Fred 呉怡龍

I haven't been moved to post in a while, but I read this article today and just had to put in my two cents.

The article is titled Parents Rise Up Against A New Approach to Math and is about certain schools teaching kids how to do basic math in a different way than the traditional multiplication tables and flashcards.

At first, I was thinking, geez, they're not teaching multiplication tables anymore? What's up with that?

Then, I saw this:

Memorization will only carry you so far," Knight said. "With 'Investigations,' kids understand the real values of the numbers and are not doing shortcuts. When they multiply 23 times 5, they'll do five 20s to get 100, and then add five 3s to get 15, and they put that all together and get 115. What they've done is made actual use of the numbers.

and that really struck a nerve, because that's how I actually do math in my head! And I actually started doing that kind of math spontaneously--nobody taught it to me, but I somehow stumbled onto this "style" and realized that it just worked better and faster so I've been doing it ever since.

So this "New Math" business might actually be onto something after all.