New Math

[Homeschooling6]

What does the term "New Math" mean? I have seen it a few times but am not sure what people mean by it.

 

Thank you,

[FawnsFunnyFarm]

I have a hard time explaining it, but here is a video. My 11yo ds who is a math wiz, just went back to ps in Feb. His school uses this "new math" crap, he went from completely understanding math to being completely lost to the point of he may fail for the year over it. They sent home a student handbook for the parent to help the student with (Thy use Pearson's Terk Investigations books), but I get even more lost than he is.. so it is completely useless to us.

 

 

[FawnsFunnyFarm]

Here is another video:

 

 

[Homeschooling6]

Thank you, I really liked that second one with the 5th grader :)

[FawnsFunnyFarm]

Yeah, I don't use Saxon, which I am pretty sure she is promoting, but I love that she shows that with Terc, she was taught to use a calculator. When my son came home to do homework with one I said no way.. he said mom I have to.

 

If they don't write every little thing out, it the way that the book says/shows, then even if they have the right answer the problem is wrong.

 

I really feel bad for my son because he has always been great in math and to have to bring home papers that are marked "does not meet benchmark standards" (no he doesn't get a grade in this math) every week, is really degrading to him. I think if I would have known that the district had switched to this math, he wouldn't have gone back and we would have figured out a way to work out our issues that sent him back.

[forty-two]

There's the New Math of the 60s, and the new "New Math" of the 90s/00s.

 

The 60s version was a response to Sputnik and the U.S.'s perceived need to increase the number of math/science people in America. Basically, it was school math designed by mathematicians, without enough input from math educators about the practicalities of actually teaching K-12 math. It was all about teaching the underlying structure of math, often with a strong discovery and/or problem solving component. But the problem was that parents didn't get it, often teachers didn't get it (ouch!), and so lots of students didn't get it either. But it was great for mathy students with good teachers, and there are a lot of great textbooks from that era.

 

So then we had the back to basics era in the 70s/80s. And New New Math came in response to *that*. It has lots of the same goals as New Math - the big thing is understanding, again - but this time it was done by math educators without input from actual mathematicians. So it is all up-to-date with the latest pedagogy, but is rather deficient when it comes to the actual math bits :glare:. (And the up-to-date pedagogy is itself controversial, too.) So once again, parents don't get it, often teachers don't know the math well enough to teach it (ouch!), and so lots of students still don't get it either.

Edited June 1, 2010 by forty-two

[Storm Bay]

The only new math I am familiar with is that of the 1960s-1970s. In it's original form, it's fabulous. When the US was using it, we had a more students deciding to major in math. For better threads on this, I'd do an advanced search here on the high school forum. Include the poster Charon. He is strongly opinionated, but he has more facts about the majors, etc, than I do. Others have made good posts about this, of course, but he's one of the math majors over there. Some of us use these older texts for high school Algebra, and another fan of this is Jane in NC.

The main problem lay in the fact that high school teachers, who were not taught this method themselves, were inadequately prepared to teach it and that watered down versions appeared. I remember when we switched in school. The problems weren't inherent in the program itself, but in implementing it.

 

My eldest did Algebra 1 with this and really understands what she's doing. She did to Algebra 1 twice and this was the second time, but it is a strong program. Just hard to find answers for or teacher's manuals, etc. Dolciani 1965-1975 is the popular book for those on the high school forum who choose to go this route (note that it's not the most popular book overall since it's old, harder to get answers for, etc.)

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

Wow, that is scary! I like how the lady in the first compares specific curricula.

[swainsonshawk]

Thanks for sharing those videos. I wondered why kids in my state are so screwed up in math. Now I know. Yeah Homeschooling!

[Snickerdoodle]

Maybe you mean this:

 

 

 

 

Ok, ok, I was just interjecting a little levity. ;)

[Spy Car]

Two different math education movements are being conflated. "New Math" (as Forty-two has correctly noted) was a 60s era movement, where the 90s era movement is usually called "Reform math," and the latter are exemplified by TERC and Everyday Math.

