Jul

5

The inconvenient truth about math education today

Filed Under math 

I’m always amazed by the fact that so many teenagers and young adults today cannot even do the simplest math calculations without using a calculator. I teach kids in grades nine and ten who use the calculator to multiply single digit numbers together and cannot do long division without a calculator.

A few summers ago, when I was teaching math to students who were retaking their grade nine and ten math because they failed it during the school year, the kids actually thanked me for showing them how how to multiply and divide the way I did. Imagine that- thanking me for showing them how to multiply and divide. They told me that they hadn’t been taught that way. I didn’t believe them, of course. I thought they had been taught that way but for some reason didn’t learn or remember the lesson. After all, a teacher teaching something doesn’t necessarily translate into a student learning it. We all know that.

When talking to students about their struggles with math, I tell them about “the use it or loose it principle” and that I think that’s part of the problem. The use it or lose it principle may explain why they can’t do math as well as they might.

Let me try to explain what I mean and why. I show a PBS video to my Advanced Learning Strategies Class called the “Inside The Teenage Brain” It’s excellent. My students really enjoy watching it and tell me that they’re glad I showed the video to them because it explains why teenagers act the way they do and why they see things differently than adults. My colleagues and friends enjoy watching it for the same reason. It helps adults understand teenagers better and that’s a good thing when you’re surrounded by teenagers.

At one point in the video, we’re told how the brain prunes away brain cells that aren’t being used. It’s the use it or loose it principle. I think that’s what’s happening to my students when they use a calculator to do simple math and not their brain. They loose those mental math brain cells. That’s what’s happening to me because of speed dialing. I’ve lost lots of my telephone number brain cells.They’ve been pruned away because I don’t use them. At least I can remember my mom’s telephone number. I don’t use speed dial for her number for some reason.

OK, OK before anyone has a fit about my logic here. I’m not a brain expert so maybe I shouldn’t be drawing these conclusions, but it makes sense to me after watching “Inside the Teenage Brain” and listening to all those experts and my own experience. I encourage you to see the video so you can see where I’m coming from.

If I’m way out in left field, just let me know. Then I’ll tell my students that I used to think…..

Let me get back on track here. Until today, I’d thought the lack of math skills and/or math fluency was due to students’ over reliance on calculators to do simple math. As a special education teacher, of course I know that some students’ brains are wired in such a way that makes math challenging for them to do. That could account for some student having difficulty, but not for the huge number of students that actually do.

Today saw M.J. MCDermott’s “Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth” which you can see below. Her video helps shed further light on the problem.

I’m astonished by what I saw and heard - the different algorithms for teaching math and the wisdom of advising teachers to encourage their junior grade students to use calculators because it is too onerous to and time consuming not to.

I hope, because I really don’t know, that this isn’t a wide spread practice and that where kids are being taught math using these methods things will change. It’s not fair to our kids to do this to them.

Please watch the video and tell me what you think.

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