Yeah sure, you're spared. Talk to these folks though:
More than 50 professors and teachers have now signed a petition calling for a return to the conventional teaching of arithmetic, with a focus on students learning, practicing and mastering the basics of math in elementary school.
Here’s Dawn Arnold, a high school math teacher in Tofield. “I am seeing the results of the ‘discovery’ method coming into my senior high math classes and it is very disturbing.”
And John O’Connor, a math instructor in Edmonton: “I have been teaching University level Mathematics for many years and have seen first-hand the harm that has been caused by the high-school Math curriculum. Students have been cheated by not having been taught the basic fundamental skills that are essential to an understanding of the subject.
Gordon Swaters EDMONTON
In addition to having an 11 year old daughter in the school system and seeing the math she brings home, I am a
U of A Math prof who sees the declining the ability of first year students to do basic math.
Donna Nixon ST. ALBERT
I am a junior high math teacher. More and more grade 7 students are coming in with no basic math skills – they don’t even know their basic addition and subtraction facts, never mind multiplication or division!!!
Terry Gannon EDMONTON, AB, CANADA
I am a parent of 7 year old twins,
and a math prof at the U of Alberta. As a parent, an educator and indeed a mathematician, I know a balanced approach is fundamental. From what I have seen with my children’s education, there is no balance in mathematics education in our schools today.
Peter Zajiczek` CALGARY, CANADA
I am a
mathematics teacher and our children are so ill-prepared for higher level mathematics it is frightening. Students need basic math facts memorized to focus on higher level concepts.
Christian Rios, Calgary
I am a mathematician at the University of Calgary, and I have children in the school system. Currently math education is
creating more confusion than enlightenment. The main problem is the concept that synthesis (what they call “making sense”) may come before proficiency. This is an upside down approach to learning. Mathematics should be learned the way we learn our native language: First we memorize a few words and their basic meaning, we learn how to put together basic sentences allowing us to communicate.
Much later in this process we get to the point of analyzing syntax, parts of speech, and symbolism.
The current approach to learning mathematics
pretends to start with the analytic stage. This creates confusion in students, that leads to chronic frustration, and finally creates aversion to everything mathematical.
Olia Libicz Pavlin EDMONTON
I’m an ex – teacher with 2 elementary aged kids. They are not learning real math at school and I end up teaching them at home. What happens the the kids whose parents don’t like math and can’t explain math to their kids. I am very concerned with the whole
discovery way of learning and that is why I left teaching. I have to teach my kids at home after school and there is no energy left at the end of the day to teach your own kids when you just worked with 31 kids.
Marc Van Sluys, Calgary
As a teacher, I can see the advantages of teaching math fundamentals.
Since the new math curriculum has been introduced, I have seen the slow decline of fundamental math knowledge in my students. They struggle with simple addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. It seems to me that as an adult, I use the above skills more than the current skills being taught by the new curriculum.
Deborah Younger, Edmonton
I am a high school math teacher. I am noticing that an
increasingly larger number of my Grade 10 students do not know basic times table facts, nor do they understand operations with fractions or integers. These are fundamental to successful completion of most high school math courses.
Viena Stastna, Calgary
I teach Calculus 1 at the university so
I see the consequences.
Neil Hepburn CAMROSE, CANADA
I teach undergraduate economics and
deal with the fallout from this every day. Simple algebraic operations escape my students.
Clearly they have not “discovered” the methods.
Phil Davidson EDMONTON
I teach statistics to BComm students. On average my students educated here in Alberta are way behind my foreign students in basic math skills.
Roy Sharplin, Edmonton
I am an instructor in an engineering technology program at NAIT. We are seeing an increase in students who came to NAIT with high marks in high school math but struggle in our basic technology math courses.
Noel Allin EDMONTON
I have a teaching degree and was exposed to this doctrine of
‘discovery-based learning’ back in the 1970′s. The theory is that you will retain an answer longer and better if you ‘discover’ it yourself.
It was a confusing mishmash then. It led to – nothing.
Get rid of this idea entirely. Eveen at the university level there was much resistance and no fun involved in this ‘process’. International results should be more than enough to consign your experiment to the trash heap of useless learning techniques.
Corry Mortensen TILLEY
I was a mathematics teacher and I see the effects on the students I taught and on my own children. I also firmly believe that if you introduce critical thinking problems you must also teach “how” to be critical thinkers – those skills aren’t automatic.
Teaching 4 different ways to do something isn’t critical thinking, teaching skills so students can develop their own methods and techniques is.
Hank Kalke EDMONTON, CANADA
In my career as a high school teacher of many courses including math & as an instructor at NAIT, I truly have experienced the importance of I totally agree with the “Back to the Basics: Mastering the fundamentals of mathematics” petition. As is stated, “the “new math” glares of absurdities in that
students are led through multiple convoluted “strategies” to get to a solution, with no emphasis on mastering any one method. As a result, the importance of knowing basic math facts (eg. algorithms, time tables, automatic recalls, vertical additions) is diluted down to a weak understanding and poor grasp of basic mathematical concepts.”
Allysa Lumley LETHBRIDGE, CANADA
I am a mathematics master student and I see a lot of people struggling to handle basic math facts at all ages. It is very upsetting. I also have a large number of friends who are teachers that have expressed concern over the lack of preparedness for the next grade.
Ioana Crisan, Calgary
I have taught principles and intermediate courses in Economics at university level for twelve years.
The inability of some of my students to solve basic equations that a Grade 5 student should be able to solve is shocking. It is obvious that some of them are paralyzed by math. A student should not have to use a calculator to divide 72 by 9. The education system has failed these students, and I hope it is not too late for those in charge to admit that a mistake has been made and to try to correct it. I have a daughter in Grade 1 and I hope that by the time she reaches university she will have more confidence in her math skills than my current students do.
