Johnny can't factor: critics say the new, new math is too, too dumbed down
by Robert Greene of the AP
in the Lewiston Morning Tribune, Lewiston, ID, 4-22-97
Washington -- It's the kind of drill that drives math nerds crazy. And
it wouldn't matter so much if these statisticians, scientists and others
weren't parents as well.
The drill, as described in a California workbook for
seventh-graders: Students, in a group, must fill an imaginary recycling
container with imaginary phone books. But the books and container have
only two dimensions. And the kids also may use a calculator to figure
out .75 times 600, part of the exercise. The text gives the answer,
right next to the problem, just in case students can't get it with a
calculator.
Critics like Paul Clopton a 46-year-old statistician and angry San
Diego parent, say 1992 changes in California math teaching, prompting
such exercises, are creating math dummies. A state board is working on
new standards this year.
And the issue has attracted angry parents' attention beyond
California, because some of the teaching philosophy under fire would show
up in voluntary national standards and tests that Present Clinton supports.
Critics say the math curriculum reflects the handiwork of the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which in 1989 called for a
national overhaul of math teaching.
The council, worried about America's math phobia and dropping
test scores, hoped to make math more meaningful by changing from a
dry-as-chalk focus on drills, postulates, definitions and proofs -- the
memorization of tables and rules--to a more real-world focus.
The council also recommended that all grades use calculators.
"All of the research that we've seen shows that children learn
differently," said Jack Price, professor of mathematics education at
California State Polytechnic University in Pomona and past president of
the national group. "For some, direct instruction in the classroom works
well. For others, it doesn't."
"We have never said anywhere in any of our publications taht
children shouldn't know their basic skills," he added.
In an interview, though, Price questioned the need to learn the
multiplication tables, or at least more than half of them. Why memorize
4 times 3 if you already know 3 times 4?
Why figure a square root without a calculator? Or long division
for that matter? Why do a stack of division problems for homework?
Should standards be so specific as to say children in the first
grade ought to be able to write every number up to 100?
"Some kids are not going to be able to do that," he said.
Under the council recommendations, students instead were
encouraged to focus on problem solving, generally in groups, as the best
way to pick up skills and prepare them for the real world.
The council also recommended that students learn geometry,
probability and pre-algebra before they reach high school--a seeingly
high standard.
But critics worry how well the children use classroom time, and
whether the stress on group activities too often substitutes play-acting
for real learning.
Marianne Jennings, a 43-year-old lawyer and professor of business
ethics at Arizona State University, has crusaded in newspapers and otehr
publications against a widely used algebra textbook. It talks about Maya
Angelou's inaugural poem for Clinton, African tribes, pollution --
striving, she suggests, more to be politically correct than educational.
"I was driven to write about this because it became very clear my
daughter was becoming a math illiterate," Jennings said, talking about
Sarah, now 14.
Critics also complain there's too much stress in the early grades
on "manipulatives" -- cubes, little figures, colored sticks and other
pieces that critics call "concrete pacifiers."
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Laura Bracken Petersen petersen@lcsc.edu
Division of Natural Sciences PHONE 208-799-2484
Lewis-Clark State College FAX 208-799-2064
500 8th Avenue
Lewiston ID 83501-2698 USA
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