# Are schools failing to teach our kids math? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 10, 2013, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756 "2013-01-10T16:32:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/61 "2013-01-11T02:41:23Z")
> [@gracer](#): > > ETA: WhyNot, your daughter is a genius, seriously. Wow. Seven?? That’s the thing, though…she’s not even at the top of her class. I mean, I personally think she’s a genius, of course. 😉 She may indeed have good aptitude for math or she may bottom out by third grade, it’s just impossible to know yet. But this is just how they’re doing it now. Bits and pieces smooshed together - a little algebra, a little geometry, always some arithmetic. I don’t begin to grok the connections or fundamental concepts they’re working on over, say, a week, but it seems to be working. My son was thrust into the Everyday Mathematics with second grade (we moved into the district them) through eighth. He was reading over my shoulder when I wrote the earlier post. He says it wasn’t hard, it was just different than how he remembers his first couple of years in the more traditional curriculum and how his high school math (again, traditional, first algebra, then geometry, etc.) He’s now doing just fine in…um…whatever comes after calculus in college. (He’s 19.) Don’t get me wrong: some people HATE this way of teaching math. Some of them are mathy people who know mathy math stuff (which I don’t). It’s been years of controversy bringing it into our schools. But I’ve been nothing but pleased, although we do add a little drill ourselves. Keeps us entertained on long car rides. > [@Senegoid](#): > > And Og help [del]us[/del] them if we ever have (a+b+c)(d+e+f+g) _runs screaming from thread_ (No, seriously, it’s just ad+ae+af+ag+bd+be+bf+bg+cd+ce+cf+cg, right? I think? Everything multiplied by everything and added together?) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/62 "2013-01-11T02:51:16Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > **You don’t need to memorize anything. All you need to do is provide the correct answer to the given question** , and none of this is difficult; it’s grade 9 or 10 math at most. > > I’m struggling to find any difference at all in the approach to solving these equations. (Bold added). Ahh, if only I had known _that_ back in my school days. Especially in Calculus (which, to be sure, isn’t 10th grade stuff). All those pages and pages of integrals I busted my ass memorizing (ass being where my brain must have been). And now you tell me, I didn’t really need to memorize anything. All I needed to do was _provide the right answer._ If only I had known then that it was all so simple. **Leaffan,** where were you when I needed you? Uhhh… This _is_ a whoosh, right? P.S. You didn’t actually say what your approach is to multiplying polynomials. But if you do (a+b+c)(d+e+f+g) the same basic way you do (a+b)(c+d), then I’m not quite sure if you’re actually using the FOIL rule. I sure tutored a lot of students who tried FOIL on problems like that and were lost. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/63 "2013-01-11T03:12:51Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > (Bold added). > Ahh, if only I had known _that_ back in my school days. Especially in Calculus (which, to be sure, isn’t 10th grade stuff). All those pages and pages of integrals I busted my ass memorizing (ass being where my brain must have been). And now you tell me, I didn’t really need to memorize anything. All I needed to do was _provide the right answer._ > > If only I had known then that it was all so simple. **Leaffan,** where were you when I needed you? > > Uhhh… This _is_ a whoosh, right? > > P.S. You didn’t actually say what your approach is to multiplying polynomials. But if you do (a+b+c)(d+e+f+g) the same basic way you do (a+b)(c+d), then I’m not quite sure if you’re actually using the FOIL rule. I sure tutored a lot of students who tried FOIL on problems like that and were lost. We weren’t talking calculus. We were talking simple percentages. If you think you need to memorize formulae to decide how much more, or how much less, or what the increased percentage is then you’re not able to interpret the question correctly. Interpreting the question is what math is all about really. For the gasoline question I deduced that the price went up by 5 cents. The original price was $2.99. I divided 5 cents by 3 in my head to get the correct answer as 1.67. I don’t think most people can grasp simple math in this manner. Can you? And I’m serious and not being snarky. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/64 "2013-01-11T07:35:47Z")
