Interestingly that song is apparently about the first time they tried to massively redesign the mathematics curriculum based on on fuzzy math that we were falling behind the Soviets or whatever. My parents tell me they rebased around set theory early etc but it foundered on nearly the same rocks that common core mathematics is now - teacher must be well educated in the pedagogical paradigm and fully understand it. E.g. you can't just take the same set of teachers from math v1.2.1 and slam them into math v2.1.0 or whatever without significant issues the two approaches are not abi compatible. That's why in my with opinion common core we are seeing teachers test finding answers via method 1 specifically or method 2 specifically rather than encouraging the use of either to get a correct answer by an understood method. /rant
That all sounds about right. The song was from around the time I was in elementary school.
I suspect that part of the problem is that teaching math concepts is at least somewhat orthogonal to drilling kids on being able to perform basic arithmetic operations fluently. Of course, these days I assume at least some of the debate probably gets into the fact that being able to do, say, long division quickly has about the same utility as learning Palmer script.
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That's hardly a new thing with common core. See Tom Lehrer's "The New Math."
"...But in the new approach, As you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, Rather than to get the right answer."
Interestingly that song is apparently about the first time they tried to massively redesign the mathematics curriculum based on on fuzzy math that we were falling behind the Soviets or whatever. My parents tell me they rebased around set theory early etc but it foundered on nearly the same rocks that common core mathematics is now - teacher must be well educated in the pedagogical paradigm and fully understand it. E.g. you can't just take the same set of teachers from math v1.2.1 and slam them into math v2.1.0 or whatever without significant issues the two approaches are not abi compatible. That's why in my with opinion common core we are seeing teachers test finding answers via method 1 specifically or method 2 specifically rather than encouraging the use of either to get a correct answer by an understood method. /rant
That all sounds about right. The song was from around the time I was in elementary school.
I suspect that part of the problem is that teaching math concepts is at least somewhat orthogonal to drilling kids on being able to perform basic arithmetic operations fluently. Of course, these days I assume at least some of the debate probably gets into the fact that being able to do, say, long division quickly has about the same utility as learning Palmer script.