I would love to have gat's opinion about this one. Of course, everyone else's too! IMO, in grade 1, 2 and 3, they should teach the traditional way. I am confused by the comments I've highlighted. It makes no sense. Very young children need to get the basics first. Critical thinking can come later. All bracketed comments and emotes are mine.

Parents across Canada fight for return to traditional math lessons


VANCOUVER – Parent groups in several provinces say it’s time for math teachers to go back to the basics and say goodbye to so-called “new math.”

Canadians students aren’t doing nearly as well in math as other nations, despite going to school in one of the better-ranked countries in the world.

A survey of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations released last month placed Canada sixth among 65 countries, when it came to overall performance in key subject areas.

When it came to math, the average score of the 21,000 15-year-old students tested — among 500,000 worldwide — showed a 14 per cent slip in the past nine years.

Grassroots movements based in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta believe the problem is starting early, in elementary school, and are now lobbying their provincial leaders to rethink how teachers are instructing math.

Parents such as Tara Houle feel the creative methodologies that were used at her daughter’s elementary school did nothing to help the girl understand fundamentals such as multiplication.
As an example they’re being given math Sudoku puzzles in Grade 4 in order to understand multiplication tables. They have computer games in the classroom where they shoot monsters in order to solve 3 x 4,” she said in a phone interview from her home in North Saanich, B.C.

She said that it led to a lot of tears and frustration at homework time.

Houle explained her daughter at one point said, “Mommy, I can’t learn it that way because we don’t do it that way in class anymore. That’s the old way. It’s not the right way.”

......
“They’re being allowed to explore these different methodologies to solve math problems, but when all they need to do, for a lot of them, is just go back and practice math the way it’s already been taught,” she said, adding some kids go into middle school and are taught multiplication all over again using traditional methods.

......
WISE Math — started by professors at the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg and University of Regina — says its “ultimate goal is to ensure that all children have the opportunity to achieve their potential in math so that they may enjoy lives free of innumeracy, may experience the beauty in math, and so that they may have a wide range of career opportunities.” (HUH? maybe in grade 4 and above. Goddamned hippies, lol)

......

“We need to actually get people thinking more, more problem solving in mathematics,” said Dr. Krista Francis, an assistant professor in the Education Dept. at the University of Calgary.

Francis said the traditional way of teaching math was “effective 100 years ago” and memorization isn’t the only method needed to understand the subject.

“The world has changed dramatically,” she said. “We need people who can think for themselves. The teacher no longer has all the knowledge.” (WHAT?? For BASIC MATH? )

.......
But recent results from Ontario’s Education and Accountability Office indicated 57 per cent of Grade 6 students in the province and 67 per cent of Grade 3 students do not have math abilities that meet provincial standards. (So, obviously there is a problem)


oops, here's the link

http://globalnews.ca/news/1070386/paren ... h-lessons/

Any good math teacher knows that you need a few tricks up your sleeve and there is no single way to teach math. You follow the curriculum and start with the method in the approved text or materials. Then, when someone doesn't understand that, you think of other ways to present the concept and other methods to solve the problem until the little light goes off. Sometimes I can't help my daughter with her homework because I can't grasp the method they are using and she can't grasp the method I would use but we get the same answers and we both understand what we are doing.
The problem starts when a teacher asks you to show your computations and then they mark it incorrect because you did not use the method that is being taught by the text. This kills kids' understanding of the concepts and stifles their problem solving abilities. Let teachers teach and let kids learn and stop with all the standardization, my way or the highway, everyone needs to do and know the same thing BS.

Sometimes experiments fail.

Having said that I'm not sure its at all clear what "traditional methods" means.

As an example Cattleman, once upon a time we learned multiplication by memorization of the "times tables", usually for the numbers 1-12. It works well! I always had a mental block for the 7's for some reason. Still do. I have to think about it, but I can whiz through the others without thinking.

We took home a little booklet with times tables and were tested on so many each week.