The FOIL rule just sounds needlessly complicated to me (I had to Wiki it, hadnt heard of it). But I probably would have got Craftermans % problem wrong, since I would have divided something by something but they may or may not have been the right somethings. > [@njtt](#): > > \ > Schools put a _lot_ of effort and resources and, yes, expertise, into teaching math. Very arguably, in the USA, they put _too much_ into it in proportion to other educational areas. Does this mean that all the pupils end up good, or even competent at math? No it does not.\*\* Math is hard, and hard to teach, and most people do not have much aptitude for it. Those few who do have an aptitude for it often seem unable to understand why everybody else is not like them\*\*, and they blame the teachers. In fact it has always been like this, and probably always will be: most people are bad at math, and probably most people always will be. Bolded seems very true to me. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/65 "2013-01-11T08:59:52Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Math is hard, and hard to teach, and most people do not have much aptitude for it. Those few who do have an aptitude for it often seem unable to understand why everybody else is not like them, and they blame the teachers. In fact it has always been like this, and probably always will be: most people are bad at math, and probably most people always will be. I wouldn’t go that far. But I might say that some, perhaps many, primary school teachers are bad at math and they can’t effectively teach what they don’t really understand. So “teaching the concept” fails in the classroom because the teacher doesn’t have a strong grasp on the concept themselves. If students get a few years in a row of muddled teaching, it could be very difficult for them to get back on track. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/66 "2013-01-11T09:07:35Z")
> [@Indian](#): > > What … the …#%€¥?!:eek::eek: > > Business majors?!. :smack: I think you meant “what… the… $£¢€¥ç?” ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/67 "2013-01-11T09:30:05Z")
> [@Weedy](#): > > … But I probably would have got Craftermans % problem wrong, since I would have divided something by something but they may or may not have been the right somethings. … would this make it easier? question –\> the price of gas today is \_\_\_\_\_% higher than yesterday replace with values –\> 3.04 is 0.05 higher than 2.99 convert answer to a percentage –\> 0.05 as a percent of 2.99 why 2.99 instead of 3.04? because we’re comparing the 0.05 to yesterday and not today (than yesterday) work it out –\> 0.05 divide by 2.99 times 100 > [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > … “Yesterday the price of gas was $2.99/gallon. Today it is $3.04/gallon. Thus the price of gas today is \_\_\_\_\_% higher than yesterday.” … ---
**Author:** ![Indian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@Indian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indian)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/68 "2013-01-11T09:54:57Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > There are many techniques for solving math problems and many ways of teaching math. If, as seems to be the case, you are insisting or implying to your child that the ways you happen to have been taught (or the methods that you now use) are the only right ways, and that her teacher’s way is wrong, you are probably just going to confuse her and harm her education. If you want her to learn well (and if you are not prepared to take the responsibility for full home schooling, which you are almost certainly unqualified to supply in most subject areas), then you would serve her best by finding out what her teacher’s approach is, and then supporting and reinforcing it, rather than undermining and sabotaging it. > > Schools put a _lot_ of effort and resources and, yes, expertise, into teaching math. Very arguably, in the USA, they put _too much_ into it in proportion to other educational areas. **Does this mean that all the pupils end up good, or even competent at math? No it does not. Math is hard, and hard to teach, and most people do not have much aptitude for it. Those few who do have an aptitude for it often seem unable to understand why everybody else is not like them, and they blame the teachers. In fact it has always been like this, and probably always will be: most people are bad at math, and probably most people always will be.** > > New ways of teaching math are constantly being devised and tried in order to overcome this problem, but none of them have ever done so to any very significant degree. Some teaching approaches may work for some kids and some for others, and most do not work very well for most. Unfortunately schools do not have anything remotely approaching the resources to tailor teaching methods to individual kids’ needs, even if they had any way of knowing in advance what would work for what kid. I agree with the view that maths is not for everyone. But how are those students reaching business major class without knowing basic arithmetic? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/69 "2013-01-11T13:02:42Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Same bitch I have with the lame “FOIL” rule. Learn that by rote, and you can do all the (a+b)(c+d) problems in the world. But just throw one (a+b)(c+d+e) problem at the poor little dears, and they are lost. And Og help us them if we ever have (a+b+c)(d+e+f+g) > > I’m struggling to find any difference at all in the approach to solving these equations. The problem is that they don’t understand \*why \*they’re “FOILing”. So they follow “the rule” very literally, even when it doesn’t apply. “F means First…okay, that’s ad, got it. O means Outside…okay, ag. I means…uh…crap!..what’s the Inside?!..THERE’S MORE THAN ONE INSIDE!..OMG!..I’M SO STUPID, MATH IS HAAAAAAAARD!!!” It’s not hard, they’ve just