Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

M.J. McDermott is speaking about the current state of math education, as a private citizen . KCPQ does not endorse this video.

Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Math
• Education:
• An
• Inconvenient
• Truth

[Deeptunester]

Children are taught how to reason instead of blindly memorizing algorithms? This is bad...how?

[conormmmm]

This really angers me. Teaching algorithms should definitely not be the goal of maths education. The clustering method allows the student, in time, to understand the algorithms commonly used, but what's more, it teaches children about the distributive, associative and commutative properties of multiplication, without having to use such big words.

[MrMraggies1996]

@tomaufc yes i was a teacher for 45 years

[tomaufc]

@MrMraggies1996 ''wasteing'' - and you were a teacher!?

[tomaufc]

Mathematics IS understanding. Silly woman.

[MrMraggies1996]

I think kids should know there multiplication by the end of 5th grade. I am a Geomertry Teacher in Texas. I used to teach Algebra, and i taught my students algorithms. I dont know why the teachers in washington dont like teaching algorithms. I think they r wasteing there money on those textbooks and workbooks.

[PecaniAnna]

I agree, I love teaching algorithms.....Why not? That's what math is about....all math is full of algorithms and symbols....Is like teaching a new language. Could anybody learn a new language without its grammar??!!! .I had the same experience in my life, went to get my graduate degree after 20 years and find my young classmates, amazing unprepared to learn, more math, trigonometry, calculus... 

[WTLB8]

@CooCurrent And, if you do it that way, you can solve it mentally, which is really difficult with the standard algorithm..

[CooCurrent]

@CooCurrent She's trying to make the other method of doing 26 x 31 look long and inefficient. But that's how I would do it! (I'm doing A level maths at the moment). In reality there may be more steps to finding the answer; but each step goes extremely fast and so you end up with an answer faster (in my opinion).

[CooCurrent]

@Deeptunester I agree completely!

[Heissenburger]

@conormmmm the (uneducated?) Russian peasants use a halving-doubling and adding algorithm. all algorithms are based on distributive, associate and commutative properties. they should also teach students to critically compare the Russian/Egyptian, standard right-to-left, left-to-right and their own crappy algorithms and learn what is good and bad. having crappy teachers is another issue -- not a good excuse to criticise curriculum based on this.