Responding to the following anecdote: A friend of mine who launched one of the nation’s first, statewide specialty schools in math and science once told me a story about a teacher who walked into his classroom one day with all the principles and strategies of the latest standards for teaching mathematics well in hand. Of course this was back in the days when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics was busy setting the stage for the development of math standards in the many states that the pro-CCSS Fordham Institute has recently graded as equal or superior to the CCSS. As the teacher proceeded with his lesson, he became increasingly annoyed by a student who was dead asleep, sprawled out with his head down on his desk in the very front row of the classroom. Finally, the teacher could stand it no more and admonished the student for not even giving his innovative teaching half a chance to get him engaged in learning math in a deeper and more relevant way. Startled, the student looked up at the teacher, politely waited for the teacher to finish scolding him, and said: “Well, go ahead and teach then – – – it don’t bother me none.” I wrote in reply: Of course, “your friend” (or you) was adopting a vastly older story that in fact applied more aptly to more typical and traditional classroom teaching of many subjects and which cuts far deeper than NCTM or Common Core, as an honest critic would admit up front. James Milgram is a very knowledgeable mathematician. What he knows about the core issues for teaching K-12 (or more importantly, K-5) mathematics is highly debatable and in practice approaches zero, other than the fact that I’m sure he knows about the natural, whole, integer, and rational numbers and their operations, though not likely how to explain them to or lead any kids to understand them, particularly not without already being at or near the level of advanced calculus and/or abstract algebra. Not my go-to guy on real problems of teaching mathematics to children. Not close. Nor are any of his Mathematically Correct and NYC-HOLD compatriots. Far better would be to read and heed the work of people like the oft-maligned (by the above two groups) Constance Kamii, a student of Jean Piaget. And dozens and dozens of mathematics education researchers who have taught elementary school in recent memory, actually work with real children and their real teachers, and are familiar with the main body of research literature in the field. Our MC/HOLD buddies disdain such people and their work, UNLESS their conclusions happen to dovetail with anti-progressive biases. Otherwise, Milgram would sooner listen to Sandra Stotsky, who has no background whatsoever in mathematics or mathematics education, is a paid stooge of the Walton Family in her position at U of Arkansas, and gets to serve on these national math panels because. . . ? ? ? Politics and money, period. Yet our James thinks she hung the moon. Deborah Ball, a former elementary mathematics teacher, doctorate in mathematics education, dean of the University of Michigan School of Education? Not so much. If you don’t think that’s odd and unprofessional and highly political, then perhaps you need to think more than you do about what’s going on. I say everything above as an OPPONENT of CCSS-I, but not of particular ideas within them that make sense and have since they first appeared anywhere between 25 and hundreds of years ago. But the Math Wars types like Milgram are never going to bother to read the history of mathematics or care about it if they did. They’ve not had a new idea about math teaching since they left grammar school and never will. They’re fighting to preserve the principles and practices of 19th century Prussian military training in the mistaken belief that these are all-American in every way. But of course, they’re quite other than that, anti-democratic, anti-freedom, and most of all, anti-child. If the kid in the made-up anecdote wants to sleep, that’s his call, but why he wants to may be in some part on the teacher, the school, the curriculum, the insipid assumptions of American schooling (as opposed to educating) that don’t reach a vast number of kids, including the ones who seem to be thriving in it, but instead are just playing the game of studenting, not learning). -Michael Paul Goldenberg Jacky Boyd
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 12:57:23 +0000