 

"New Math" actually contained many interesting elements, as anyone can investigate by looking up the CSMP math program archived on the web. But as Fourty-two also mentioned, if a teacher doesn't understand the math or how to really teach it no math program is going to be successful no matter how laudable some of the aims might be.

 

One problem of the "backlash" movements is (that instead of focusing on teacher education and the implementation of sensible means of teaching conceptual understanding of mathematics) is that they fall back into arguing for an "algorithm only" math education.

 

You can see the confusion of the weather-lady when she performs the "standard algorithm" for multiplication in the first linked film. The answer to a good math education is not to return to teaching math as "following procedures only."

 

Fortunately some of these anti-reform groups do seem to favor Singapore Math, but they also (more strongly) push for "traditional" math programs that may be "parent friendly" for being familiar, but which also leave a great deal to be desired in terms of teaching mathematical reasoning.

 

There is a 3rd way of teaching math, between either extreme, and I fear the anti-reform groups are as misguided as the programs they are rebelling against.

 

Bill

[Guest RecumbentHeart]

Two different math education movements are being conflated. "New Math" (as Forty-two has correctly noted) was a 60s era movement, where the 90s era movement is usually called "Reform math," and the latter are exemplified by TERC and Everyday Math.

 

"New Math" actually contained many interesting elements, as anyone can investigate by looking up the CSMP math program archived on the web. But as Fourty-two also mentioned, if a teacher doesn't understand the math or how to really teach it no math program is going to be successful no matter how laudable some of the aims might be.

 

One problem of the "backlash" movements is (that instead of focusing on teacher education and the implementation of sensible means of teaching conceptual understanding of mathematics) is that they fall back into arguing for an "algorithm only" math education.

 

You can see the confusion of the weather-lady when she performs the "standard algorithm" for multiplication in the first linked film. The answer to a good math education is not to return to teaching math as "following procedures only."

 

Fortunately some of these anti-reform groups do seem to favor Singapore Math, but they also (more strongly) push for "traditional" math programs that may be "parent friendly" for being familiar, but which also leave a great deal to be desired in terms of teaching mathematical reasoning.

 

There is a 3rd way of teaching math, between either extreme, and I fear the anti-reform groups are as misguided as the programs they are rebelling against.

 

Bill

 

 

Thank-you for clearing that up. I was getting terribly confused.

[TandLMommy28]

OK, I'm so confused because when i tool my graduate level history of education class, my professor explained new math completely differently. He pulled ACTUAL math problems out of what he called "new math" text books that PS are actually using and they were all horrid but the one I will never forget was this:

 

There are four yellow birds and one blue bird in a nest.

How do you think the blue bird feels about being different?

 

So I thought "New Math" was referring to forgetting math skills altogether, even in math books? Was what my teacher talked about actually called something else? He had a stack of text books he pulled out and showed us these examples in all of them. Scary stuff!

[Guest RecumbentHeart]

There are four yellow birds and one blue bird in a nest.

How do you think the blue bird feels about being different?

 

So I thought "New Math" was referring to forgetting math skills altogether, even in math books?

 

 

:lol:

 

Well .. actually it's pretty sad .. but anyway .. that sounds more like the first news report I saw on the topic of the recent math changes.

 

The lady interviewed was explaining that we don't know what the jobs of the future are going to be like or what they will require and so that is why we need to teach math differently (in the way they were showing it in the report). :confused: Cookies for anyone that can explain the logic to me behind that one.

[Spy Car]

 

So I thought "New Math" was referring to forgetting math skills altogether, even in math books? Was what my teacher talked about actually called something else? He had a stack of text books he pulled out and showed us these examples in all of them. Scary stuff!

 

Not at all. New Math aimed at deepening the conceptual understandings of the laws of Mathematics. Noteworthy elements of New Math included "discovery" techniques (such as those in Miquon) for learning math axioms though "doing"' such as playing with manipulative to "prove" the Commutative Law, for sake of example.

