – that is supposed to be readily available to any parent …
Has the instructor been in the district for more than one year? ie: recent graduate or complacent veteran?
Are there ‘math’ oriented games for the Wii or DS ?

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