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Special Report: Solving the math problem
OTTAWA CITIZENMore from Ottawa Citizen
Published on: January 30, 2015Last Updated: January 30, 2015 4:41 PM EST
There are several approaches we can take if we want to help students do better in math, experts and educators say.
Greg Fulmes / Calgary Herald
Report cards are going home across the city next week, and across Ontario, Grade 9 students have just been through provincial assessments for math.
For all involved — students, teachers and parents — this is an occasion ripe for anger and anxiety. If the past is any guide, the math scores won’t be good, and the trendlines are going in the wrong direction. It looks, increasingly, like Johnny can’t add, and everyone has an opinion on why that’s the case.
Underlying this is a debate between the old way of doing math — lots of rote learning — and the new curriculum, called discovery math.
Yet the heated rhetoric obscures two real facts: First, that energetic and experimental educators have made great strides in the teaching of math that goes beyond long division and the times tables. Second, that learning something by heart is itself a form of discovery, and that many forms of human intellect and achievement have elevated memorization to a poetry or an art.
But to see this, we first need to get past the empty-headed political posturing that all sides engage in, as if by rote.
For this special report, three Citizen writers have examined new efforts to solve the math problem.
• Elizabeth Payne on what the experts say we should do.
• David Reevely on Ontario’s plans for increasing the learning and use of math in the curriculum.
• Kate Heartfield defends memorization, but not for the reasons you think.
OTTAWA CITIZENMore from Ottawa Citizen
Published on: January 30, 2015Last Updated: January 30, 2015 4:41 PM EST
There are several approaches we can take if we want to help students do better in math, experts and educators say.
Greg Fulmes / Calgary Herald
Report cards are going home across the city next week, and across Ontario, Grade 9 students have just been through provincial assessments for math.
For all involved — students, teachers and parents — this is an occasion ripe for anger and anxiety. If the past is any guide, the math scores won’t be good, and the trendlines are going in the wrong direction. It looks, increasingly, like Johnny can’t add, and everyone has an opinion on why that’s the case.
Underlying this is a debate between the old way of doing math — lots of rote learning — and the new curriculum, called discovery math.
Yet the heated rhetoric obscures two real facts: First, that energetic and experimental educators have made great strides in the teaching of math that goes beyond long division and the times tables. Second, that learning something by heart is itself a form of discovery, and that many forms of human intellect and achievement have elevated memorization to a poetry or an art.
But to see this, we first need to get past the empty-headed political posturing that all sides engage in, as if by rote.
For this special report, three Citizen writers have examined new efforts to solve the math problem.
• Elizabeth Payne on what the experts say we should do.
• David Reevely on Ontario’s plans for increasing the learning and use of math in the curriculum.
• Kate Heartfield defends memorization, but not for the reasons you think.
