>I am a teacher of mathematics in a metropolitan school district. I have witnessed over the years the down spiral in quality of curricular resource materials for mathematics. I have found it increasingly necessary to enhance, augment, and compensate (for) the materials with which I have been expected to teach. The politics by which inferior resource materials have been foisted on math teachers (and therby students and parents) is insidious and anti-educational. State, district, school, and corporate administrators (attempt to) pressure, misdirect, and manipulate teachers to buy into the math flavor fad of the day. Teacher input is all but ignored unless (of course) it reinforces what the powers-that-be wish to be heard and/or publicized.
Administrative media access so highly filters the information which is output to the public that the quite intelligent and well-meaning parents, who want only to advocate what is best for their children, are often undertandably confused by the discrepancy between administrative lip-service and academic results (e.g. WASL). Being that the math WASL has been all but diefied (unjustifiably) as an academic measure, parental angst becomes preyed upon by smooth talking demagogues offering a reformist concoction of snake oil and mediocrity to remedy a near-disaster of their creation. The apple of mediocrity will always be mediocrity regardless of how well is polished or spiffed up by the minions of fuzzy mathematics. Each year the number of students arriving to my classroom without basic and essential arithmetic skills in place
increases. Many students cannot do simple arithmetic operations without a calculator.
Basic multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, fraction, decimal, exponent, and percent facts are often just not in place… the simple stuff! Often, students are recommended from middle school into high school courses for which they are either less than adequately prepared or for which they are not prepared at all. TERC & CMP exposure and/or induced calculator “dependency” (in elementary and middle school are the usual culprits. Those students who arrive and are indeed ready to advance must then patiently endure the requisite review process in order to bring as many of their classmates up to speed as possible. The math reality… it is insufficient that a student can merely perform calculations on a calculator. Unless an inculcated arithmetic process is operative (consciously or unconsciously) in the student’s reasoning, use of the calculator becomes little better than a crap shoot. It is just as important to have a sense of when an answer is not in the ballpark as when it is. Without a developed sense of knowing the difference, one answer might often be just as well as any other answer.
If I had a Lotto ticket for each time I heard a student remark that an answer was correct because “that’s what the calculator says”, I would have won the lottery long ago.Calculators do not speak. Calculators do not have an opinion. Calculators calculate. (A hammer does not suggest where to place the nail. That is the carpenter’s job.)Good “basic math skills” supply the basis for good mathematical reasoning. Calculators cannot reason. Reasoning is the student’s job. CMP, TERC, IMP, CPM, Core Plus, Everyday Math, etc,… all fail the student. The fundamental cognitive tools of mathematical reasoning (basic skills) are abandoned by these curricula. Rather, these curricula nurture a handicap… a dependence upon the superficial and uninsightful non-reasoning tool, the calculator.Calculators do have their uses. But those uses first need to be tempered by experience… the experience of an acquired comprehensive body of knowledge and interpretive skill. As an educator, I do my best to guide my students through the process of acquiring that mathematical experience. Such experience will surely serve them qualitatively far better (than mere calculator “dependence”) as they progress through their education and, insofar as choices are made, through their lives.
The advocates and purveyors of fluffy math curricula do not seem to be genuinely concerned with the academic and future well-being of students. Such advocates and purveyors seem only to be concerned with the promotion of their ideological agenda(s). I believe that the next step forward should start with one (or more) step(s) backward. Fluffy math texts (and corporate interference) should be scrapped regardless of administrative or governmental pressures. The true educators (parents and teachers) should take back the educational system and do what is right for the kids. Thank you.
NOTE: My point of view tends to get me into hot water with school and district administrators. It is a small price to pay.
