[HN Gopher] The Teaching of Arithmetic I: The Story of an experi...
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The Teaching of Arithmetic I: The Story of an experiment (1935)
Author : barry-cotter
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-06-10 07:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inference.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inference.org.uk)
| WalterGR wrote:
| (1935)
|
| Actual title: The Teaching of Arithmetic I: The Story of an
| experiment
| mtdewcmu wrote:
| What's the TL;DR of this? I finished part 1 and and I lost faith
| that this was heading toward any conclusion.
| andai wrote:
| I really like the writing style used here. Nobody writes like
| that anymore, although it was considered normal for centuries.
| What happened to make it go away, and when?
| lisper wrote:
| Twitter. 2007. Wrtng hz nvr bn the sm snc.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > In the fall of 1929 I made up my mind to try the experiment of
| abandoning all formal instruction in arithmetic below the seventh
| grade and concentrating on teaching the children to read, to
| reason, and to recite - my new Three R's.
|
| > I was so delighted with the success of the experiment so far
| that in the fall of 1930 we started six or seven other rooms
| along the same line. The formal arithmetic was dropped and
| emphasis was placed on English expression, on reasoning, and
| estimating of distances.
|
| > In other words these children, by avoiding the early drill on
| combinations, tables, and that sort of thing, had been able, in
| one year, to attain the level of accomplishment which the
| traditionally taught children had reached after three and one-
| half years of arithmetical drill
| andi999 wrote:
| It might just be that older children learn faster. And same
| results might happen in any subject. Here they started to teach
| a foreign language from grade 1. After 4 years kids usually
| reach the same level the would have had end of grade 5 when
| instruction started at beginning of grade 5.
| Raidion wrote:
| I did fairly well in maths, and I still resonated with this. It
| wasn't until I was deep into university that I realized that
| higher level maths were a game of sorts. I enjoyed it to a point,
| but found myself asking "what's the point?". Calculus was an
| exception because it really does start with "how do we find an
| area under a curve" and ties in closely with the physics concepts
| of finding velocity/acceleration/jerk.
|
| I think bringing interesting problems to students and enabling
| them to think about those problems naturally before introducing
| abstract concepts is always the way to go. Teaching
| inquisitiveness and building confidence that they can solve
| problems will serve them far better than more multiplication
| memorization.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| It's a pity that primary education isn't done this way now. As
| far as I can tell it is worse than ever with children being
| regularly tested but never taught how to think.
| lkbm wrote:
| It's not quite the same, but there've been several efforts in
| the US to shift math education away from "memorize this
| algorithm for addition, this one for multiplication, etc." and
| instead get kids to understand our number system.
|
| New Math was ridiculed for it[0], and now Common Core[1]. "Why
| are you teaching kids these inefficient ways of multiplying
| instead of memorizing the standard algorithm?"
|
| Despite it being the focus of Tom Leher's song, my go-to test
| for "Do you understand our number system?" _is_ "Can you work
| out a multiplication problem in base 8?"
|
| If you understand the concept of digits, you can solve
| multiplication in other bases, and likely have solid grasp on
| how our number system work. From there, you'll understand both
| the standard arithmetic algorithms and will be able to figure
| out your own shortcuts. If you lack this understanding, you're
| likely stuck just mindlessly using the algorithm you were
| taught.
|
| (One other thing I'd also like for us to add is Fermi problems.
| Physics students learn to estimate everything from the mass of
| the earth to the number of dogs in their city. Seems like
| something everyone would benefit from practicing and that kids
| would really enjoy.)
|
| [0] Tom Leher has a famous and delightful song about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBkQAxt1JXA (This is more a
| defense of Common Core, but in response to the common
| complaint.)
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