Fuzzy Math

A mathematician with child learns some politics
By Barry Garelick

I am not a mathematics teacher, but I have a degree in mathematics and an intense interest in how the subject is taught. When I retire, I would like to teach math, which is why I started tutoring high school students in my spare time three years ago.

Confronted with what I thought could be a common problem, I was still unaware that what I was really seeing was a national crisis in mathematics education.

An A-Maze-ing Approach To Math

There is a war raging all around us, a war the United States cannot afford to lose. No one has died in this war, and no one is likely to. But there are casualties. The injuries are mental rather than physical, but the suffering is lifelong. I’m not referring to the global war on terror or the war on drugs. I’m talking about the mathematics war.

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This web site is devoted to the concerns raised by parents and scientists about the invasion of our schools by the New-New Math and the need to restore basic skills to math education.

Mathematics achievement in America is far below what we would like it to be. Recent “reform” efforts only aggravate the problem. As a result, our children have less and less exposure to rigorous, content-rich mathematics.

Mathematically Correct

For almost two decades, mathematics education in K-12 classrooms has been driven by unsupported pedagogical theories constructed in our schools of education and propagated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Their curricular and pedagogical “vision” for mathematics education reform, articulated in the two NCTM standards documents (1989 and 2000), has dominated local, state, and federal education decision-making and policies, as well as public discussions and press coverage.

Sandra Stotsky’s The Myths and Realities about FUZZY MATH

The Investigations program is very bad because it omits standard computational methods, standard formulas, and standard terminology. TERC says this is now obsolete, due to the power of $5 calculators. They claim their program moves “beyond arithmetic” to offer “significant math,” including important ideas from probability, statistics, 3-D geometry, and number theory.

Bill Quirk’s TERC Hands-On Math: The Truth is in the Details