The New Math

Tonight I was helping Alison with her homework. She had a worksheet of math problems to do, I think it was about 25 problems, all division. At first I told her to do the problems and I would help her as she needed it but I wanted her to get an answer for each problem before helping to get the right answer. She actually did pretty well.

However there were a couple of problems that she got wrong. When I started to help her she said to me that she had to do it a particular way, a way called the partial quotient method. I remember Sarah being taught something like 3 or 4 different methods for getting the correct answer, but they were all long, complicated, and just generally more of a hassle than it was worth. I tried to show her that the traditional way of doing long division is both easier and faster, but she threw a small fit saying they HAD to do it that way.

I find it funny that the schools teach such stupid methods for finding solutions to rudimentary math but yet, once they get to middle school, they teach the traditional methods. Sarah has even said she doesn't know why they ever taught her the way they did when she was in grade school, because it was all pretty much useless. She was just like Alison, she had to do it one particular way, but once she got to 6th grade it was one way, and that was it. Hopefully I can get through to Alison. Maybe I'll talk to her teacher and see if she minds me teaching her the real way to do math.