She posted it along with a complaint that "This kind of math is so damaging to [children's] critical thinking skills! It was so worth my time to watch her explain the new kind of 'fuzzy' math, and why it's so bad." She even said she's considering homeschooling her children over it! *Gasp*
In case you didn't know, we are homeschoolers, so yes, sarcasm intended.
This led me to some questions that I think would be worth asking ourselves. They will make more sense if you watch the video above.
Disclaimers: I'm a math minor, a computer programmer, and love mathy things.
1) This first question is really the most important one, and the rest are moot if this one is not clearly and specifically answered: What is the purpose of math education for your child individually? Worth some real deep thought.
Another important question: what is the purpose of education for your child individually? But we'll just stick with the math part for this post.
2) Is there anything inherently wrong or bad if our children do not learn to do something the same way we did? That seems to be the premise of one set of her comments; that because parents are not as familiar with a certain way of doing things, it somehow must be bad. Is that true?
3) Is she arguing for rote memorization without understanding? Going back to question #2 a bit, is there something inherently wrong if kids not not have the 12 x 12 multiplication table memorized? Is it somehow more noble to just write the answer to 36 / 6 because it's memorized? Which child understands how math works better, the one who has it memorized? Or the one who can show how to solve the problem in a myriad of different ways? Again, what is the purpose of math education for your child individually?
4) Is the "standard method" standard for any solid reasons? She claims it is the least error prone. Even if this could be statistically proven, is it possible that a method that is more error prone for one child is less error prone for another?
5) What is the appropriate role of a calculator in learning math? Or better said, in considering the purpose of math education for an individual child, how can a calculator best be used to achieve that purpose? Are there places where it could best be left out to achieve that purpose?
6) What does it mean to "learn multiplication and division with mastery by the end of 5th grade"? (This seems to be Miss/Mrs. McDermott's bellwether for whatever her answer is to question #1 above.) If her answer is "has the 12x12 multiplication table memorized and can work through standard algorithms with great skill," then I can see the sense of her argument.
- However, is that what it means to "learn multiplication and division with mastery?" I wouldn't consider a chess-master someone that only knows how to win a game of chess if the opponent can only use one specific sequence of moves. That's just not what the word mastery means to me.
- It seems to me that these books/methods she argues against are trying to help kids explore what the arithmetic means. They are trying to help kids gain a mastery, albeit perhaps not a memorization. Because we as parents expect kids to be able to rattle things off like we did, then not knowing 4*6 without thinking about it is labelled as bad.
- So going back, what is the purpose of math education for your child individually? With a clear answer to this, then maybe not having 4*6 memorized is bad, meaning it doesn't advance or serve that purpose. But then, it might not be. Depends on the answer to question #1.
In conclusion, I am not for or against these books she's speaking of. Heavens, I know nothing about them besides what you just saw in the video. But let's think deeply about question #1, because that will give us context to consider wisely whatever (math) education is thrown at us.
For example, the man in this TED talk has a bit of a different idea of the answer to question #1, which is why his ideas are interestingly different than many regarding math ed.
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