In Praise of McDermott

Provides background for appreciating the importance of M. J. McDermott's video titled "An Inconvenient Truth." The dumbing down of math instruction is just part of an overall dumbing down. (Improve-Education.org, Bruce Deitrick Price)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• dumbing
• down
• New
• Math
• low
• standards
• illiteracy
• Reform
• Everyday
• MathLand
• arithmetic
• counting
• numbers

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Thanks. You said it very well.

(The big shock for me the past year was to realize that New New Math programs are so much like Whole Word. Another flawed approach where failure is always the kid's fault or the family's fault. I looked at all this from another direction in "Why Don't Public Schools Do A Better Job?")

[MarkKronenbergNYC]

@sleeper2345

The Everyday Mathematics manual said that mastery is not a good use of classroom time and that when it get's too tough, a student can use a calculator. China, India, and Europe are already running circles around us mathematically and now kids are being taught to think to the exclusion of mastery. They need both so that when they accidentally type a wrong number in the calculator, they will know that the answer is unreasonable.

[MarkKronenbergNYC]

@sleeper2345

The Everyday Mathematics manual said that mastery is not a good use of classroom time and that when it get's too tough, a student can use a calculator. China, India, and Europe are already running circles around us mathematically and now kids are being taught to think to the exclusion of mastery. They need both so that when they accidentally type a wrong number in the calculator, they will know that the answer is unreasonable.

[alleyghost]

So you are telling us if you want it to work you need to have faith in it?

Not so self-evident after all, you will admit?

[sleeper2345]

It is. Unfortunately, we see little willingness for small, sustained change in education. Everyone wants changes that demonstrates quick results. Thus, we return to what we've always done.

[213HM]

As a teacher educator I've come to realize if Investigations is not working, it is often either 1. lack of professional development of teachers, or 2. teachers with beliefs similar to BruceDeltrickPrice who roll their eyes during professional development. Some KNOW it won't work so they pretty much set their students up for failure & in the end can say, "See, I told you it wouldn't work." School districts don't give programs time to show success. Talk about a vicious cycle!

[twentyflights]

on that note, maybe there's also something to be said for the importance of having an intuitive "sense for numbers"...not just how they interact on a simple level (i.e. arithmetic) but what they mean, the things they imply, how they "look and feel" etc. treating numbers as more-abstract entities goes a long way in not only making math education more powerful, but more fun and meaning. newer math methods are not disciplined enough for this, and the older are not abstact enough.

[twentyflights]

i agree that an algorithmic approach to mathematics is appropriate and necessary *but only so long as* there is a deep underlying understanding and intuitive *sense* of why it is the way it is. one or the other is not sufficient for sound mathematics or problem solving. it seems as though the two methods we are discussing straddle this idea.

[sleeper2345]

McDermott is quite misleading in the video. She focuses on the procedures that are taught and not how they are taught. As you note, these textbooks focus on reasoning and sense making. This is something that folks like McDermott don't want to discuss. Instead the focus is on the superficial. "New Math" is a term from the 60s, so using this term is quite misleading.

[sleeper2345]

The goal is not to just learn the process, but learn why these algorithms work and when they work. However, this has not been the focus of mathematics in the US (though it is in other countries). Through learning arithmetic, students can learn why procedures work and develop mathematical reasoning.