Wednesday, November 09, 2005

 

Constructivist Math All The Rage

There is something to this new new math, even more than what has the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics all acquiver. The basic idea is that kids do better figuring out how to do math by themselves, and all that stuff about multiplication tables, long division, and assorted algorithms is just "drill and kill", rote memorization that just makes math boring. You have to admit that doing a math problem without knowing your "times tables" would be pretty exciting!

The old new math meant well, but was largely defeated when the students figured out that you could do it the old way as long as you called everything "sets". Same deal with functions. I was really flummoxed by f(x) until someone whispered it was just "y".

Instead of multiplication tables, you let students figure out how many apples are in 9 stacks of 8 apples each by counting them. And it works! It isn't long before even a slow student realizes how hard it is to stack apples, and that there has to be a better way. This clever device not only gets the parent involved, covertly slipping the student the tables, but incentivizes the student to learn them, and all without the use of precious time at school. And back at school, that student will win the stacker-counter bees every time.

Naturally there is resistence. People hate change. According to the NYT, Joe Hoover was upset when he took his 6th grader to McDonald's for lunch and she couldn't compute the correct change from a $20 bill. What he fails to understand is that constuctivist math applies the subject to the real world, where generally there wouldn't be enough change to worry about. And anyway, the article noted that the school has begun to supplement constructivist classes with lessons in computation, and nearly 300 students are now in remedial classes. And with a nod to Joe's view, I always called that "arithmetic" and found 9x9=81 sort of soul satisfying, in a squarish sort of way.

One cautionary note. Just because the old math gets boring for the teachers doesn't mean it is boring for the students, most of whom have never multiplied before. At least in my day.

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