Here is part of a story from a father who faced the same thing. It’s a comment left by Mark, a [...]]]> Are you a homeschool parent struggling to teach your child math? Or are you just frustrated by the way your kid’s school teaches math? You’re definitely not alone, and you’re in great company.

Here is part of a story from a father who faced the same thing. It’s a comment left by Mark, a reader at the MathNotations blog.

You should read the entire article, then scroll down to the comments where the exchange between Paul Michael Goldenberg and myself (Brian) begins. Read them to understand the background to the great comment by Mark, which is partially reproduced here:

“I had a 4th grader who was being just totally crushed. I tried to help with math homework, but the assignments were chaotic. He just finally refused to even try to do his math homework. To see tears in his eyes and protest, “I’m not good in math, Dad!” broke my heart.

“I took him home, and found out that he could do not complete a 10 x 10 multiplication table or do any long division. I concocted a non-stressful systematic build-from-a-foundation scheme. We used a variety of manipulatives, including an abacus for computation. (I guess you and I think alike, eh?) I taught him basic algebra using a balance and weights: keep the pans level, and that’s an equation analogue.

“Upshot: he started calculus at age 16.”

Amazing! What a motivation for you to try your own ways (with or without Math Mojo methods) to help your child. Of course, not everyone can know as much math as Mark (I sure don’t!) but you can do plenty with the methods you can find on this site, and in Mark’s comments (click the link to MathNotations, above, to get there).

So head out there and read them now.

Wait! The author of that comment just left a terrific comment below. Make sure you read it if you are trying to teach your child math.

M.J. had two good premises, but her conclusion [...]]]> This post is a continuation of the other posts about the video on YouTube entitled “An Inconvenient Truth” with M.J McDermott (not to be confused with Al Gore’s film) which concerns the dismal state of American basic math education in public schools. You can view it here.

M.J. had two good premises, but her conclusion does not jibe. “Their methods suck.” (True.) “My method is better.” (True.) “Therefore mine is the one everyone should use.” (Nahhhhh.)

Why don’t you experiment a lot and discover what works best for you, and keep refining it? It can be so much more fun and rewarding to do that. Respect your mind, not the opinions and emotional responses that were put there by others in the past. Try this stuff out, then decide.

It’s important to mention that people who think it’s OK not to learn the basic arithmetical operations because “you can do it with a calculator” are just plain damn dumb. That’s like saying, “Hey, this ‘walking’ stuff sucks. It takes effort! Why do we need to learn to walk? That takes years! Let’s just give everyone a wheelchair!’

Not having the basics down cold, and being asked to educe basic mathematical algorithms for yourself, is like not knowing how to read, and having to derive the sense out of every word you read as you go along, without knowing what the letters mean. It would be amazingly cool, and I’m sure some autists have done something like it, but expecting every school child to do that is nothing short of educational child abuse. And then subjecting them to standardized testing? Well, that’s just medieval.

Learning the basic operations can be much easier than the ways generally taught in school. Learning them only takes years if you have ignorant educators, or good educators limited by ignorant administrators and politicians. The “No-Child-Left-Unstressed” act only exacerbates the situation. It’s great for teachers – bad teachers who don’t know how to teach and need someone looking over their shoulders to make sure they are “on track”. If a person can’t be trusted enough to do the job s/he was hired to do, why should s/he be doing it?

On the other hand, that law, born of ignorance and arrogance, limits and straight-jackets good teachers into using only the “standard” methods of doing things. “Standards” are nice and quaint. They are “minimums.” They do not inspire – and no valuable learning comes without inspiration. Inspired teachers are punished in today’s schools. Inspired kids drop out, hate school, and usually are more intelligent than the drones that the “No-Child-Left-Untested” law creates. Thank you, standards!

My point is, this way to multiply is better than the “standard” in probably every way, yet people keep clamoring for the “standard.”

Why is it that people see a change for the worse, and say “We need to change back to what wasn’t worse” instead of raising standards and look forward to a change for the better, which is easily at hand?

I’m afraid the “new” math suffers from lack of willingness to do work, and “old school” math suffers from lack of imagination.

How about using both effort and imagination?

If Newton and Euler stayed “old school” we wouldn’t have calculus.

An algorithm is more like a recipe than a law. It’s only a word; don’t be intimidated by it. An algorithm is basically a set of well-defined instructions.

First of all, it’s silly to think that there is one best algorithm for all multiplication problems. There are lots of algorithms, and lots of problems. You don’t use the same kind of hammer for every kind of nail, do you?

Karl Menninger, in “Calculator’s Cunning” (a brilliant book, by the way) has dozens and dozens of ways to do multiplication. He suggests that people who can reckon really well need to have a lot of arrows in their quivers. That was in 1931, and the situation has changed a bit. Dozens of methods might be a bit much now, but we should all certainly have more than one tool for each operation.

Each time you learn a new method, it helps you understand other methods, as long as you learn a bit about why each method works.

Think of music. There are plenty of ways to play a song, but it’s the same song. Some of the “standards” are pretty hokey. Some of them are absolutely great. But if we insisted that we stick with what we did before, a lot of the music that you love would never have been made. (If you like Steve Miller, that might be a good thing.)