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Math 'remedies' don't make sense

Published October 29th, 2009 | 0 Comments

I’ve been reading news stories about how poorly Tennessee students are performing on mathematics tests and comments from school officials about what they are doing to improve the performance.

I’m puzzled because the remedies that have been offered are to increase the class time for algebra and upper-level math classes. The testing, however, is done at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels. At the fourth-grade level, I expect the requirement to be that students should be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. By the eighth grade, students would have been exposed to fractions (fifth grade) decimals (sixth grade) square root, and simple formulas for calculating ratio and proportion.

From conversations over the years with grandchildren, nieces and nephews and children of my neighbors, I’ve been amazed to learn that many schools do not require memorization of the multiplication tables through nine times nine. It appears that the “new math” doesn’t require memorization, but it does introduce concepts of base-two systems that have little application in the ordinary tasks of life and serves not only to confuse students who haven’t yet learned to count change or balance a checkbook, but many of their teachers as well.

Murvin H. Perry

Johnson City

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