Category: homeschooling

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Are you a homeschool parent struggling to teach your child math? Or are you just frustrated by the way your kid’s school teaches math? You’re definitely not alone, and you’re in great company.

Here is part of a story from a father who faced the same thing. It’s a comment left by Mark, a reader at the MathNotations blog.

You should read the entire article, then scroll down to the comments where the exchange between Paul Michael Goldenberg and myself (Brian) begins. Read them to understand the background to the great comment by Mark, which is partially reproduced here:

“I had a 4th grader who was being just totally crushed. I tried to help with math homework, but the assignments were chaotic. He just finally refused to even try to do his math homework. To see tears in his eyes and protest, “I’m not good in math, Dad!” broke my heart.

“I took him home, and found out that he could do not complete a 10 x 10 multiplication table or do any long division. I concocted a non-stressful systematic build-from-a-foundation scheme. We used a variety of manipulatives, including an abacus for computation. (I guess you and I think alike, eh?) I taught him basic algebra using a balance and weights: keep the pans level, and that’s an equation analogue.

“Upshot: he started calculus at age 16.”

Amazing! What a motivation for you to try your own ways (with or without Math Mojo methods) to help your child. Of course, not everyone can know as much math as Mark (I sure don’t!) but you can do plenty with the methods you can find on this site, and in Mark’s comments (click the link to MathNotations, above, to get there).

So head out there and read them now.

Wait! The author of that comment just left a terrific comment below. Make sure you read it if you are trying to teach your child math.

This post is a continuation of the other posts about the video on YouTube entitled “An Inconvenient Truth” with M.J McDermott (not to be confused with Al Gore’s film) which concerns the dismal state of American basic math education in public schools. You can view it here.

M.J. had two good premises, but her conclusion does not jibe. “Their methods suck.” (True.) “My method is better.” (True.) “Therefore mine is the one everyone should use.” (Nahhhhh.)

Why don’t you experiment a lot and discover what works best for you, and keep refining it? It can be so much more fun and rewarding to do that. Respect your mind, not the opinions and emotional responses that were put there by others in the past. Try this stuff out, then decide.

It’s important to mention that people who think it’s OK not to learn the basic arithmetical operations because “you can do it with a calculator” are just plain damn dumb. That’s like saying, “Hey, this ‘walking’ stuff sucks. It takes effort! Why do we need to learn to walk? That takes years! Let’s just give everyone a wheelchair!’

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I’m tipping my mitt a little early, because the intermediate multiplication lessons are not finished yet. But I thought people should have easy access to the basic method for advanced multiplication. This is the tip of the iceberg, but everyone should at least be able to do this method. Anything less than that is either merely standard or substandard.

Here’s the “mystery algorithm” for 26 * 31, or any other set of two-digit numbers. Keep in mind that the description is much longer than the problem should take. After a little practice, it should take no longer than 10 seconds to do a problem like this in your head.

Step 1:
Multiply the digits in the ones columns of both numbers together. That would be the 1 ( of 31) and the 6 (of 26). That gives you 6. That’s the final digit of the product.

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