A Convenient Truism

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First a tip of the hat to thethinkingmother blog, an interesting homeschool blog, where I found out about the video that is the subject of this post.

The title of this post is a little strong, but I want to make an important point.

No, I’m not going to rag on Al Gore.

This post is about an interesting and provocative post on youTube, by M.J. McDermott. Ms. McDermott is a meteorologist on a Seattle news station, and she is concerned about the miserable state of math education in this country.

She has done a very nice exposé of some mindless math books and programs that have wormed their way into many school systems.
When you watch the video (I’ve linked to it here) you may be tempted to agree with just about everything, and become “incensed” at the state of affairs.

Me, too.

But it is all too easy to shake our little fists in the air and want to “get back to the good old ways” of doing things. The good old way in this case is what Ms. McDermott calls “The Standard Algorithm.” And there lies the rub.

As a “guerrilla math” advocate, I take like to at least look critically at what we call “standard.” Standard for whom? How high is this standard? What goes above and beyond the standard, and how do we get there?

Face it, standard is, well - standard. It’s “good enough.” And that is true in this case. The “normal” way we multiply large numbers, with pencil and paper, carrying the ones to the tens, dutifully writing one row of partial-products under the next, remembering to put enough zeros behind each new row… - well, it works.

It is not particularly inspiring, nor creative. But it works. Bully.

If you’ve been poking around on this blog, and on mathmojo.com, you’ll know that I think mental math blows the doors out of the “way we are taught in school.” And by that I mean the good old ways as well as the more wussified pap that Ms. McDermott has done such a good and heartfelt job of exposing.

It is ludicrous for anyone past fourth grade to need pencil and paper to do a simple two-digit by two-digit multiplication problem.

The truism refered to in the title is the notion that “the good old way” is somehow the best way. Or that there even is a best way. Or that, if there is one, it’s the one you think is best. Where ever you stopped thinking is where you tend to think the end is.

It occurs to me that the people that other people like to label “liberal” tend to like the “new age” (rhymes with “sewage”) approach to education. That causes the people some like to label “conservative” to backlash, and want to get back to “the good old ways of the good old days.”

But the conservatives forget that the “new age” is a backlash against the fact that the “good old ways” weren’t always so great. I’ll admit that the “standard algorigh” (I’m beginning to hate that term) is better than a lot of the fuzzy “I love you - you love me” feel-good horsefeathers that is sometimes taught. But that old time “drill and kill” stuff just beat the creativity and inquisitiveness out of too may students.

That smug, conservative way of bullying people with “the right way” is as assinine as the liberal “feel-good” B.S. It’s bad enough to bully, but when your “right way” is mearly one step better than “doesn’t suck”, it’s really hard to be inpired by you.

I wish that both sides would chill out and instead of telling us what is right and what is wrong, would go out and do a creative and critical thinking. One without the other is counterproductive.

Mathmojo is a labor of love for me, but I intend to work at it full-time now, until I have written at least one book and made a series of podcasts about each of the four operations, from the basics to turbo-charged streamlined ways to do massive problems.

It’s been slow going, because web-design and programming just aren’t in my blood. I’m getting a handle on the beast now, and I hope to get one good lesson up per day here or on mathmojo.com.

We’re only up to the beginning of intermediate multiplication on “Eating Math for Breakfast”, but when we’re finished with those lessons, I will begin pages, podcasts, flash animations and videocasts of a wonderful and intellectually gratifying way to do huge multiplications mentally, quicker than others can do them with the “standard algorithm” and pencil and paper. Stay tuned and send in your encouraging thoughts. That’s what keeps me going.

An observation: The way most intelligent people consider how using a calculator to solve basic multiplication problems is absurd, is the same way people who do mental math think of using pencil and paper.

The thing is, the better you get at the basics, the more you enjoy them, and the more brain power you are building to use for other things. So why not get really good? Why just be standard? Why just “not suck?”

Touting how great “standard” anything is compared to things that truly suck, is like saying, “Hey, lookey there at that durn fool still riding that mule. He ought to get hisse’f one of these newfangled Model Ts! That’s the fashion!”

While his neighbor in the Ferrari whizzes by dusting both of them, dreaming of the day we’ll all have jet-packs.

Hotcha!

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