Educational focus on fads doesn’t add up
Our children need fundamentals, not the latest gimmick, Tara Houle writes.
Recently, my daughter’s dance studio did something revolutionary — they adopted an exam system for their pupils. Their reasoning was shocking: To ensure their student’s 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 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 classrooms. Ample evidence illustrates there has been a significant decline in our students’ math performance over the past 15 years, and we also know the percentage of our top math students has fallen dramatically. Tutoring rates have recently skyrocketed, as parents are now scrambling to ensure their kids learn the fundamentals properly — something lacking in today’s classrooms.
This spike in enrolment correlates with an increased use of problem-based learning in our schools. Yet education leaders don’t want to acknowledge the tutoring phenomenon. Are our ministry officials afraid of what they might find?
Let’s compare for a moment the methods that are now 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 subtraction sentences, and the use of calculators as early as Grade 2. There is little emphasis on mastering any arithmetic procedure, let alone ensuring kids memorize their multiplication tables. Unfortunately, these glaring deficiencies underlie a much bigger problem with math education in this province. With all the millions of taxpayer dollars 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. What, exactly, are we paying for?
A review of the curricula and textbooks used in B.C. over the past 125 years raises serious questions about the Education Ministry’s new direction. The familiar refrain of how 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 is 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 kids had the opportunity to learn 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 that textbooks don’t have to be used in conjunction with the new education plan. Instead of rigorous standards, educators will be encouraged to use whatever resources they want, most of which will be based on the hyped-up progressive fads that education consultants promote at BCTF-sponsored workshops. Those teachers who try to use successful, straightforward methods are labelled dinosaurs, and some have been shuffled out of their districts for refusing to 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 been eradicated in B.C. classrooms. There is a rabid fervour promoting 21st-century learning, and insisting that inquiry-based learning take precedence over everything else.
However, the basic fundamental principles of arithmetic are non-negotiable. Without establishing a strong foundation at the elementary level, any attempts at Math 10, pre-calculus or entry-level 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 (or send them to your MLA). It’s time they acknowledge the mess they’ve created.
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. Tara Houle, WISEMathBC founder