Posted in Curriculum
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I know it's not fun. I know it's hard work. I know it stretches the brain. But there really is no substitute. My best friend pulled her daughter out of school this year because she was in second grade and she hadn't learned to read. She's going through Hooked on Phonics with her and the little girl is progressing well. But I'm really disappointed in the math aspect of her education up to now as well. It seems that the schools just don't like forcing anyone to memorize anything anymore. They just want the kids to "understand the concepts". But as far as I'm concerned, if the only math a child does before grade 6 is getting the math facts down cold and understanding fractions, they'll be fine. The rest they can pick up really quickly later. The reason that math often goes so slowly is because they haven't memorized the facts. When kids know what 5 * 6 is or what 7 * 8 is without thinking, then doing 5678 * 85 becomes just routine. It's not scary. But when each time they're confronted with a simple multiplication problem like 8 * 5 they have to think about it, math is going to be hard. She is still counting out all her plus 2's on her hand. She knows how to line up double digit addition and figure it out, but it takes her a long time to do it because she doesn't know these facts. She'll learn them all right, but I think it's tragic that we don't stress this enough in our schools. Here's a great link to a Michelle Malkin column about the problem with "Fuzzy Math" and "New Math". It has a 15 minute video embedded in it that is fascinating. Even my 10-year-old was glued to watching it. So check it out! |
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