Maybe. I recall asking my parents for help on my math homework once, and they found the problem so poorly presented as to be incomprehensible. None of us could figure out what the question was, much less answer it. There’s been some pretty badly made textbooks published.
Why? What we were doing before worked fine. Teaching is not rocket science and it doesn’t require a degree. Humans have been teaching each other since they became self-aware. The chances someone will come up with a better way of doing it or a new way of doing it will be essentially zero. It’s like sex. Every generation thinks they discovered it.
What a degree is required for is to make sure that everyone is indoctrinated the same so that the proper agenda can be pushed. Competence in the subject matter is an afterthought and that is the problem as much as anything.
You sound like an excellent teacher.
…the bane of my existence. I couldn’t even do regular math so ALL numbers were negative to me. I think I have that thing where a person just absolutely can’t do math. I know there’s a word for it…I’ve seen it here on the Dope.
Oh, and it took me two years to get through Algebra I. Near the end of the second year the teacher put this question on the test…something like “How do you figure the dimensions of half a hole?” I answered, “There’s no such thing as half a hole.” I was the only one who got it right. He said, for that he was going to pass me. Everybody clapped.
Isn’t an axiom something that’s found under a car? (…running away…)
I was reading this article about the problems that science and technology majors have in college. It seems to me without a solid math background in high school a lot of this majors would be very difficult.
Well, author John Allen Paulos wrote a book called Innumeracy, though he was more addressing an attitude of indifference to math, rather than just difficulty with it.
I think Dyscalculia is the name used by diagnosticians.
Did it? Surely there was a problem which “New Math” was attempting to solve?
Powers &8^]
What do you call the rendition of Euclid into English?
Translation of axioms
(Yes, I made that up one day in Calculus class, during the chapter on Analytic Geometry.)
Yes. And I mentioned “Why Johnny Can’t Add” up-thread. I think these two books should be required reading for anybody studying math beyond, say, beginning algebra, and certainly for anyone contemplating teaching math.
And in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Feynman (duh!) there’s a chapter in which he pokes fun at the whole process of reviewing and choosing math textbooks. He was invited to participate in a review committee. He tells of how the various publishers’ [del]lobbyists[/del] uh, sales reps wined and dined and lobbied them, and the politics, etc., involved.
ETA: If you like the stuff Paulos writes, note that he has a monthly column too. I don’t have the cite at my fingertips, but it’s somewhere within the ABC network’s web world. I’ll dig up a cite RSN if I can find it . . .
ETA: Here it is: “Who’s Counting?” http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/
And a couple of years after it was introduced in the US it was imported to Sweden as part of the 1969 edition of the national curriculum for the Swedish primary school system. I went to teachers’ training school 1970-1973 and had to learn how to teach it. It was definitely new maths as none of us students had ever come across it before and had to completely forget everything we had ever learned.
I had use for set theory, though, when I learned to programme computers.
Bookmarked, thanks.
I always thought new math was a method used by publishers to get otherwise stingy school districts to buy new books. After all people complain when a social studies book still has the USSR but math doesn’t change that much especially at the grade school level. So they invent “new math” and lobby the DOE to force classrooms to teach it.
New Math was simply trying to get kids to think about math in the same way that mathematicians did. It was the same as the problem with reading. Adults who read well don’t waste their time reading one letter at a time. Similarly, to a mathematician, “To each real number a we assume there corresponds another unique real number, denoted by -a, having the property that
a + (-a) = 0. This number -a is called the additive inverse of a, or simply the negative of a,” is a clear, simple, almost trivial definition of negation—the only one possible, in fact. The only problem is that children don’t have minds trained to the necessary degree of rigor—Hell, most adults don’t, either.
The idea was to skip taking baby steps, and you just can’t do that.
The idea was to prepare students for higher math, instead of just drilling them in Arithmetic, which had been the previous focus. Some concepts are easier to learn as a child and if they’re left out, will make the transition between Arithmetic and Algebra, etc. harder, resulting in fewer students jumping that gap. The drive to get more students into math & science was part of the Space Race. Although if it’s done badly, or the student’s style of learning doesn’t go from abstract idea to calculation well, it can feel like something was left out.