been sabotaged by being provided with a “shortcut” before they’ve understood the lie of the land. When the shortcut doesn’t precisely fit, they don’t know how to adapt the directions and get to the right destination. Among a group of students taught FOIL without grokking the concept, you’re most likely to get: (a+b+c)(d+e+f+g) = ad+ag+cd+cg Whereas (assuming I got it right) I haven’t remembered FOIL in 20 years, nor have I used factoring (this is factoring, right?), but I somewhere along the way formed the sloppily worded/remembered concept “Everything multiplied by everything and added together,” so I could still do it with more than binomials. If I had learned a conceptual level deeper and understood why the [BLEEP] we wanted to factor and what it really meant, I’d probably not even have the haze of self doubt about my answer that I do. But I never quite really got to that point. I feel like I memorized a list of vocabulary and a few grammar rules, but never got to the point of being fluent in math as a language. I regret that. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/70 "2013-01-11T13:11:59Z")
My kids got more math than I ever did - I graduated in 1984 and the highest math course my high school even offered was trig. My daughter is in seventh grade and is doing the math I did in tenth grade. She is on track to take calculus as a Junior. If she takes math her senior year, she’ll need to go to the University of Minnesota for a math class. There are about 20 kids out of 200 on this path. My son is in advanced math as an eighth grader doing the math I did in ninth grade. He’s tracked to take calculus his Senior year. They’ve been doing “spiral math” so very little emphasis on memorization, but a lot of emphasis on conceptual math - understanding why you subtract x from both sides, not just doing it. However, my kids elementary school was failing no child left behind, particularly in math. We had lots of resources going towards trying to get everyone competent and few going towards kids who are adept. And that is what I remember from my own school - there were a number of kids who even in Senior High were relearning “long division” - their capacity for math had been reached. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/71 "2013-01-11T18:52:16Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > The problem is that they don’t understand \*why \*they’re “FOILing”. So they follow “the rule” very literally, even when it doesn’t apply. “F means First…okay, that’s ad, got it. O means Outside…okay, ag. I means…uh…crap!..what’s the Inside?!..THERE’S MORE THAN ONE INSIDE!..OMG!..I’M SO STUPID, MATH IS HAAAAAAAARD!!!” > > It’s not hard, they’ve just been sabotaged by being provided with a “shortcut” before they’ve understood the lie of the land. When the shortcut doesn’t precisely fit, they don’t know how to adapt the directions and get to the right destination. > > Among a group of students taught FOIL without grokking the concept, you’re most likely to get: (a+b+c)(d+e+f+g) = ad+ag+cd+cg > > Whereas (assuming I got it right) I haven’t remembered FOIL in 20 years, nor have I used factoring (this is factoring, right?), but I somewhere along the way formed the sloppily worded/remembered concept “Everything multiplied by everything and added together,” so I could still do it with more than binomials. Quite right. “FOIL” is, properly speaking, not a _rule_ but a mnemonic device, handy for helping you remember how to _apply_ the general rule in one particular common kind of situation. That doesn’t make it bad, any more than “Every Good Boy Does Fine” is bad because it only applies to the treble clef. As to memorization: there’s relatively little in math that _has_ to be memorized, in the sense that there’s relatively little that’s arbitrary. Things like multiplication facts can be figured out. Anyone who understands the underlying concepts could figure out what 8 x 4 is, and why, if they didn’t already have the correct number memorized. (And if they somehow had the incorrect number memorized, you could explain to them convincingly why it was wrong.) But it’s an enormous handicap to have to stop and figure things like 8 x 4 out (or to reach for a calculator) every time you need them, or (in a different context) to have figure out what numbers multiply together to give 32, so having them committed to memory is in fact important. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/72 "2013-01-11T19:06:07Z")
I just took an algebra class at the college level. And I was really impressed and happy by how much more they used real world applications, instead of just grinding out problem after problem. I’d say they are teaching maths better nowadays then when we were kids. I had a really hard time with math when I was a kid/teen. I got a 490 on my maths section on my SATs. I just brought down an A- in my algebra course. Now algebra is always one of the courses that made sense to me, but this was home study, and the textbook had a myriad ways to explain it and understand WHY things were important. And you can pry FOIL from my cold dead hands, as well as PEMDAS. Some of these little memory devices are AMAZING. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/73 "2013-01-11T20:24:23Z")
