For a few years I thought the worst possible gimmick in education was Whole Word, basically a device to make sure kids don’t learn to read.

In the last few months, the clamor grew about Core Standards and National Standards, and I started to focus on arithmetic. More and more I’m struck by the parallel with Whole Word. The Education Establishment seems to specialize in coming up with techniques that are almost guaranteed not to work.

I know there are cynics who will say, well, of course, everyone knows this. No, many are blissfully unaware. In any case, the thing that fascinates me is the amount of skill and intelligence needed to create something that is not what it appears to be. Personally, I’m still stunned. Did people really go into a room and say: how do we teach math so that nobody learns math??? Well, it sure seems that way.

I think we can see the phenomenon best in New Math. Experts said it was the perfect way to teach math; but it was trashed only a few years later. The flaw was that easy arithmetic was mixed in with advanced concepts so that kids were too confused to learn even the basic stuff. Unfortunately, that central flaw was rolled forward into all the subsequent programs, for example, the many programs within Reform Math.

As so often happens in education, the public has to deal with this weird choice: are the people in charge hopelessly stupid or hopelessly subversive?

For a sense of how bad things are, here is a scary report from math teacher C. F. Navarro, PhD (on the excellent site Illinoisloop.org):

“At the George Washington Middle school where I taught eight-grade math in 1998, only a few of my math students were at grade level. The rest were at a fourth-grade level, or lower. Most had not yet learned their multiplication tables and were still counting with their fingers. By the end of the year some had progressed to about a fifth-grade level, a substantial improvement, but far short of the comprehension and skills required for algebra. Nonetheless, all were required to register for algebra the following year.

“More troublesome still was my algebra class. The students in that class were all nice kids, mainly from middle-class families and, therefore, on the school’s ‘talented and gifted,’ program. Yet, with few exceptions, they didn’t know how to work with fractions, decimals or integers. They lacked the power of concentration to set up and solve multiple-step problems. They were incapable of manipulating symbols and reasoning in abstract terms. Like most of my general math students, some had not yet learned their multiplication tables and were still counting with their fingers.”

Could things really be that bad if the Education Establishment were sincerely trying to teach math? Isn’t that hard to imagine?

So what is the answer? Many businesses and parents (with kids in public schools) have to consider tutoring (e.g., Saxon Math, Singapore Math, Math Mammoth, MathUSee). Next, the more I look at the National Standards and Core Standards, the more I hope that states will reject these federal proposals. If you’re curious, go to corestandards.org to read some of these bizarre so-called Math Standards.

One of the distinguishing traits in the newer Standards is a gimmick called spiraling. Children are moved quickly from topic to topic. Teachers introduce as much variety as possible. According to lots of testimony, it’s confusing!?!

Just as a “thought experiment” I wondered, well, what would total simplicity look like?? I wrote a piece for hubpages.com called “Price’s Easy Arithmetic For First Graders.” My conclusion was that you could teach all the arithmetic appropriate to first-grade by using pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters and dollar bills. That’s it. Very cheap; and kids already know half of it. The goal is to make all the routine transactions easy and automatic, both the additions and subtractions. This proposal is exactly opposite from spiraling, which is sort of like a one-day tourist excursion to all the favorite spots in Paris. Exhausting!

Nothing for me illustrates the absurdity of New Math, Reform Math and National Standards Math better than the insistence on teaching base-8, base-7 and other such nonsense to little children. What adult needs to deal with such irrelevant, esoteric knowledge? Not one in a hundred. But for a child it’s even worse than useless. In base-8, the symbols 11 and 12, for example, have completely different meanings. A schizophrenia is introduced, a mental tension. I’m satisfied that nobody sincerely trying to teach arithmetic would mention such gimmicks.

The key word is “sincerely.”

(For a more studious look at the whole problem, see “53: One Thing We Know For Sure: The Education Establishment Hates Math” on Improve-Education.org.)

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, a high-level education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Another focus is education reform; see “38: Saving Public Schools.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.” whole

Category: Education
Keywords: k-12, public schools, arithmetic,, math, facts, basics, numbers,