An "I Told You So," -- Eight Years Coming

On the New York Times front page today was a surprising flashback from, well, 10th Grade. Way back then, I threw a giant stink when the school district was trying to implement "New Math," aka "Core Math." I went to school board meetings, made it into the paper, and generally made very few friends among the math teachers and administrators of the public school I had just joined.

My major complaints were that the new teaching styles and concepts had not been empirically tested, and the students in our district were being used as lab rats. The SAT/ACT tested the traditional styles of math. The entire "Core Math" theory was modeled out of a California trial that had eventually gotten scrapped when the students' test scores started sinking. So our school board in all it's wisdom, decided to give it a try in our district... Essentially we were getting screwed in our math educations. The school district eventually caved and let me take my math at the local college, but I was the squeaky wheel. Not everyone had that option.

Well today I received my due reward. The NYTimes printed "As Math Scores Lag, A New Push for the Basics." Read it if you can (subscription might be needed).

"The changes are being driven by students’ lagging performance on international tests and mathematicians’ warnings that more than a decade of so-called reform math — critics call it fuzzy math — has crippled students with its de-emphasizing of basic drills and memorization in favor of allowing children to find their own ways to solve problems."

“When my oldest child, an A-plus stellar student, was in sixth grade, I realized he had no idea, no idea at all, how to do long division,” Ms. Backman said, “so I went to school and talked to the teacher, who said, ‘We don’t teach long division; it stifles their creativity.’ ”

"Across the nation, the reconsideration of what should be taught and how has been accelerated by a report in September by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the nation’s leading group of math teachers."

"It was a report from this same group in 1989 that influenced a generation of teachers to let children explore their own solutions to problems, write and draw pictures about math, and use tools like the calculator at the same time they learn algorithms."

So... In short. I was right. HAHAHAHAHA!!! Okay. I'm being mature about this. But there are a few math teachers I feel like calling up right now. "I saw through this as a 10th grader!"

Musical Fodder for my Writing:
"Snow (Hey Oh)" Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Stadium Arcadium