Where’s the Math?
The New York Times published an article about the lower standards in Math in American schools these days. They wonder how to improve math skills.
It appears to me the places that are having Math problems are the places in the United States that “reformed” their math programs. Louisiana usually ranks pretty low in the education department in the United States, but I cannot say I had a poor education. I was blessed with excellent teachers throughout elementary, middle, and high school. I furthermore had parents who cared about my education and stressed to me the importance of a good education. I was told that I was exceptionally intelligent and that I should take advantage of the excellent school system I was in. I believed them and did well throughout school, especially in mathematics and grammar.
Schools and school systems are never going to be good without community support. If the community doesn’t care about their children’s education then the school isn’t going to function properly. The students in turn will not care and will not get an education. That’s the bottom line.
Basic mathematics is not hard. Basic mathematics is a necessity. What’s the problem with the current system of doing things? The basic problem is the calculator itself. When I was a kid we were not allowed to use calculators at all until I was in junior high where we had to take a series of tests to prove that we understood properly how basic math works. We could use our calculators then. I remember having to be tested every single year except my senior year (I didn’t take a math class that year) on basic math skills. We were tested again on basic math skills on the ACT.
Even when the parents care for their child’s education the school system has mainly failed them in teaching proper mathematics all because of a simple machine. The calculator is an evil machine for a child. My nephew just started school and there is a girl down the street that’s in third grade. They were playing school one day, and as a result the girl was creating a make believe classroom out of her own experiences in school. My nephew was sitting at a desk with a calculator on his desk. She told him to figure out the problems on the board as fast as he could on the calculator. I asked her, “Do you use calculators in school?” Her reply was, “Yes, sir. We all have calculators. We’re required to have them.”
Kids being able to use a calculator in the classroom in the third grade is wrong. At the third grade level a student still doesn’t have the full grasp of mathematics, but only a subset of it. For the most part they are just learning multiplication and division at that level (I was taught multiplication before I even started school). Why allow them to use a calculator? Because the teachers are too lazy to teach the kids to do it in their heads like their parents and grandparents did. Easily available and cheap technology is making us weak. I can do computations in my head that make kids look at me in awe. My father can do basic math problems in his head most of the time faster than someone could punch the buttons on a calculator. He’s 70 years old. The first step in proper mathematics education is to ditch the calculators until students can be properly tested (7th grade level) on their knowledge of basic math. Repeated testing throughout junior high and high school is essential. It assures the faculty and the parents that the kids are capable of doing basic math even while using a calculator to figure out geometry, algebra, and calculus.
To understand mathematics a child has to understand how to add, to subtract, to multiply, and to divide. Everything else from ratios, percentages, and decimals all involve these four fundamental things. They have to understand the proper steps you go through to solve those types of problems. Memorization of simple mathematic computations is vital as well. Students should be tested yearly on their memorization of basic math skills by taking a 100 simple math problem time test. I had to take tests like that regularly until I was able to do all 100 in a minute. To do 100 simple math problems such as 2+2, 3×6, etc. in a minute is slow. How many kids these days would be able to do something as simple as that? Not many. The ones that do would be considered geniuses by today’s standards.