 

New Math also tended to do a lot of early work with "sets". And was fundamentally little different that the whole/parts methods one will find in Singapore Math, Right Start, MM, and other fine math programs.

 

There were some elements of New Math that were questionable for average math students, such as working in different "bases" (bases other than base-10). This may have been great fun for the math-adept, but potentially torture for those struggling to understand base-10.

 

But New Math did contain many important ideas. Many were not implemented well, due to a lack of teacher education, but New Math informed the best of the math programs we now have access to as home educators.

 

There are films on the CSMP website showing how this New Math program was taught, and I think it is quite interesting.

 

Unfortunately the way educational philosophies tend to swing in this country is from one extreme to another. There may be some poorly done Reform Math textbooks out there, but returning to "Old Math" as a reaction is not sensical.

 

There is a 3rd way.

 

Bill

[lovemykids]

CSMP is pretty good, (even though we are not using it anymore). But I think the University of Chicago Mathematics Project is a complete ‘new math’ nightmare.

[msjones]

Two different math education movements are being conflated. "New Math" (as Forty-two has correctly noted) was a 60s era movement, where the 90s era movement is usually called "Reform math," and the latter are exemplified by TERC and Everyday Math.

 

"New Math" actually contained many interesting elements, as anyone can investigate by looking up the CSMP math program archived on the web. But as Fourty-two also mentioned, if a teacher doesn't understand the math or how to really teach it no math program is going to be successful no matter how laudable some of the aims might be.

 

One problem of the "backlash" movements is (that instead of focusing on teacher education and the implementation of sensible means of teaching conceptual understanding of mathematics) is that they fall back into arguing for an "algorithm only" math education.

 

You can see the confusion of the weather-lady when she performs the "standard algorithm" for multiplication in the first linked film. The answer to a good math education is not to return to teaching math as "following procedures only."

 

Fortunately some of these anti-reform groups do seem to favor Singapore Math, but they also (more strongly) push for "traditional" math programs that may be "parent friendly" for being familiar, but which also leave a great deal to be desired in terms of teaching mathematical reasoning.

 

There is a 3rd way of teaching math, between either extreme, and I fear the anti-reform groups are as misguided as the programs they are rebelling against.

 

Bill

 

Thank you, Bill. I do agree that many folks in the anti-reform groups seem to have such enflamed opinions that there is no room for discussion. A few of the linked videos were made right here in our very own school district and I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the folks involved.

 

Many students do very well with programs like TERC, Everyday Math, IMP, and CMP. My husband and I have observed that students taught with the much-maligned reform math often have very good understanding of why the algorithms work. For example, I know lots of 4th and 5th graders who can not only use the traditional long-division algorithm, but can also explain confidently why it works. Also, we see great improvement with mental computation; many kids understand the algorithms well enough to do them mentally. This is a real change from what we observed with the 'old math.'

 

That being said, I also understand the concerns. The biggest problem I see is poorly-trained (often barely trained!) teachers making dismal attempts to teach something they don't truly understand or wish to teach.

 

If a teacher can't teach the new stuff, his/her students would probably be better off with the old stuff. Unfortunately, public schools tend to rush through training to save time and money (both of which are hard to come by) and to require the use of the new materials regardless of the teacher's ability.

 

So, for those of you who have suffered through poor implementation of these types of materials, I do understand just how bad it can be. However, I believe these programs can provide excellent math education.

[Beth in SW WA]

A few of the linked videos were made right here in our very own school district and I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the folks involved.

 

We live in Washington also. I remember watching these videos years ago. Whatever happened to this movement up north?

 

Our local school district uses Simms Integrated Math. My neighbor girl showed me her math books. We weren't impressed.

 

Thanks!

[Storm Bay]

There are four yellow birds and one blue bird in a nest.

How do you think the blue bird feels about being different?

 

!

:001_huh: Wow, that's not the new math I did, that's for sure.

 

Bill has some good points. Perhaps I have such fond memories because I was a mathy dc. I enjoyed all that set work and the other things we did.