> [@Nature\_s\_Call](#): > > [Paul Lockhart](http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html) agrees. > > ETA: if I recall, the “lament” is because conceptual math is not taught well, not that mechanical arithmetic should be taught better. He’s got some really insightful things to say, but I have no confidence that the way he teaches can be implemented as a teaching method. It relies too much on creative expertise. The very thing that makes it awesome also makes it impossible to put reliably into practice. ☹ He also does say some things that strike me as odd. He’s bothered that students are asked to prove that opposite angles at the intersection of two straight lines are equal. His problem is that this is so blindingly obvious, and can serve only to make students mistrust their own intutions. But I find that one of the _strengths_ of education in a liberal society is that it helps students see that what seems intuitively obvious to them can nevertheless be supported. Moreover, it helps us learn that things that seem intuitively obvious may not be true. I’m not sure what’s supposed to be wrong with getting students to mistrust their own intuitions. Learning to mistrust my own intuitions has been a source of considerable growth and satisfaction. And then he gives the example of the proof that a triangle with one side being the diameter of a square is always a right triangle. The student proof he likes starts with the statement (words to this effect) “Rotate the triangle around so it’s exactly opposite inside the circle.” The guy likes this proof, and I can see that it has the right idea, but that statement is so vague! I have no idea why we shouldn’t ask the student to clarify it and prove that it can be done. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/74 "2013-01-11T20:45:04Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > I just took an algebra class at the college level. And I was really impressed and happy by how much more they used real world applications, instead of just grinding out problem after problem. > > I’d say they are teaching maths better nowadays then when we were kids. I had a really hard time with math when I was a kid/teen. I got a 490 on my maths section on my SATs. > > I just brought down an A- in my algebra course. Now algebra is always one of the courses that made sense to me, but this was home study, and the textbook had a myriad ways to explain it and understand WHY things were important. > > And you can pry FOIL from my cold dead hands, as well as PEMDAS. Some of these little memory devices are AMAZING. See, I was never taught FOIL or PEMDAS, which is why I have a different approach to solving the problems. I had to look up FOIL, I still haven’t looked up PEMDAS. ETA: Order of operations huh. We were just taught the order of operations. Never had an issue in my life with it. ---
**Author:** ![perfectparanoia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@perfectparanoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perfectparanoia)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/75 "2013-01-11T21:39:00Z")
The teaching of math at a young age was never something I had to really think about. I tutored my peers in high school and while those that were not that good at math were missing basic skills, they still had some knowledge (of at least arithmetic) so we focussed on the repetition of new skills. That all changed when my daughter came to live with us. She is bad at math. Well, actually, she was so far behind that there was no chance of her ever catching up. She has no learning disability and is certainly smart enough to understand things. (Small background, I am a Mathie. I have a Bachelor of Mathematics. My husband is Mr. Statistics and Arithmetic. Neither of us ever struggled with math.) We have made it our overreaching goal to catch our kid up. Here are some things we have learned: 1. As long as your child is passing (as in earning 50%), there will be no extra help or intervention. (Even when it is obvious that she doesn’t even understand what subtraction means in grade 4.) 2. If your kid is diagnosed with any sort of disability they will get extra help regardless of how well they are doing. 3. Primary teachers who fundamentally understand math are few and far between. 4. There are two strategies to teaching math: understanding and rote. The schools try to use understanding and throw out the repetition. However, that repetition is needed for a child who is at all struggling to learn mathematical concepts. 5. Calculators are used to replace learning of facts like times tables. It became our job to fill in the holes that we saw in her learning. Here is what we do: 1. Every night we review her math schoolwork from that day. We ensure that she can both do the work and understands what she is doing. This takes about an hour a day. 2. She does Kumon 6 times a week. Their entire strategy is based on rote learning so she is getting faster and better at basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. This makes doing the schoolwork above much easier. 3. We have a tutor that comes in once a week to fill in the holes in understanding of basic numbers that she missed in the years she was neglected. He is mostly there to get math to be fun. He rocks. 