Parents call for a return to basic math

Petition to Education Ministry asks for changes to curriculum, including multiplication and long division

As B.C. moves forward in making its education system more flexible and innovative, some people are calling for a return to the basics. North Saanich mother Tara Houle, who has a petition urging more teaching of basic math, questions the wisdom of the Education Ministry’s plan.

“What evidence exists that this new plan will actually work? When 550,000 schoolchildren are being used as guinea pigs in an untested experiment, who will hold our policy-makers accountable?” Houle asks.

Houle says she watched her two children, who are now in middle school, struggle with math until she put them in a math learning centre.

“I am shocked, dismayed and frustrated at the various math concepts that are employed in our classrooms today.

“As opposed to encouraging and teaching children to solve problems, these various methods simply confuse and overwhelm young minds,” Houle says in the petition, which has 445 signatures and calls on the government to return to common sense mathematics in the classroom.

A similar resolution was passed by the provincial parent body, the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, last May. It calls for the group to urgently request the following changes to the math curriculum: the mastery of math facts including multiplication tables to 10, the mastery of addition, subtraction, multiplication, long division and basic fractions.

“We really just need to take a breath and look at what we are doing,” Houle said. “We need to really focus on what works and give as much support as we can to our teachers. Where is the evidence that this type of learning will be a success?”

There are similar movements in Ontario and Alberta, where the government recently adjusted its math classes to make sure students memorize their times tables. In England, the government announced this week that all children will be expected to know their times tables when they leave primary school.

George Bluman, a professor emeritus of math at the University of British Columbia, said it is a fine balance between learning the basics, which everyone has to learn, but also going beyond the basics to learn conceptually.

“Students coming out of schools should have a conceptual understanding and they should have a strong emphasis on problem solving,” Bluman said.

“A discovery-learning approach requires the teacher to be more of an expert than otherwise. If you want to teach problem solving, you have to know how to solve the problem in many different ways — we all learn in different ways — and you need a much better understanding of the subject matter to do that. You can’t have creativity without the basics.”

Coquitlam mother of three Ramona Chu, who has a math degree and tutors some friends’ children, says more students are falling through the cracks because they don’t have the basic facts, which she says are best taught through play.

“I feel the current curriculum, at the elementary level, tries to teach ‘play,’ but fails. In the secondary years, I find many students are confused because they don’t understand the basics,” Chu said.

The most recent math curriculum in B.C. was developed in 2007 and does not mention long division. It includes concepts like “mental mathematics strategies for multiplication and division facts to 81” instead of memorizing the times tables.

All of B.C.’s education system is undergoing a curriculum redesign, with an emphasis on “competencies” such as critical thinking and communication.

The draft math curriculum also doesn’t include long division or memorization of times tables. Rather, the focus is on problem solving and developing mathematical “habits of mind.” It also includes a focus on financial literacy, starting in Grade 1, and applying math to real-life situations.

Although memorization of math facts is not explicitly in the curriculum, many teachers still teach these skills.