 

Before we did new math, we did Arithmetic. It wasn't called math. It was the basics. You can see, then, why the switch was so great for mathy dc. I still recommend Charon's posts on this, fwiw. I still think that New Math at its best taught by teachers who could really teach it or learned by students who could learn math by reading the text was very strong. The problem is that you need different maths for kids with different math strengths. They do this at our local high school--there are 4 different math streams. This ought to be done more often, IMO, so that dc get what they need. This one reason why we homeschool :).

 

Bill is also right about finding the best somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. I find this is the case much of the time and not just in math.

 

However, based on how my dc and I learn math, I'm still an avid fan of Dolciani 1965-1975 Algebra books. Not only those, because Gelfand's is very cool (but has long, hard problems at times) & we like LOF in so many ways. For younger years, CSMP has some great features to it, too, but mostly I like Singapore Math as our main math in those earlier years. We like to add things, though, since I just don't think there is a perfect math program out there. Even my dc need different mixes of things.

Edited June 2, 2010 by Karin

[Guest RecumbentHeart]

Please be patient with me, I've been under a rock ... these two extremes being referred to - are they the "both sides of the math war" that are spoken of when I read the introduction of Liping Ma's book?

[Halcyon]

I have a hard time explaining it' date=' but here is a video. My 11yo ds who is a math wiz, just went back to ps in Feb. His school uses this "new math" crap, he went from completely understanding math to being completely lost to the point of he may fail for the year over it. They sent home a student handbook for the parent to help the student with (Thy use Pearson's Terk Investigations books), but I get even more lost than he is.. so it is completely useless to us.

 

[/quote']

 

 

I actually found the 2nd part of the video (I think she's using the TERC algorithm) to be interesting and useful in how it helps a child think about place value. I wouldn't necessarily want my kid doing that every time, nor would i NOT want him to know the more familaiar method of multiplying double digit numbers, but I do think it's a neat way to make sure a child understands what he/she is doing, place value-wise.

[laundrycrisis]

I was a victim of New Math in the 1970s. To me it means torturing 2nd graders by teaching them to subtract by adding a set of "negative apples" to a set of "positive apples". WTH ? Everything was set theory. I'm still not over it.

 

My kids get an integer number line. It's on the kitchen table. They will not encounter sets until I teach them the way they are taught to college students when they take "discrete math". That was the first time I understood set theory.

 

He pulled ACTUAL math problems out of what he called "new math" text books that PS are actually using and they were all horrid but the one I will never forget was this:

 

There are four yellow birds and one blue bird in a nest.

How do you think the blue bird feels about being different?

 

 

 

:lol: :lol: :lol: I seriously just blew beer out my nose laughing at that !!!!

 

 

I almost forgot we were also subjected to having to learn all sorts of bizarre numbering bases in 6th grade. Nothing that is actually useful in computer science or anything - base 5 ? base 7 ? (the only ones I encountered in CS classes were binary, hex, and octal). And it wasn't enough to just grasp the theory of different bases - we had to add, subtract, multiply, do long division, and work in decimals in them. Seriously. Deranged.

Edited June 3, 2010 by laundrycrisis

[nmoira]

And it wasn't enough to just grasp the theory of different bases - we had to add, subtract, multiply, do long division, and work in decimals in them. Seriously. Deranged.

Can I use that as an endorsement? I had my eldest do all this (here's the book). And elementary set theory as well.

 

:D

[laundrycrisis]

Can I use that as an endorsement?

 

:lol:

 

It would have been cool if it was just for fun. It was for a grade though :001_huh:

 

That book looks cool ! Much more fun than the approach we had.

[dancer67]

CSMP is pretty good, (even though we are not using it anymore). But I think the University of Chicago Mathematics Project is a complete ‘new math’ nightmare.

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

That math program is HORRIBLE!!!

[Storm Bay]

I was a victim of New Math in the 1970s. To me it means torturing 2nd graders by teaching them to subtract by adding a set of "negative apples" to a set of "positive apples". WTH ? Everything was set theory. I'm still not over it.

