Go figure, Ashley can’t [more…]
April 14, 2010
Article from http://www.globeandmail.com
May 5, 2001
Go figure, Ashley can’t
MARGARET WENTE
Caitlin Kirby’s only in Grade 4, but already she has hit the math wall. Sometimes she lays her head down on her math homework and cries. “I´m stupid!” she tells her mother Tressa.
Tressa doesn’t understand Caitlin’s homework either. What she does know is that her daughter hasn´t grasped the fundamentals of arithmetic. “In Grade 4 they’re doing fractals. But they don´t even seem to have the basics down,” she says in frustration. Finally she showed Caitlin how to divide 27 by 9 — the unapproved, old-fashioned way.
Welcome to the world of new new math, the pedagogical fad gripping most of Canada’s education system. Enthusiasts (who mostly work in faculties and ministries of education) say it unlocks higher-order thinking skills. Critics (who include many leading mathematicians, top learning experts, angry parents, and quite a few math teachers) call it a huge miscalculation.
“This is probably the biggest disaster in education in my lifetime,” says John Mighton, a brilliant mathematician who also teaches math to children who´ve been labeled remedial learners. “It´s going to wipe out a whole generation of kids.”
New new math — also known as fuzzy math, whole math, or constructivist math — relies on a child-centred philosophy that encourages students to lead each other to knowledge. The teacher is “the guide on the side,” not “the sage on the stage.” It is intensely process oriented. In new new-math classrooms, children work collaboratively in groups to explore different approaches to problems. They work with “manipulatives,” concrete objects that are supposed to help them connect math with the real world. Creativity and communication are as important as right answers.
New new math discourages the teaching of standard algorithms (that is, the methods used to solve problems). In fact, it discourages all direct instruction, repetition and memory work. Times-tables drills (and, in some schools, long division and fractions) are out the window. These are thought to deaden interest in learning. As a leading proponent of the new math said, “It´s time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous.”
New math comes from the United States. It was never widely tested before being introduced around a decade ago. It was supposed to improve American kids’ poor performance on international test scores, even though high-scoring countries don’t use anything resembling it.
In most of Canada, new new math is becoming more entrenched even as it’s being repealed in much of the United States. In California, parents rose up in revolt and forced the school system to back off. Last month, New York Schools Chancellor Harold Levy was forced to reassure parents that new new math is out and traditional math is in again. “Children must be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide,” he said.
Opposition is strongest from parents with strong math backgrounds — engineers and scientists. But in Canada, few parents are aware that their children are the lab rats in a great experiment that has already soured south of the border.
In fact, parents in Ontario are under the impression that math has been “reformed” as part of the Tory government´s determination to raise standards. What they don’t know is that the math curriculum and teaching methods are determined by education theorists in the Ministry of Education and the current leaders of the teachers’ math association. “The ministry inflicted it on the schools and the schools didn´t have much of a choice,” says mathematician John Mighton.
Tressa Kirby, who is active on her parent council, says that many teachers think the new curriculum is detrimental to the children. “But if they don’t teach it, they’ll lose their jobs.”
Barry Onslow, a professor of education at the University of Western Ontario, helped develop Ontario´s new math curriculum. He regards opposition from teachers and parents as uninformed and backward-looking. “Some people don’t accept that we don´t sit in a high stool with quill pens writing in ledgers any more,” he told me. “Change is hard!”
Prof. Onslow, who is teaching the next generation of math teachers, outlined some of the progressive new-math methods for me, including keeping a math journal. “They write about what parts of math they find the most difficult, and what they enjoy most.”
Another important element is peer assessment. “So, you can´t get an A just by getting all the answers right on your tests?” I asked. No, he told me. “You have to explain your thinking and problem-solving to me and be able to communicate. If you´re not doing that, then you won’t get an A, because you haven´t shown you really understand.”
Tressa Kirby doesn’t buy it. “One plus one equals two!” she says. “It´s a fact! There’s nothing to explore! In the elementary grades, it is not necessary to understand why!”
John Mighton agrees with her. “Kids should be able to think independently,” he says. “But first you have to function with numbers. Then you layer the concepts on top of that.”
Critics often liken the new-math approach to trying to play sonatas before you´ve learned the scales. “Students can´t do simple multiplication in their heads,” says Gary Reid, who heads a secondary school math department. “When you have calculus students who can’t deal with multiplying by 10 and stumble over the fractional equivalent of 0.25, can real problem-solving take place?”
