Rant about modern elementary education

[MrX8503]

I learned method #1 as it's faster, but I could see why the teacher would teach method #2. A lot of math teachers would want their students to know the full steps of how to get to an answer. Once you understand that fully, any and all shortcuts is fair game just as long as you understand the process.

 

[fulltilt39]

funny that you post this - i mean, i guess most 5th grade classes across the country do the same thing, but my daughter has also been struggling with it. in her case, she says all the kids learned it last year and it's just being reviewed, whereas in canada (where we lived until this year) they hadn't even touched long division yet.

i learned the way most people our age (30's/40's) did - method #1.

but my daughter is having a very hard time learning to do it that way. i've never seen method #2, but i might try and see if it helps her.

my only thinking for why someone came up with that method is just like most things people come up with these days - to make everything easy so nobody actually has to remember steps and do things without messing up. LOL

 

[JS80]

I learned method 1, but I can see how dumb white kids would need to be taught via method 2.

 

[dainthomas]

The thing I noticed when my kids were in school is that many elementary school teachers really don't know arithmetic, let alone mathematics. They're fanatical about whatever process they use because they don't understand what's really going on and get totally lost when you change things. To my kids' elementary teachers, Method 1 and Method 2 are totally different animals.

Fortunately, the kids learned math anyway, in spite of their teachers.

I thought it was because public elementary school years are critical for the government to instill a conforming attitude into the future worker drones. Deviation from accepted methodology cannot be tolerated.

 

[PsiStar]

i learned the way most people our age (30's/40's) did - method #1.

but my daughter is having a very hard time learning to do it that way. i've never seen method #2, but i might try and see if it helps her.

I learned method #1, but I see advantages to #2 for those kids less than perfectly neat. I was all about putting things anally in columns. My son, was easily distracted (or something) & would have benefited from method #2. He wrote neatly, but for what ever reason I could not get him to get things lined up vertically .. and he often got things skewed a bit and wrong.

 

[MarkXIX]

Who cares, in high school you start using the calculator for all the basic math anyways.

That's another discussion. I was gone on business and my wife was helping with homework. My daughter seized an opportunity and completed her division using the calculator on the computer downstairs. Naturally, my wife figured it out when there was no work to show how she came to the correct answers.

My wife called me angry because as she said, my daughter "cheated". I reminded my wife by asking her the last time that she did long division without a calculator?

 

[DrPizza]

Who cares, in high school you start using the calculator for all the basic math anyways.

Sort of. I teach the smart kids. Many of them figure out that for 90% of the arithmetic you do in high school, they can do it just as fast (if not faster) without a calculator. It just takes a little practice.