 

 

I almost forgot we were also subjected to having to learn all sorts of bizarre numbering bases in 6th grade. Nothing that is actually useful in computer science or anything - base 5 ? base 7 ? (the only ones I encountered in CS classes were binary, hex, and octal). And it wasn't enough to just grasp the theory of different bases - we had to add, subtract, multiply, do long division, and work in decimals in them. Seriously. Deranged.

 

 

See, nothing works for everyone:glare::D. My sister & I were in grade 5 (me because I did a year at a private school, and her because we moved home after that and they started it at our home public school when I was in grade 6 & she was grade 5.) The eldest of my brothers was grade 3. I LOVED it and benefitted from it, as did they, and you suffered. I wonder how much of it was which text was used, the teacher you had and how you learn math.

 

My dc find negative numbers very easy but long division hard (well, at least my first two did; my eldest didn't find any arithmetic hard--she wasn't stumped until a few times in Algebra 1), but I know some dc who have that situation reversed or who find both hard.

 

That said, I don't know if all of my dc will do Algebra with New Math even though that's the tentative plan. My eldest benefitted from it a great deal, but each one is different.

[Storm Bay]

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

That math program is HORRIBLE!!!

 

 

CSMP without the teacher guide does end up being crazy. I regret not printing it for my middle one before we started. With the teacher guide it was right up her alley, but I don't think it will work well for my ds.

[LinzluvsGJ]

I know I watched a kid take 10 minutes to do a problem using "everyday math" methods at the library yesterday that would take another kid 2 minutes max using standard algorithms.

 

My husband is an engineer and watched a video about the EM methods and said he uses those things in his head to estimate numbers, but never if he needed an exact answer for something, and certainly not on paper longhand.

[selh09]

I know I watched a kid take 10 minutes to do a problem using "everyday math" methods at the library yesterday that would take another kid 2 minutes max using standard algorithms.

 

My husband is an engineer and watched a video about the EM methods and said he uses those things in his head to estimate numbers, but never if he needed an exact answer for something, and certainly not on paper longhand.

 

Would you please explain the "everyday math" method. I've been following this thread with much interest. We're bouncing between math programs right now, so that's why I'm asking...:001_smile:

[golfcartmama]

I'm not going to pretend to be well-versed in all of the specifics, but here's what I DO know. I was a mathy child. My son is a mathy child. When I was in school in the early 80's (showing my age here!) it was all about drilling the basic facts. We had to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication (2nd grade...I remember memorizing these tables!) and division. Throw in basics such as time, temperature and measurements and you were solid in grammar school.

 

My son, who completed 1st grade in ps last year, can't double all of his numbers to 12, can't subtract in his head and has no idea what an inch is, but he can make change for a $20.00 and read a word problem. It's simply beacuse they don't ask/teach/expect him to. He tested on a 3rd grade level. That's sad and wrong. One of the many reasons we have brought him home for schooling!

[EKS]

I'm not going to pretend to be well-versed in all of the specifics, but here's what I DO know. I was a mathy child. My son is a mathy child. When I was in school in the early 80's (showing my age here!) it was all about drilling the basic facts. We had to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication (2nd grade...I remember memorizing these tables!) and division. Throw in basics such as time, temperature and measurements and you were solid in grammar school.

 

My son, who completed 1st grade in ps last year, can't double all of his numbers to 12, can't subtract in his head and has no idea what an inch is, but he can make change for a $20.00 and read a word problem. It's simply beacuse they don't ask/teach/expect him to. He tested on a 3rd grade level. That's sad and wrong. One of the many reasons we have brought him home for schooling!

 

Right. Between New Math and Reform Math was a period without a name, but was essentially "Cookbook Math" and ran from the mid 70s until the late 80s. It was all about learning procedures without understanding. Reform Math is reacting to the Cookbook Math era.

Edited June 16, 2010 by EKS

[forty-two]

Would you please explain the "everyday math" method. I've been following this thread with much interest. We're bouncing between math programs right now, so that's why I'm asking...:001_smile:

Here's a helpful explanation of EM's various algorithms.