Prof. Mighton runs a remarkable program in Toronto called Jump. He and 80 volunteers teach failing kids, many of them poor, who need remedial help. “Every kid is capable of understanding mathematics,” he says with passion. “Even the ones who appear to be slow learners can do math at an extremely high level.”
Jump kids are tutored for only one hour a week. They’re taught by small and incremental steps to lay a solid base and build their self-esteem. “Journals are fine, but you have to give the kids methods that are so well laid out that they can’t fail.” Half the Jump students are now performing above their grade.
The neglect of foundation skills is just part of the problem. The new curriculum also introduces kids to complicated concepts they don’t yet have the tools to master, such as geometry and probability statistics. The curriculum is too overstuffed, and classes are always moving quickly on to something else. Many children never get enough time and practice to consolidate their learning.
And everyone agrees that many classes are too large to teach the new-math way, even if teachers did understand how. They´re supposed to tailor their guidance to individual learning styles, says Barry Onslow, “to see which child needs this type of question asked and which child needs that question.” Even he admits that this is difficult. And the “investigation and discovery” method eats up amazing amounts of scarce classroom time.
It also turns out that most kids prefer certainty to guesswork. “It gives them security that they´re headed in the right direction,” says John Mighton. A bewildered student told his teacher, “We go to school so that you can teach us. Why should we teach ourselves when we have you?”
Not surprisingly, private learning centres are booming; 20,000 Ontario kids have flocked to Kumon Math and Reading centres for help in math this year, at $70 a month.
Those kids will be all right. The students who will suffer are the ones who always do — those whose parents don´t know what’s going on, the ones whose parents don’t have time to fight for them, the poor kids, the kids with English as a second language. “The books are very heavily language-based, so the kids with ESL can’t use them,” says John Mighton. Many boys have weak language skills, and they´ll suffer too.
Some parents darkly joke that new new math must be a diabolical plot to undermine the already battered public-education system. If it is, it’s working. “These kids are smart and connected,” says Tressa Kirby, Caitlin’s mother. “But our schools are killing them. There is nothing more soul destroying than thinking you are stupid.”
The Jump program can be reached at (416)348-9545. [in Canada]
Tags: Mathematics
Article from http://www.globeandmail.com
May 5, 2001
Go figure, Ashley can’t
MARGARET WENTE
Caitlin Kirby’s only in Grade 4, but already she has hit the math wall. Sometimes she lays her head down on her math homework and cries. “I´m stupid!” she tells her mother Tressa.
Tressa doesn’t understand Caitlin’s homework either. What she does know is that her daughter hasn´t grasped the fundamentals of arithmetic. “In Grade 4 they’re doing fractals. But they don´t even seem to have the basics down,” she says in frustration. Finally she showed Caitlin how to divide 27 by 9 — the unapproved, old-fashioned way.
Welcome to the world of new new math, the pedagogical fad gripping most of Canada’s education system. Enthusiasts (who mostly work in faculties and ministries of education) say it unlocks higher-order thinking skills. Critics (who include many leading mathematicians, top learning experts, angry parents, and quite a few math teachers) call it a huge miscalculation.
“This is probably the biggest disaster in education in my lifetime,” says John Mighton, a brilliant mathematician who also teaches math to children who´ve been labeled remedial learners. “It´s going to wipe out a whole generation of kids.”
New new math — also known as fuzzy math, whole math, or constructivist math — relies on a child-centred philosophy that encourages students to lead each other to knowledge. The teacher is “the guide on the side,” not “the sage on the stage.” It is intensely process oriented. In new new-math classrooms, children work collaboratively in groups to explore different approaches to problems. They work with “manipulatives,” concrete objects that are supposed to help them connect math with the real world. Creativity and communication are as important as right answers.
New new math discourages the teaching of standard algorithms (that is, the methods used to solve problems). In fact, it discourages all direct instruction, repetition and memory work. Times-tables drills (and, in some schools, long division and fractions) are out the window. These are thought to deaden interest in learning. As a leading proponent of the new math said, “It´s time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous.”
New math comes from the United States. It was never widely tested before being introduced around a decade ago. It was supposed to improve American kids’ poor performance on international test scores, even though high-scoring countries don’t use anything resembling it.
