Subscribe to our Blog
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)”.