4. She is not allowed to use a calculator at home. 5. We work simple math into daily activities (time, cooking, etc.) So, with all that in mind, what I really see in the schools is that we need to: 1. Devote more time to math in the early years. 2. Focus on both understanding _and_ rote learning in mathematics. The understanding is so concepts can be built on and the rote is so that when things get arithmetically more difficult, they are not onerously time consuming. 3. Give kids who are struggling help regardless of no diagnosis. My biggest problem with all this is that we spend (quick math) 10 hours a week on math at home. They spend (more math) 4 hours at school. There is no way that we would be making the gains we are seeing with only 4 hours of math instruction. (On the bright side, she was at about an early grade 2 level in math when she started this year (grade 4) and now she is about a late grade three. There is reason to believe that by the end of the year, she will be at grade level.) ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/76 "2013-01-11T21:40:56Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > See, I was never taught FOIL or PEMDAS, which is why I have a different approach to solving the problems. I had to look up FOIL, I still haven’t looked up PEMDAS. > > ETA: Order of operations huh. We were just taught the order of operations. Never had an issue in my life with it. The whole point is, one size fits all solutions don’t really work. So teachers try to come up with a lot of different ways, and hope that one sticks. ETA: FOIL is how I can solve those things in my head, rather than having to write them out all the time. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756/77 "2013-01-12T00:59:10Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > We’re at least two “news” past the way they taught math in 1967. Three, I think. And none of them have done anything to improve our students’ scores compared with students from the rest of the world. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Here’s the transitional plan for the curriculum being phased in grade by grade in Chicago Public Schools. Here’s the program that makes the foundation of that curriculum being phased in. Next time you post a 99-page pdf citation please post some extracts so your readers don’t have to slog through the whole thing themselves to get some idea what it is trying to convey. I scrolled to almost the end looking for sample problems before finally finding a set of four on page 90. There was a ridiculous typo (can you find it?- it’s obvious), and I am discouraged that the authors could not even get their boilerplate exactly right. Also, I doubt they really needed 90+ pages to get their message across. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Nothing like I learned in the 80’s, much less what you learned in the 60’s. I had the advantage of rigorous private schooling K4-12, and if the samples on p90 are typical, then I think I probably was being taught at that level in Grade 8 (_not_ that I found it easy!), although I cannot recall specifics with certainty. FWIW I was a mediocre mathematician. I scored 527 SATM in the fall of 1965 and 597 SATM in the fall of 1966 (but: NO CALCULATORS!). In college I earned a B- in Algebra I and a C- in Probability I and then left academic mathematics for ever. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Our teachers must use Everyday Mathematics (in those grade levels for which it’s been rolled out in the school district), as well as having the freedom to add anything they’d like to add from other sources, some of which are more focused on rote memorization… What does “Everyday Mathematics” mean? The problem set I mention above involved graphs unlikely to be encountered in the course of a normal day except by some of those working in technical professions. > [@WhyNot](#): > > …my girl calls those “the easy pages”. > > My daughter can do fractions and fundamental algebra. She can calculate the volume of solids and tell time on an analog clock face as well as a digital, including telling you what time it will be “in three hours,” or was “12 minutes ago” - she can even add minutes past the hour mark and get the hour switch right. She can do addition and subtraction of as many numbers of as many digits as you can feed her. She can count by 1’s (of course), 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s and 10’s. She can multiply one and two digit numbers. She can do probability predictions for dice rolls and spinner games. She can calculate multi-item purchases and accurately make change. > > Most importantly, she can do most of these things in at least two different ways (in her head, on her fingers, with manipulatives, with a calculator) and she can tell you WHY she’s doing what she’s doing. She understands math, not just regurgitates it. > > She’s seven. I expect your daughter has much above average mathematical aptitude and could learn the subject no matter how ineptly it is taught. Maybe she will be lucky and the Chicago school system will turn out to be one of the better ones in the country. If so, however, proof will have to come from the system-wide averages rather than the progress of a gifted student such as your daughter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-schools-failing-to-teach-our-kids-math/646756.md?page=3)