On any given week parents will come in seeking my advice about their child. Invariably they bring in work samples from the child’s school work.
As they tell the stories and show me what’s being asked of their child, I can literally feel my “CM” (Cranky Meter) rising and I think to myself, “It’s a good thing I meditate.”
One of the things that makes me particularly cranky is the way math is taught.
Having never been a particularly good mathematics student myself, I think I would be in a state of panic the way children are asked to manage math.
Not sure when the reverence for word problems emerged, but word problems predominate the landscape. I believe it’s linked to the view that math should always be enhancing “higher order thinking” that are embodied in the word problems.
Let’s look at, Chris age 8, a third grader who is a given a worksheet with 10 problems like:
“Winnie counted between 400 and 500 oranges. The number of oranges is an odd number. The number of oranges is the sum of two of the numbers below. (Show your work.”)
137 258 114 164 281
After Chris muddled through with no idea what he was doing, at the top of the page was a “56% – F”. There were no other comments.
Keeping in mind the fact that Chris doesn’t know what a percent is or what the % sign means or that his grade represented an “F” (also a concept he doesn’t understand), there’s also one small piece to consider.
Chris also had no idea what an “odd number” the word “sum.” These words meant nothing to him
Oh, and one other point. Chris is a struggling reader, likely to be idetntified as dyslexic. So, giving him one math word problem after another is doing nothing for his “higher-order thinking” or his basic math skills.
Takeaway Point
My “CM” is ringing off the hook.
I need to meditate more.