I'm not sure about the other aspects of basic math or how they are taught now. Maybe someone who's had a child in the k-3 grades recently could explain.

I"m not sure what you mean by traditional means either--but I'm assuming you mean rote memorization of basic math facts--addition, subtraction, multiplication.

I think what we really need is a balance of both. I understand what the new techniques are trying to teach, and it is valid. we spent generations producing great little automatons that could spout memorized math facts like parrots, but had absolutely no idea of how to apply that knowledge in a real life setting. An example we were given in an inservice for teaching math was this word problem:

Fifty students are going on a field trip. Each van holds 8 students. How many vans will be needed to take them to the field trip?

Student answer from the example: 6 remainder 2.

You can see the problem. The kid understood that you had to divide 50 by 8--but had absolutely no idea what the answer meant, or that the remainder 2 meant two students left standing in front of the school without a ride. And it's a good illustration of the problem with teaching math facts in isolation.

The feeling behind the new math has issues as well though. The philosophy kind of goes like this: People have calculators and computers for everything. Therefore, learning rote math facts is no longer necessary. Also, it's boring to memorize things, and kids need to be engaged in order to be successful. Therefore, we need to make math fun, engaging, blah blah.

The problem they're realizing with this kind of approach is that if kids don't memorize their basic facts at some point, they have to keep using their brains to work on basic facts, and have less brain cells left to work out complicated calculations and manipulations. Algebra is the best examples of that. If you don't know 6 divided by 2 equals 3, then 2a=b is going to be beyond you. Period.

So I think personally that there needs to be a balance. Kids need to be challenged. They need problem solving as much as they need basic facts. They need to know what their computations mean, and they need to have basic facts memorized at some point so that they don't have to waste time on them. And, at some point, they need to be told that into every life some boring work must fall. And tough toenails, you just have to do it.

Student answer from the example: 6 remainder 2.

Wrong.
The correct answer is 7.

congratulations oskar. you pass grade 3 math.

unfortunately, you are not my target audience.

There are other answers to that question. Six vans and a car taking the other two.

There is no way around learning to add and multiply.

Thanks gat. That is essentially how I feel. Start with a good, basic foundation and build on that. A child will take to algebra much easier if they understand the basics. Otherwise, it seems like a foreign language.

I liken it to a child being handed a book and told to read it before they've learned how to recognize letters and words.

Why not take a bus seating at least 50 kids plus driver and two or three teachers?

"....we don’t do it that way in class anymore. That’s the old way. It’s not the right way.”

Boy have we heard THAT more than once. LOL!

(guffaw)

Algebra is the beginning of abstract thought. Formal operational thinking in Piaget world. Some people never get there. They are concrete thinkers and cannot understand Algebra. Generally they find a way to get through.

oskar is really the end product of the target audience. My 11th grade students were an end product on the other end of the scale. They'd been disengaged for a while and they needed the arithmetic skills to succeed in life.

Sometimes this America is awful in math thing goes too far. My seven AP Stats students knew way more mathematically than 99 percent of America needs to function on a daily basis.

All young kids need arithmetic skills. They need to know how to add and multiply. Subtract and divide are just by products. They do an awful lot of fraction work. How often do you divide 2/3 by 3/4 in your daily life? Should they cover it? Totally, if for no other reason than for firing those neurons.

We live in a multitasking world now, where children are NOT developing adequate attention spans. They can't look at a problem for five minutes and figure it out because they are off to the next thing. Schools have to address that. Kids have to learn to handle boredom which I don't think is really boredom but some empty time to think.

Back to rote memorization of math facts: if you had trouble memorizing them didn't your teacher clue you in on the tricks- every multiple of 10 ends in zero, multiples of 11 go 11,22,33 etc, multiples of nine go up one down one 09, 18,27,36, practice counting by 5s, practice counting by 2s, chisen bop- there are many ways to learn how to multiply, add, divide rapidly without memorizing tables. For nines you can also multiply by 10 then subtract the number, take a percent by putting a decimal point, by the time they are 12 many girls can figure a 10,15,20, 25 percent discount in their heads if they like to shop.

