New Math

The receptionist person where I go for PT has 2 kids, one of whom is in, I think, 4th grade. She’s entertained me several times with the tough homework her kid brings home. Like:

What do the following have in common?

assess
banana
revive

There were others, but I can’t remember them. Anyone know the answer?

Last week or so we discussed math and how they are currently teaching division.

Here’s how I learned to do it. 12 into 16, then 12 into 36.

But here’s how her daughter is being taught to do it. You know that 12 will go into 162 at least 10 times so you write ten down. And you know 12 will go into 42 at least 3 times so you write 3 down. Then add the numbers on the right together and you get the answer.

How weird is that? In a way, it makes sense but not by much. Math is about breaking it down and putting it back together again. This way is about taking guesses and putting your guesses together when you’ve run out of them.

When I was in 4th grade, I had Mrs. Reel (shudder) for my math teacher. She didn’t like me because of a problem with my older sibling 2yrs prior. I didn’t like her, either. Anyway, she had me doing division in some sort of twisted way and I just could not wrap my brain around it. Instead of teaching me another way, she tried to force it on me. Didn’t work. Finally, I’d had enough and just could not do the in-class work. I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms. She got mad, drug me outside to the hall, and beat my butt with a paddle. I’d barely sat down when the school secretary came to get me. This did not please Mrs. Reel one bit because her favorite “Watch The Idiot Do the Problem” toy was leaving. She made me wait until she wrote a note to my parents (it was my grandfather who had come to get me).

That night, my father whopped me again for being a snot then sat me down (how ironic) to have me show him how bad I was at division. I tried to show him, he got all freaked out, showed me another way, and in less than 5 minutes, I could do any division problem he gave me. He went to school the next day and ripped Mrs. Reel a new you-know-what. He was furious that she’d not even tried to show me another way. He had her give me any division problem and had me do it. I did it. She was floored and, sigh, mad at me again.

As a historical side note, my grandfather came to get me that day because my mother had become very ill. That day was the beginning of a new phase of my life. Mrs. Reel’s treatment of me was just a small part of a huge upheaval but I remember it better than the rest. Perhaps because it was something my young brain could grasp while the rest of it was chaos.