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There is safety in numbers
At School for Thought, I tend to emphasize the importance of literacy but, as “Darlene” points out in this excellent posting from Hypatia’s blog, math appears in one’s life at all angles. Darlene can’t help her grade 3 daughter with her math homework, nor figure out a budget. Math literacy is almost as important as the ability to read and write.
Another excellent posting from Hypatia’s blog points out that in many cases we are paying four times for math education - the first time in elementary school when it is supposed to be taught, the second time in high school when remedial math courses are offered, the third time when paid math tutors are engaged by parents or students, and the fourth time when post-secondary institutions have to run remedial math programs.
Lastly, this posting gets to the heart of the matter in pointing out that standard algorithms like long division are not being taught in the Western provinces at all - even though long division is crucial to an understanding of higher math. I need hardly add that use of the standard algorithm for long division is given very short shrift in the Ontario curriculum as well. As an example, here is the relevant section from the Ontario grade 6 curriculum (p. 88): “solve problems involving the multiplication and division of whole numbers (four-digit by two-digit), using a variety of tools (e.g., concrete materials, drawings, calculators) and strategies (e.g., estimation, algorithms)”.
“How many doors are shut to children the moment they enter consumer math, such as careers in science, engineering, business, pharmacy or nursing?”
As well as teachers’ training, and the teachers being force to teach without students having the foundational knowledge, or even the requirement for students to have the crucial foundation in numeracy.
Rather ironic, while as a parent, I was a busy beaver at home, working with my youngest on foundation knowledge and skills needed to do advance school work, the education system was busy eliminating the foundation knowledge needed to received a good grade in the high school years.
Today, the book learners of my child’s class, who always had the top marks in the classroom, was pouring over my youngest tests in areas of the sciences and math. They were trying to figure out why my youngest was getting much better grades than they were. They think it was as simple as going through previous public exams, and being graded by the lighter standards of having LD. The difference between the book learners and my child, used to be on their reading and numeracy ability. But not now, the difference is in the foundation knowledge and crucial skills needed to do good work in senior high school and higher levels. My child may be a slower reader, and still has fluency problems when it comes to numbers, but their impact has been limited, due to her solid foundation knowledge and skills such as writing a proper science lab. The book learners have much weaker foundational knowledge and skills that is causing havoc with their grades. As I told my youngest, if they had the same set of foundation knowledge and skills as my child, they would still be the number one students when it comes to grades.