Ah, Everyday Math. The reason I am pulling my kids out of my otherwise excellent NYC public school. Even though the most egregious parts of the curriculum aren't observed in my kids' school (i.e. calculators for kindergarteners) I am still faced with the fact that my fourth grader doesn't know his times tables and if left in the current school, will never even be taught long division. Yes, calculators are everywhere but if a child is never taught basic math TO MASTERY then they will fail once they get to college. So a whole host of careers will be closed to them: not just higher math but engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science, etc.

Besides...do the people who come up with these theories even HAVE kids? The idea that early elementary kids will become bored with drills is absurd to anyone who has seen a child watch the same video 17 thousand times. And watching my son have to painfully calculate, AGAIN, what 6x7 is in order to solve a word problem is immediate evidence that his life would be easier, not harder, if the basic math facts were drilled into his brain once and for all in 3rd grade. Then that brain space would be freed up to think about the problem in larger terms.

And the annoying thing is, the teachers agree with me. But they're not allowed to deviate from the curriculum. I am just told, off the record, to buy flash cards and do it myself.

Two words for those who have kids in TERC, Everyday Math, or any other BS curriculum: Singapore Math. Textbooks and workbooks available online and very reasonably priced.

It's frightening to think I've been out of school for more than a decade, but all this stuff must be really new. I remember learning math the traditional way and being assigned pages of problems for practice. We used to do timed drills where every student would get a page full of basic problems and 2 minutes to complete as many as possible.

I think the emphasis on "making learning fun" has driven common sense from educational curricula.

To be fair, though, some of the methods they're teaching in these books just mirror how you might go about solving a problem in your head. That's fine, if you want to teach kids to think about problems when they can't get out pencil and paper, but there's no need to use these methods when you have writing instruments available.

Students get plenty of practice making diagrams and breaking down problems once they get into advanced math classes where those are valid methods. When problem solving switches from applying the one method you've learned to picking the most appropriate approach from a set, these teaching methods have merit. But, that's Calculus, not fifth grade math.

I think part of the problem is that the creators of the curriculum seem to be averse to identifying a "best" way to solve a problem. Yes, in higher math (or even algebra) there are multiple ways to approach a problem and whatever works is probably fine. But basic mechanics? Yes, there is a best way to multiply 2 three digit numbers. There is a best way to do long division. The standard algorithms got that way because over hundreds of years people have learned that those methods are the most efficient and least likely to produce errors.

My super-smart math PhD friend finds some of the alternate methods interesting. But why confuse a 8 year old kid with 3 different ways to multiply or divide, none of which is taught for more than a day or two?

I absolutely agree. I sent my son to a Catholic school for 4th-6th grades. They weren't allowed to use calculators. When he got to junior high school in the on-campus lab school, he was dumbfounded that the kids used calculators for 6*7. He called them helpless children! We had him tutored in Algebra, and he took college algebra (at the university) in the 8th grade.

Now? He's an engineering student, getting an A in differential equations in his sophomore year in college.

In Catholic school, I believe they used Saxon math.

spiritual humanist writes:

But basic mechanics? Yes, there is a best way to multiply 2 three digit numbers. There is a best way to do long division. The standard algorithms got that way because over hundreds of years people have learned that those methods are the most efficient and least likely to produce errors.

Actually, this is patently false. There are many "standard algorithms" for any given operation. The ones most commonly taught in the U.S. today are different from those typically taught in Central and South America, and also from those taught in many parts of the U.S. 50 years ago!

For an amusing take on this, see (or listen to) Tom Lehrer's "New Math"...

Wholehearted agreement from someone who found out late in the game how everyday math works! I have an 11th grader who can barely do long division (and she was a successful everyday math student). last year, her chemistry teacher told me taht she found out during the first week of school that virtually none of her students, many of whom were in gifted and scholars programs, could do long division. Didn't know their multiplication tables either. Don't believe that all teachers must be teaching "outside the book," they told me they'll get reprimanded for doing so. My solution was to hire a math tutor from the closest Catholic school, after trying in frustration to teach the everyday math way, I told him to teach my kids the same way he teaches his own students.