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Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

americanheritage.com

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Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#11

Post by harimau777 »

username90 wrote: post #9
brazzy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. Nonsense. There is a search for more effective ways to teach math. And there most definitely are differences in effectiveness, so no reason to believe that any given way is optimal. > Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work. There are, however, lots of ways to spend a lot of hard work for little gain.

If we were finding better way to teach then kids scores would improve, but they aren't improving.

You may very well be correct; however, I can see some other possibilities:

- The scores don't effectively measure learning.

- The need to prepare students for tests undermines the ability to try different teaching approaches.

- Scores don't change overall but the distribution of scores change.

- The distribution of scores don't change but the demographics of the students in a given part of the distribution change.

- There are confounding factors such as budget or classroom size.

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#12

Post by WalterBright »

harimau777 wrote: post #11
username90 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were finding better way to teach then kids scores would improve, but they aren't improving.

You may very well be correct; however, I can see some other possibilities: - The scores don't effectively measure learning. - The need to prepare students for tests undermines the ability to try different teaching approaches. - Scores don't change overall but the distribution of scores change. - The distribution of scores don't change but the demographics of the students in a given part of the distribution change. -…

I don't understand how someone can learn math, yet be unable to solve math problems on a test.

In my 16 years of education, I saw a consistent 1:1 correlation with learning the material and doing correspondingly well on the tests. That consistency included myself - when I learned the material, I'd ace the test. When I didn't learn it, I failed the test. There wasn't any magical "learned but didn't test well" going on.

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#14

Post by rlvesco7 »

Within home schooling communities, Singaporean style math has quite a following. Singapore also tends to score quite high on international exams. Basically, they focus on fewer topic more deeply. They also teach from concrete to abstract. I wish American schools would adopt this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_math

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#15

Post by qz2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #7

Fashions, programs, rhetoric, task forces, agendas, etc., come and go in the public schools. The only constant is no change in results. It's actually kinda funny. There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. There is no such thing. Learning math requires work. Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work.

Yep. Had exactly that experience this week. They're trying to teach my youngest how to subtract with carry. Now I taught her the column method about a year ago but she's not allowed to use that suddenly due to a new idea they have. Not a single one of the children understood it so the teacher went back to column method a couple of days later having pissed the time on that attempt out of the window. This sort of stuff happens very regularly.

Fashion is exactly it. I feel like they experiment on them rather than use established methods.

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#16

Post by WalterBright »

brazzy wrote: post #8
WalterBright wrote: post #7

Fashions, programs, rhetoric, task forces, agendas, etc., come and go in the public schools. The only constant is no change in results. It's actually kinda funny. There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. There is no such thing. Learning math requires work. Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work.

> There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. Nonsense. There is a search for more effective ways to teach math. And there most definitely are differences in effectiveness, so no reason to believe that any given way is optimal. > Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work. There are, however, lots of ways to spend a lot of hard work for little gain.

> Nonsense.

All the attempts to gamify learning math, or teach it by passively watching TV, suggest otherwise.

> more effective

Sesame Street is probably the most inefficient way to teach arithmetic ever devised. A kid can watch 1000 hours of it, and barely be able to count to 10.

We know how to effectively teach math. Present the concepts, follow up with the student working through progressively harder problems.

> And there most definitely are differences in effectiveness

Since the needle hasn't moved on results, we've likely found the optimal method.

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#17

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

username90 wrote: post #9
brazzy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. Nonsense. There is a search for more effective ways to teach math. And there most definitely are differences in effectiveness, so no reason to believe that any given way is optimal. > Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work. There are, however, lots of ways to spend a lot of hard work for little gain.

If we were finding better way to teach then kids scores would improve, but they aren't improving.

Of course they're not improving. The US education sector is like the US health sector - a device for increasing shareholder value among parasitic corporates, not for providing an effective public service.

As a result it provides vanishingly poor outcomes which keep the US below the OECD average, in spite of some of the highest per-student spending in the world.

Education is highly politicised, managed by school boards which seem to attract religious kooks and other low-quality authoritarians with eccentric ideas, and which does almost everything it can to discourage good teachers and other suspiciously well-educated and competent individuals from joining or staying in the profession.

Widespread poverty in the US population doesn't help.

Changing how math is taught won't address the essential dysfunctional broken futility of the system as a whole.

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#18

Post by pfortuny »

brazzy wrote: post #8
WalterBright wrote: post #7

Fashions, programs, rhetoric, task forces, agendas, etc., come and go in the public schools. The only constant is no change in results. It's actually kinda funny. There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. There is no such thing. Learning math requires work. Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work.

> There's an endless search for an effortless way to learn math. Nonsense. There is a search for more effective ways to teach math. And there most definitely are differences in effectiveness, so no reason to believe that any given way is optimal. > Just like there is no way to get strong without hard work. There are, however, lots of ways to spend a lot of hard work for little gain.

Nonsense is such a strong word when experience shows otherwise.

Learn playing! Gamify!

But people DO NOT LIKE MATHS despite them needing it. I am a professor of the thing and am not ashamed to own it. It is what it is.

Like cleanin your room, doing your bed or... shaving!

Re: Whatever Happened to New Math? (1990)

#19

Post by red_admiral »

rlvesco7 wrote: post #14

Within home schooling communities, Singaporean style math has quite a following. Singapore also tends to score quite high on international exams. Basically, they focus on fewer topic more deeply. They also teach from concrete to abstract. I wish American schools would adopt this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_math

That was how I was taught, in Europe, decades ago. We didn't call it Singapore Math, we just called it Maths.

And we used Cuisenaire Rods instead of bar charts.

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