How Parents and Taxpayers
Can Get Math Basics Back In Schools
Q. I've
seen young cashiers who can't subtract 14 cents from a dollar and have to rely
on the computer to tell them how much change to give me. I've seen mistakes
made in measuring at my company that have cost us some money. I know that local
teachers don't get to choose the curriculum and instruction methods, so I'm not
blaming them. I'm not blaming anybody, really - I just want tried-and-true,
traditional math back in our schools. I'm ready to tell our school boards and
legislators to make our schools get back to the math basics. But how do I go
about it?
Just about everybody knows we have
to do it - get back to traditional math with basic skills and lots more
computation. Everything from brain research to our nation's international
competitiveness points to that need.
The biggest problem appears to be how to do it in a way that
everybody can live with, including math educators. They are pretty deeply
entrenched with the "fuzzy math" methods that the rest of us agree have to go,
through colleges of education and their national associations.
But here are some common-sense suggestions for how to turn
the tide back to traditional math in schools:
Use
the media. Write letters to the editor and persuade your friends and family
to, too. Use anecdotes like your clueless cashier or expensive measuring
mistakes. If 10 out of the last 10 engineers your company has hired are all
working here on foreign visas because your company couldn't find any Americans
with the math skills for the job, tell about that. Demand traditional math, and
say it loud.
Use
politics. The other side certainly has used political connections to
protect its positions. Why shouldn't those who want traditional curriculum and
instruction to be put back into schools? Whole Math is supported by the
National Science Foundation, the teachers' unions and a host of left-wing
foundations. Why? Because it brings more jobs and resources into the schools,
to reinstruct and remediate all the kids who are left underachieving in math,
ill-prepared for college, or innumerate and not really employable. Tax groups
are a great place to start to build support for traditional math and getting a
better bang for our instructional bucks. Be bold: no one who is NOT employed by
the schools or attempting to contract with them in some manner typically
testifies at many school board meetings on state and local levels, or in front
of legislative committees, on matters such as switching math curricula. If you
have no ax to grind other than wanting improved math instruction, start being a
presence at those meetings and speaking out. Wealthy conservatives and business
owners are no doubt extremely anxious about the math educations of their
grandchildren. So use that emotion to your benefit, to direct political
contributions to candidates who agree that traditional math is best. You'd be
surprised how little money in a campaign contribution to a state senator or
state board of education member will make a huge impact and get you a listening
ear. Then use it! Educate the decisionmakers. Help them overrule the education
bureaucracy.
Do
what works. The back-to-the-basics movement has made great inroads in
reading through the No Child Left Behind grants program, Reading First. They're
beginning to turn around the disaster caused by the Whole Language philosophy
of reading instruction. It's the language equivalent of Whole Math, and it's
also under fire for being ineffective and overly expensive. But Reading First
has some good lessons for the math world to follow. What appears to work is to
offer sizeable federal grants in exchange for offering traditional curriculum
and instruction in schools. Federal support can be a real catalyst, and add
peer pressure to the mix by publicizing the successes of schools which have
gone back to the basics and helped their students do better.
Use
the truth. There is no evidence Whole Math is best. But there's a lot of
evidence that traditional, computation-based math instruction works well. Find
peer-reviewed studies published in bona fide journals and promulgate them.
Count up how many problems there are in a traditional math textbook such as
Saxon Publishing's series, vs. the much fewer number in a Whole Math textbook,
to show how little practice and replication the kids are getting with Whole
Math. Get a sympathetic professor or concerned computer company president to
write an op ed for your local paper.
Study
the success stories. Spend time on these popular math advocacy websites and
model your organization after theirs:
www.mathematicallycorrect.com
www.nychold.com
www.illinoisloop.org/math.html
www.POBMath.com
www.VORMath.info
Use
the Internet. Save money whenever you can by sending links via the Web to
your friends, colleagues, and political decision-makers such as school board
members and state senators. Send these:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymvSFunUjx0
to everyone on your email lists,
and urge the recipients to watch AND send the link on to the people they know.
Please also include the link to
the original video (Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth) in your
emails: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
Homework: Here's a good
article: http://www.ednews.org/articles/8082/1/The-Road-to-Building-Critical-Mass-Or-How-to-Bring-Real-Change-to-US-Mathematics-Education/Page1.html