My experience with New Math was from a child’s perspective, so I’m not sure what changes stuck. Did previous elementary teaching systems introduce the following: number lines, greater than/less than, what a percentage IS rather than how to calculate one, and the notation of different base systems (binary is an example)?
Several people have mentioned set theory, which has been retained. I’ve seen worksheets from first and second grade showing numbers separated into stacks of ten and single coins, so emphasizing that stuck, too (without as much copy work, thankfully). What other concepts have become a permanent part of elementary math instruction?
The current problem seems to be so much emphasis on the concepts that there is no actual practice of a mechanism. So students feel really comfortable with numbers, but can’t actually compute anything.
I had a similar experience with my college Chem II class. The professor was interesting and made the topics fun, but we didn’t have very much required homework. I should have elected problems on my own for drilling, but with busy college schedules driving me to the minimum required and not enough foresight to see my own needs, I actually struggled to pass the tests because I couldn’t actually solve the problems.
It wasn’t just Math that was new. It was everything. That’s when the Look See method in learning how to read replaced the older phonics method.
I actually did quite well with New Math. I understood the theories and thought it was great. I took to math in different bases and actually “proved” a few theorems of my own. (For example, in the third grade, I proved why casting 9s works and that you can cast 6s in Base 7 and 15s in Base 16).
I didn’t do to well in Reading with the Look/See method though. In fact, I never learned to read. I was memorizing the words with the pictures, so people thought I could read. This worked until the third grade when pages became longer and not all pages had pictures on them. I didn’t really learn until about the fifth grade, and I still couldn’t write a sentence until the ninth grade. Learning disabilities. Dyslexia and Dysgraphia.
I did well in High School, but ended up flunking out of college several times. You can’t be a History major unless you can write a few coherent sentences in a row. Computers came to my rescue. They allowed me to put down my thoughts, then reorganize them without the pain of rewriting everything over and over again. I could type which was much faster than handwriting, and I could correct my errors which you can’t do on a typewriter. (Very good, David, there’s only 7 errors. Now in the next sentence…)
I went back to college in my early thirties and earned my BS in Computer Science. When I was young, I had always wanted to earn a PhD, and be History professor, but reality intruded. You want a degree, you go with your strengths. Plus, by the time I got my degree, I was married with two kids. No time to get an advanced degree.
Even practice will fade, if we’re talking about the mechanics. It’s a use it or lose it thing. Although I’ll confirm that when you’re studying, nothing beats practice to get a process down. Feeling like you understand a concept is only the bare beginning of being able to apply it, especially on a test where time is limited.
The time I was most competent at cranking the arithmetic was the year I worked the Christmas rush at this odd little store. There were catalogs, order forms, and tables out front, and a warehouse in the back. In between were a wall, a counter and a bunch of counter workers.
Customers would fill in the forms and drop them through a slot in the wall. The warehouse guys would fill the orders and check the costs, then send them through a bigger hole in the wall to the counter workers. The counter workers would call the customer to the counter, check that everything was there, then hand total the amount, add the tax, and retotal before passing the merchandise and form to the two cashiers. This was pre-calculators, of course. Customers then stood in line to pay the cashiers, who would take the money and hand over the merchandise.
It was add, calculate percentage, add all shift. I will never in my life be that good at adding and calculating percentages again. When I work with numbers now, if it’s important to get the result right I’ll use a calculator and/or spreadsheet and someone else will double-check it, also using a calculator.
If it’s an estimate, there’ll also be a drawing and listed measurements, with units and all assumptions spelled out. Those will go into the files so that others can re-check them later, if needed. At no time will anyone trust the wetware if hardware is available, although because of the experience described above, I’ll often crank out simple things with a pencil, then confirm with the calculator. This is considered to be an odd quirk on my part.
**qazwart **
By the time my kids were in school, Look See had been replaced by phonics + What Makes Sense? + Just Memorize These. Because for some words, phonics will only take you so far. I approved of that.
Sad that your problem was masked for so long. Hope you’ve been able to slip in a little hobby history on the side.