Better than nothing, concerning the free site from the Ontario government. I spend some time on it, If follows the fuzzy math procedures, including guess and estimate strategy to see if the answer is correct.

I would suggest if one wants their children to acquire automacy in arithmetic and advance arithmetic, go and explore the second link. What is taught is using efficient methods, that would developed a firmer foundation in arithmetic..

Otherwise, the new free online tutoring site by the government can educate parents on what and how math is actually being taught in the classrooms.

I was tempted to dragged my 16 year old downstairs, and interrupt her studies for the mid-terms, to view a few sections. But I did not, because I would know her reaction, her eyes would roll and she would be reminded of all the times, marks were taken off, even though she had the correct answers,  because she could not estimate and guess to check her answers using the methods described in the videos.

Now everyone knows, why the young people at the cashiers have weak skills when it comes to basic discount and tax procedures, plus the counting and operations of numbers.

Two days ago I overheard a discussion about a math test between two grade eights.

They were discussing what numbers they each tried out in order to solve a problem that required simply to write a very simple linear equation and solve it.
They seemed reasonably bright kids and from their discussion I understood they were the best at math in their class. I felt such overwhelming pity and anger at the same time; I felt like vomiting and my legs were trembling!

Really who is the idiot who came up with the idea of solving equations by trial and error?
Who are the idiots who put it in “math” textbooks?
Who are the idiots teaching that crap?

It is so incredibly irrational that we take young, clean minds and we mold them with idiocy, with habits of thinking that stunt their future ability to learn.

I haven’t looked at the site, but I’ll take Nancy’s word for it that it’s got a lot of fuzzy math.  I’ll never understand the logic behind guessing:  you need basic knowledge (which it is best to memorize) in order to guess/estimate properly.  My own experience with having to memorize, is that you begin to understand why for example, math formulae work.  I’m currently writing exams through the Royal Conservatory of Music to get my artc.  There is a lot of memory work, and hundreds of rules you have to know when writing music, so 90% of preparing for the written exams is memory work.  Eventually the rules begin to make sense, so you gain a depth of understanding that you wouldn’t have without the dreary drill.  Why does our government insist on trying to eliminate the most important step in learning?  Their attitude defies logic.

Bev and Nancy,

You are absolutely right. It is all based on the Ontario math curriculum.  The point is that the provincial homework help site is too late for a lot of kids—it meant for grades 7 to 10, when the more complex math begins. That’s why I plugged in more useful help and “preventative medicine” for the younger ones, which frankly, couldn’t hurt the older students either!

Bev logic is something they are supposed to teach, not do.  )

I have a few thoughts why.  I will also try to make this succinct because I for one have a bit of a hard time pounding through the very huge posts and following some of the circuitous logic here.

A note about e-proof.  I am not going to try to convince those out there that don’t understand this posting with supporting links.  If you go out like my wife and I have, and teach in a wide variety of places, and think, you will see too. 

“Why does our government..eliminate the most important steps… “

1. They can see with data & can hear the rumblings that something is wrong with youth culture and school.  They face it everyday in Starbucks and they don’t know how to fix it.

2. They are absolutely unaware of what the elimination of fundamentals does to a learner (especially at-risk kids).  They follow current trends in teaching.

3. A combo of making the work easier, and making the required answer non-specific gets students through the work.  This solves the problem on a surface level. They feel proud of the changing data.  Students are graduating!

4.They are generally social-minded and need to appear like the feelings of each and every individual is being protected.  (If they don’t personally believe this, then they need to appear this way or else be crucified.) This leads to…

5. Students are left to fall through the cracks by and large b/c the system generally won’t fail students who don’t learn the material until grade ten.  Heterogeneous groupings and peer-group advancement *feels* nicer and causes less waves on the surface.

6. The unions (esp. BC where I live) are very powerful and cause the gov. problems in many ways.  The unions also are supposed advocates for education, but they too lobby for more non-effective practices b/c that is what people like to hear. Friendly sounding, non-specific fixes that will make the world better. Hope is a permanent fixture.

7. It is easier to teach “fuzzy” and “experientially” and about feelings etc. because there is no hard requisite skill needed in the instructor to lead a lesson like this.  Whether she/he is vauge or not makes little difference, as the material is also vague and accepting of many different answers. 

(Apply this type of instruction to a welding teacher like myself, or a basketball coach, or a band director, and you have a disaster.)

8. The whole range of mistakes spawn from procedures that are taken on -even at the classroom level- that are ineffective. I am referring to practices that are not backed by real, true data.  I am also talking about the procedures that are supposed to elicit a huge learning change, but prove to be not replicable. 

Summary
  We know how to teach kids to read and compute and to know about what happened in the world (even locally for god’s sake). We can teach them all of the things that they don’t know and fill up the deficit that makes them unable to do the things that we can.  It just means that the teacher must be informed and able to execute efficient, effective teaching.  Mostly, teachers seem not too able to do this, sorry to say.

I often wonder why they think children are capable of learning in math, using such illogical methods, It defies logic, and I remember saying it in a parent-teacher interview, that became overheated when I took to the blackboard, to explain why it is so illogical.

And to expect children to discover it on their own is not only irrational but defies logic. The new Ontario math site, is all about the process, the bag of tricks, and never about arriving at the correct answer.

On the site, I press percentage because the fuzzy math does a lousy job as well as using such complicated methods that are so inefficient. Proportional percentage procedure is not to be found in the fuzzy math. Somehow it is expected that the student must discover it on his own. When do the students learn the proportional percentage procedure, somewhere in grade 9 or grade 10. A concept that should be taught in grade 4, mastered before students are introduced to algebra.

Another excellent resource led by mathematicians who are petitioning the western provincial governments to change their math curriculum: wisemath.org

The “additional resources” section is filled with excellent articles (most in peer reviewed journals) explaining why discovery-based learning is the wrong way to teach math.

The progressive “every child learns differently, and we need to support that” mentality is designed to be inclusive. And maybe it is. ... But a country that is struggling to maintain a lead in STEM needs to let one or two “differently learning” students take extra tutoring. The way we’re teaching now, everyone _else_ is forced to take extra tutoring.  Or, do what I’m doing with my 3rd grade daughter, and spend an extra 30 minutes _every_single_day_.

My daughter is also doing a Japanese program (she’s half Japanese) and it’s shocking how far ahead the same age students are. She simply cannot do the math they are doing. She’s easily a year behind because of how Canadian schools teach math.

What a pain.

Hi Chris,

We are big on Wise Math and include it on our blog roll in the left menu.

Thanks for highlighting it!