I loved teaching math. There are so many things you can do and its really exciting to see kids and adults "get it". My husband cracks up when my daughter asks me to factor a polynomial and I do it without even thinking.

I agree with most everything Kathy says above. Thinking is the problem, not memorization and drills.

The 11 thing only works up to 9 Queen

Addition, multiplication, division and subtraction are all absolutely basic. You can't really even do algebra without them.

And actually we use "algebra" all the time, its just that we don't recognise that its algebra.

To heck with all this fancy, sophisticated analysis and blather. They should teach math in such a way that the kids' parents can help them with their homework.

(Oh....and Mr. Lee....if you happen to be looking in .....2+2=4, not approximately 4)

(Oh....and Mr. Lee....if you happen to be looking in .....2+2=4, not approximately 4)

You'll never make a politician.

I was helping my daughter with her grade 5 math one time. There was a particular series of problems she was having trouble with and I went to work on them. Apart from the fact I didn't even understand the jargon there was no way to get the required answer from the problem. The next day I booked an hour with Mr. Lee, her teacher, for a tutorial so I could learn how to do it and then help her. After a long time and a convoluted explanation I was as lost as before. Finally I told him that no matter how I did the problem I couldn't get to the answer they required. He responded that the answer only had to be approximately the same. I don't think we're raising a generation of rocket scientists or machinists.

I don't know what problems you were working on, so obviously I can't comment specifically. But i have had the experience of having parents who didn't understand the way i was teaching math, because it was different than how they were taught. and honestly, i was not prepared to change my teaching methods just because the parents didn't understand them. i wouldn't walk into an engineering office and complain that an engineer drew up plans wrong just because I didn't understand them. I've had years of training, more years of experience, and ongoing inservices to teach me how to do this and why. If everything was simple you wouldn't need teachers.

Having said that, i don't mind explaining my reasoning to parents. you mentioned approximation and estimating, and despite the jokes made about it, having the general idea of how big a number should end up without doing all the calculations is a really important and useful skill in this digital age. everyone relies heavily on technology to give them their answer quickly and accurately, and they should. that's what calculators and such are for. But, estimating and approximating give children and adults the concept of quantity strong enough to know when they hit a wrong key and get a garbage answer. Is there anyone who has not had the experience of talking to a sales person who thinks they have given you a fifty percent off discount and accidentally doubled your bill without noticing? Or missed a decimal and added a few zeroes that had a catastrophic effect on a price? Estimating is EXACTLY the skill needed to catch and fix that.

No problem with that GAT.
But its equally important for them to know the difference between approximation and precision.

of course.

Y'all might remember me ranting about the problems I had last school year with tutoring 5th grade math ~ I could/did get the right answers by doing math the way I learned it, but I could NOT follow how the kidlets were supposed to do the problems ~ at least part of MY [and their] problem was "estimation" instead of step-by-step ~ and yet I often "estimate" costs before I buy things ~

I understand and generally agree with greeny's points ~ but it still seems to me it would be easier for the kidlets to learn the "traditional" way first ~ when I showed them how I learned to do problems, they each thought it was easier than their lessons ~ I agree that it is ~

Sooz

The decline in maths skills is the bottom line.

I'm not disagreeing with you--but it's hard to discuss in such a general fashion. what math scores are declining? What exactly is being tested? Are they declining in comparison to previous years or in comparison to other countries?

I'm Canadian, so I don't spend a lot of time looking at american test scores. We do have our own testing routines and we do spend a lot of time discussing Ontario Test scores in comparison to previous years and in comparison to other schools and provinces. And declining test scores are a big part of why math instruction was reformed in the first place.

Here gat, from my OP:

But recent results from Ontario’s Education and Accountability Office indicated 57 per cent of Grade 6 students in the province and 67 per cent of Grade 3 students do not have math abilities that meet provincial standards.