[ernie]

My kids do the "new math". It threw me for a loop when that homework started coming home. I spent a week to figure it out and realized that the so called let's "go back to basics" that people so desperately want to dump the new math for is not going back to basics. It's going back to learning a process without knowing why you are doing that process. The new math is actually the building blocks and fundamentals....it's the basics. The new math is learning why you do the things you do and learning what number X and place Y actually mean rather than mimicking an algorithm.

It isn't, for example in subtraction (23-9), crossing out that two and writing a one beside the 3. It's taking a 10 from the tens column and adding that 10 into the ones column. It seems more complicated. Many more steps. But the student actually understand the basic concepts because of it. I think many people would be shocked if they went around asking there co-workers not to simply do 23-9 but EXPLAIN hat they are doing and why they are doing it. All with be able to do the former and few will be able to do the latter. The example that always goes around the internet is the 32-12 one where the person brings the 12 to 15, then the 15 to 20, 20 to 30 and 30 to 32 and adds up those increments. Yes the algorithm gets you there quicker but many will not understand fundamentally what that algorithm means or how is works.

Using subtraction again to illustrate...the "new math" or as it is often mistakenly referred to as common core is what you do when making change on a purchase. To use the example akin to a blogger I read a while ago. A customer purchases something for $5.45 and hands you a $20 bill but the register is out and no calculator is to be found. How does a person do this? They don't get a piece of paper out and perform the algorithm. you break it down into easier chunks. A nickel gets me to 5.50, two quarters to 6.00, 4 more to 10 and then 10 to 20. Ever run into a someone at a store that can't make that change to save their lives? Of course you have. And that is the reason for the new math.


Which isn't new by the way. It's how many people were taught decades ago. You know the people who are universally able to actually do math in their heads unlike a very large chunk of the people from the last couple of decades. It's what people who are good in math but went through schooling the the last 20-25 years taught themselves to do.