Sunday, November 30, 2003
Number 2 Pencil: Bright student, dim teacher
Number 2 Pencil: Bright student, dim teacher: "November 24, 2003
Bright student, dim teacher
Devoted Reader Mike recently sent along an amusing (in a black humor, how-stupid-can-people-be? sort of way) article about a bright seventh-grade student at an Ohio school who supposedly 'invented' a new math process. I was going to comment on the story myself, and then I realized that Mike had included in the email his own comments, which said exactly what I was going to say.
So here's the article in italics, with Mike's comments interspersed in regular font:
----------------------------
Killie Rick found a new solution to subtraction problems involving whole numbers and fractions. She used the concept of negative numbers in a way that has never been done before, as far as her seventh-grade teacher has been able to ascertain.
Emphasis on the 'as far as her 7th-grade teacher knows'.
This was the problem: 8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = ?
Now all teachers know that you're supposed to do '5 time 8 is 40, plus 2 is 42, write down 42/5, then 5 times 5 .......' and eventually you get to 2 4/5.
Killie Rick realized that the symbol '8 2/5' really means '8 + 2/5', so then she did
8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5 = 2 4/5
'I've never seen anybody do this, said Colin McCabe, Killies teacher. It simplifies it by taking out three steps (to find a solution). I went home and tried to find fault with it, but I couldn't. I got online and did research, and I talked to friends of mine from college, and I can't find anybody who's seen this.'
Tried to find fault with it? Sheesh. Somebody ought to tell him about:
(a + b) - (c + d) = (a - c) + (b - d).
And that 3 1/2 really means 3 + 1/2.
But there's more. This is the part that makes me want to throw something across the room:
"I think a lot of credit should go to the teacher, said Anne Steck, the schools principal. I know lots of math teachers who would've looked at Killie's work and just said it was wrong."
Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!
----------------------------
What he said. The realization that neither this seventh-grade math teacher nor any of his college buddies knows about this technique is appalling. But for the principal to give credit to the teacher for not marking a correct answer as wrong is appalling and incredibly insulting to the little girl who figured it out for herself. Not to mention completely egotistical; do they really think that no one has ever used negative numbers in this way?
It is true that, when one looks online, almost every K-12 "dealing with mixed numbers" lesson plan mentions only the least common denominator, convert-to-improper-fractions method. Some of them do so clearly, others do not; this page uses a method so jumbled and jargon-ladled that I have no idea what they're trying to teach. But, this page mentions the borrowing technique the girl used at the end when she converted 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5. And this page, at the very end, mentions the method the girl used when she subtracted the two whole numbers and then the two fractions, and then converted them to positive numbers (although the page doesn't summarize it as a concise formula as Mike did, above).
So, at the very least, with only five minutes of Googling, I've manage to disprove the idea that "no one" has ever used negative numbers in this fashion. Guess the teacher above is as bad at web searching as he is at understanding improper fractions.
Update: *Sigh.* In case I did not make it crystal clear above, I found this story appalling because (a) the teacher only knew one way to solve the problem, which is one less than one of his students, (b) a competent math teacher would not have had to do research to validate this method, thus, (c) the student should not have to share any of the credit with the teacher for this. I'm appalled that the school is sharing any of the glory, when (a) this teacher is demonstrably incapable of teaching alternate methods, and (b) the little girl figured it out all by herself.
I thought the little girl should have gotten all the credit, not just some of it. My Google search was not to take credit away from the student, but to point out that her teacher obviously doesn't understand seventh-grade mathematics very well.
Sheesh. My first piece of hate mail, and the writer completely misconstrued what I wrote (and called me a lot of nasty names to boot).
Posted by kswygert at November 24, 2003 09:47 AM | TrackBack"
The new, new math?????
Bright student, dim teacher
Devoted Reader Mike recently sent along an amusing (in a black humor, how-stupid-can-people-be? sort of way) article about a bright seventh-grade student at an Ohio school who supposedly 'invented' a new math process. I was going to comment on the story myself, and then I realized that Mike had included in the email his own comments, which said exactly what I was going to say.
So here's the article in italics, with Mike's comments interspersed in regular font:
----------------------------
Killie Rick found a new solution to subtraction problems involving whole numbers and fractions. She used the concept of negative numbers in a way that has never been done before, as far as her seventh-grade teacher has been able to ascertain.
Emphasis on the 'as far as her 7th-grade teacher knows'.
This was the problem: 8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = ?
Now all teachers know that you're supposed to do '5 time 8 is 40, plus 2 is 42, write down 42/5, then 5 times 5 .......' and eventually you get to 2 4/5.
Killie Rick realized that the symbol '8 2/5' really means '8 + 2/5', so then she did
8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5 = 2 4/5
'I've never seen anybody do this, said Colin McCabe, Killies teacher. It simplifies it by taking out three steps (to find a solution). I went home and tried to find fault with it, but I couldn't. I got online and did research, and I talked to friends of mine from college, and I can't find anybody who's seen this.'
Tried to find fault with it? Sheesh. Somebody ought to tell him about:
(a + b) - (c + d) = (a - c) + (b - d).
And that 3 1/2 really means 3 + 1/2.
But there's more. This is the part that makes me want to throw something across the room:
"I think a lot of credit should go to the teacher, said Anne Steck, the schools principal. I know lots of math teachers who would've looked at Killie's work and just said it was wrong."
Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!
----------------------------
What he said. The realization that neither this seventh-grade math teacher nor any of his college buddies knows about this technique is appalling. But for the principal to give credit to the teacher for not marking a correct answer as wrong is appalling and incredibly insulting to the little girl who figured it out for herself. Not to mention completely egotistical; do they really think that no one has ever used negative numbers in this way?
It is true that, when one looks online, almost every K-12 "dealing with mixed numbers" lesson plan mentions only the least common denominator, convert-to-improper-fractions method. Some of them do so clearly, others do not; this page uses a method so jumbled and jargon-ladled that I have no idea what they're trying to teach. But, this page mentions the borrowing technique the girl used at the end when she converted 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5. And this page, at the very end, mentions the method the girl used when she subtracted the two whole numbers and then the two fractions, and then converted them to positive numbers (although the page doesn't summarize it as a concise formula as Mike did, above).
So, at the very least, with only five minutes of Googling, I've manage to disprove the idea that "no one" has ever used negative numbers in this fashion. Guess the teacher above is as bad at web searching as he is at understanding improper fractions.
Update: *Sigh.* In case I did not make it crystal clear above, I found this story appalling because (a) the teacher only knew one way to solve the problem, which is one less than one of his students, (b) a competent math teacher would not have had to do research to validate this method, thus, (c) the student should not have to share any of the credit with the teacher for this. I'm appalled that the school is sharing any of the glory, when (a) this teacher is demonstrably incapable of teaching alternate methods, and (b) the little girl figured it out all by herself.
I thought the little girl should have gotten all the credit, not just some of it. My Google search was not to take credit away from the student, but to point out that her teacher obviously doesn't understand seventh-grade mathematics very well.
Sheesh. My first piece of hate mail, and the writer completely misconstrued what I wrote (and called me a lot of nasty names to boot).
Posted by kswygert at November 24, 2003 09:47 AM | TrackBack"
The new, new math?????
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]