New Math Education Debate

does "new math" help or hurt this?

That's a pretty horrible attitude to take to learning.It's like asking why ever read a book, with a level of english past the level of a memo asking if you have completed a task. This article also seems to suggest that people don't understand how to preform basic mental arithmetic.In the states there also seems to be this insane way of thinking that you should learn an algorithm to do things in a particular way, if you can do it one way you should understand it and all the o

Why do I feel like my teachers intentionally made math harder than it needed to be? Some concepts just lend themselves to simple visual representations and just never seem to be taught that way...

It's actually not about beauty of the math, it's about something which is nowadays called a number sense. It takes a lot of practice to develop an understanding what these things called numbers are, how these relate to each other, what happens if you combine these with operational signs, how numbers grow and shrink etc. And you are damn right that there is no any use to explain it to the 12 year olds. Or even to 16 year olds.

I’m a parent and I object not because I don’t understand it — it’s not too difficult to pick up — but because it completely misses the why of math. Being able to mentally estimate numbers or do simple arithmetic is a good skill, but having universal algorithms for solving problems and describing the universe is really what math is more about. I can trace my trajectory into computer science all the way back to practicing multiplication tables and discovering that I could multiply numbers in long

I would be embarrassed, not proud, of my inability to understand really fucking simple math aimed at young children.You appear to think your ignorance isn't because you have no familiarity with the concept but is instead because the concept is flawed. Your error is thinking that you at age six would have understood traditional methods as well as you do today.Question one: the whole is six. The part you know is Five. What's the missing part? Do you really not understand

I'm not impressed when my students can add two numbers together. I want to know if they understand the math behind the algorithm.You like "the old way" because that is how you learned it. But when push comes to shove, I bet you actually use pflats method to do math in your head.http:&#

I wouldn't say that adults have 12 years of bad habits - how you do an equation isn't as important as understanding the equation. I've found that if you teach kids the "speed" methods right off the bat, they don't fully understand the methods behind it and instead see it as a set of rules and tricks to follow. Think of it like learning how to take the derivative of an equation in calculus - you'll never learn the fast tricks right away because you wont properly understand what you're actually do

This is an absurd argument. You could make the exact same argument about addition (5+9 is definitely 'solved') and yet we still make children practice, practice, practice this stuff.

Yes that middle school thinking is called “arithmetic“