Province is botching mathematics education
Recently, my daughter’s dance studio did something revolutionary: They adopted an exam system for their pupils.
Their reasoning for this was shocking. In order to ensure their students’ progress in a more meaningful manner, rigorous practice and assessment would be required — both for their instructors and their students. In short, students would be trained properly under the watchful eye of their knowledgeable instructors, and then be held accountable to demonstrate their understanding and performance, by attending exam preparation sessions and a final exam. These students are in good hands.
Unfortunately, this same attention to detail isn’t happening in today’s math class. Ample evidence illustrates there has been a significant decline in our students’ math performance over the past 15 years, and we also know that the percentage of our top math students has fallen dramatically.
Tutoring rates have recently skyrocketed, as parents are scrambling to ensure their kids learn the fundamentals properly — something that is lacking in today’s classrooms. This spike in enrolment correlates with an increased use of inquiry/problembased learning in our schools.
Yet education leaders don’t want to acknowledge the tutoring phenomenon. They are silent when asked to investigate this issue, to determine how many kids are using tutors, and if so, why? Are our ministry officials interested, or are they afraid of what they might find out?
So let’s compare for a moment the methods that are being emphasized, in comparison to what once was the standard. Today, we have manipulatives such as fraction strips, as opposed to learning fractional arithmetic, explaining one’s work rather than adding and subtracting in columns, creating multiple strategies to write addition and/or subtraction sentences and using calculators as early as Grade 2. There is very little emphasis on mastering any arithmetic procedure, let alone ensuring kids memorize their times tables.
Unfortunately, these glaring deficiencies underlie a much bigger problem with math education in this province. With all the millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on a new curriculum, very little attention has been given to the cognitive evidence behind effective math instruction, leaving kids frustrated and teachers exasperated. So what, exactly, are we paying for?
A review of the curricula and textbooks used in British Columbia over the past 125 years also raises serious questions about the ministry’s new direction. The familiar refrain that the world is changing and the requirement to break the factory-school model is as relevant now as it was in 1895. But what has changed are the content and the methods for teaching our kids.
Previous lessons were rigorous, and they provided ample practice time and classroom guidance to ensure all children had the opportunity to learn their math fundamentals. In contrast, today’s resources, such as Math Makes Sense, are chaotic in design, offer very few challenging problems for students to solve and support an increased dependence on calculators and manipulatives.
Math Makes Sense is also riddled with errors and inaccuracies, yet the ministry continues to endorse this textbook for classroom instruction. Even scarier are rumours suggesting that textbooks don’t have to be used in conjunction with the new B.C. Education plan.
Instead of rigorous standards to be upheld, educators will be encouraged to use whatever resources they want, most of which will be based on the hypedup progressive fads that education consultants promote at B.C. Teachers’ Federation and/or ministry-sponsored workshops. Those teachers who try to use successful, straightforward methods are labelled dinosaurs, and some have been shuffled out of their districts if they do not conform.
If we truly want to ensure our kids have a bright future, we must first build on the successes of the past, and bring that forward for them. That has not happened here. Successful methods of teaching mathematics have all been eradicated from British Columbia classrooms.
There is a rabid fervour promoting 21st-century learning, and insisting that inquiry-based learning take precedence over everything else. However, the fundamental principles of arithmetic are non-negotiable. Without mastering these crucial facts at the elementary level, any attempts at Math 10, pre-calculus or entrylevel university mathematics will end in failure.
If we allow our education leaders to bury the past, these successful methods will cease to exist. Our two-tier education system has been created by their inability to acknowledge best practices. Send them your tutoring bills.
It’s time for them to acknowledge the mess that they have created. Tara Houle is a parent advocate and founder of WISEMathBC. She lives in North Saanich.