In article
<144d4f7e-a615-45ca-96f3-580289ea05be@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
mom0f4boys <momshea4@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>This thread makes me a little sad, because my mathematical ability is
>somewhere around the level of an 8th grader, and I don't think that
>will ever change. I care about this issue on behalf of my kids.
> I'm 37. When I was in elementary school, the style was 'drill,
>drill, drill'. For a while, I thought I was a math whiz, because in
>the 100 question multiplication quizzes, I was always the first to
>smack my pencil down: done!
> In the higher elementary grades, I still got correct answers, but
>my teachers chided me for skipping steps. I found this aggravating,
>and concluded that I must be really smart (ha). In junior high, math
>got more complex. I was bothered that plain old arithmetic did not
>make answers just appear in my head without doing the steps. I got
>through exponents and factoring, somewhat, but in high school, I found
>myself nearly in tears trying to slog through the problems. I
>memorized the steps, but I didn't understand them, and I hated those
>pencil-and-paper sessions of going through steps I didn't understand.
>I eventually quit school at age 16 (not over math).
< Fast-forwarding, when my oldest son was in first grade, he had a
<homework assignment with simple addition. It showed a picture of 5
<pennies, and another picture of 3 pennies, and asked how much were ALL
<the pennies. And at the bottom, it said "How did you get your
<answer?"
< The answer is 'I added 3 to 5', but my son was stressed. He
<had added 3 to 5 and gotten 8, and that process was so obvious to him
<that he was confused at the question. It was as if he had patted a
<kitten, and said 'The kitten is soft...', and then someone asked him
<'How do you know the kitten is soft?'
< The answer is 'Because I am touching the kitten'. But that
<is already obvious, and who would ask such a silly question.... so the
<person being asked the silly question wonders if there is something
<that he has missed.
< These 'show your process' questions are part of the quest for
<better math ability in the U.S., I guess, but as a math failure and a
<mom, I find them annoying.
One definitely should be asked to show the steps,
even if many are skipped later. In mathematics,
something is true if it can be proved. Alas, at
the beginning, and even later, not enough is given
to carry out a proof. The best I could do in this
problem is to say that the set of pennies could be
counted to give 8; alas, cardinal numbers were used
instead of ordinal in the original "new math".
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
|