In most of Canada, new new math is becoming more entrenched even as it’s being repealed in much of the United States. In California, parents rose up in revolt and forced the school system to back off. Last month, New York Schools Chancellor Harold Levy was forced to reassure parents that new new math is out and traditional math is in again. “Children must be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide,” he said.
Opposition is strongest from parents with strong math backgrounds — engineers and scientists. But in Canada, few parents are aware that their children are the lab rats in a great experiment that has already soured south of the border.
In fact, parents in Ontario are under the impression that math has been “reformed” as part of the Tory government´s determination to raise standards. What they don’t know is that the math curriculum and teaching methods are determined by education theorists in the Ministry of Education and the current leaders of the teachers’ math association. “The ministry inflicted it on the schools and the schools didn´t have much of a choice,” says mathematician John Mighton.
Tressa Kirby, who is active on her parent council, says that many teachers think the new curriculum is detrimental to the children. “But if they don’t teach it, they’ll lose their jobs.”
Barry Onslow, a professor of education at the University of Western Ontario, helped develop Ontario´s new math curriculum. He regards opposition from teachers and parents as uninformed and backward-looking. “Some people don’t accept that we don´t sit in a high stool with quill pens writing in ledgers any more,” he told me. “Change is hard!”
Prof. Onslow, who is teaching the next generation of math teachers, outlined some of the progressive new-math methods for me, including keeping a math journal. “They write about what parts of math they find the most difficult, and what they enjoy most.”
Another important element is peer assessment. “So, you can´t get an A just by getting all the answers right on your tests?” I asked. No, he told me. “You have to explain your thinking and problem-solving to me and be able to communicate. If you´re not doing that, then you won’t get an A, because you haven´t shown you really understand.”
Tressa Kirby doesn’t buy it. “One plus one equals two!” she says. “It´s a fact! There’s nothing to explore! In the elementary grades, it is not necessary to understand why!”
John Mighton agrees with her. “Kids should be able to think independently,” he says. “But first you have to function with numbers. Then you layer the concepts on top of that.”
Critics often liken the new-math approach to trying to play sonatas before you´ve learned the scales. “Students can´t do simple multiplication in their heads,” says Gary Reid, who heads a secondary school math department. “When you have calculus students who can’t deal with multiplying by 10 and stumble over the fractional equivalent of 0.25, can real problem-solving take place?”
Prof. Mighton runs a remarkable program in Toronto called Jump. He and 80 volunteers teach failing kids, many of them poor, who need remedial help. “Every kid is capable of understanding mathematics,” he says with passion. “Even the ones who appear to be slow learners can do math at an extremely high level.”
Jump kids are tutored for only one hour a week. They’re taught by small and incremental steps to lay a solid base and build their self-esteem. “Journals are fine, but you have to give the kids methods that are so well laid out that they can’t fail.” Half the Jump students are now performing above their grade.
The neglect of foundation skills is just part of the problem. The new curriculum also introduces kids to complicated concepts they don’t yet have the tools to master, such as geometry and probability statistics. The curriculum is too overstuffed, and classes are always moving quickly on to something else. Many children never get enough time and practice to consolidate their learning.
And everyone agrees that many classes are too large to teach the new-math way, even if teachers did understand how. They´re supposed to tailor their guidance to individual learning styles, says Barry Onslow, “to see which child needs this type of question asked and which child needs that question.” Even he admits that this is difficult. And the “investigation and discovery” method eats up amazing amounts of scarce classroom time.
It also turns out that most kids prefer certainty to guesswork. “It gives them security that they´re headed in the right direction,” says John Mighton. A bewildered student told his teacher, “We go to school so that you can teach us. Why should we teach ourselves when we have you?”
Not surprisingly, private learning centres are booming; 20,000 Ontario kids have flocked to Kumon Math and Reading centres for help in math this year, at $70 a month.
Those kids will be all right. The students who will suffer are the ones who always do — those whose parents don´t know what’s going on, the ones whose parents don’t have time to fight for them, the poor kids, the kids with English as a second language. “The books are very heavily language-based, so the kids with ESL can’t use them,” says John Mighton. Many boys have weak language skills, and they´ll suffer too.
Some parents darkly joke that new new math must be a diabolical plot to undermine the already battered public-education system. If it is, it’s working. “These kids are smart and connected,” says Tressa Kirby, Caitlin’s mother. “But our schools are killing them. There is nothing more soul destroying than thinking you are stupid.”
The Jump program can be reached at (416)348-9545. [in Canada]
Tags: Mathematics