So I am not going to take any stand on the pedagogical question of how we should be teaching kids math since I have no experience teaching them. However, as a math major, I assure you that the latter method is much sounder mathematically. There really is no such thing as subtraction (or division) in the foundations of mathematics -- those just emerge from using additive inverses (negative numbers) or multiplicative inverses (1/x) in standard addition and multiplication. The first approach is really the derivative and, in a certain sense, false approach. People who are opposing the approach they dont know or use because it doesnt make sense are inherently biased on the question. Of course the method you were taught and have used for decades is what makes more sense to you, but that has no bearing on whether it is actually a better approach or not. The right approach to answering this question, in my opinion, is to answer two questions. The first is why are we teaching kids math? If we are teaching them math as a form of logic based on the idea that they are learning a broader set of skills from it (this is the position the Common Core has taken), then the second method is clearly superior because it is the actual mathematical logic of subtraction. If we are teaching them math for its instrumental value (so they can calculate tips), then we need to answer the second question of which method is easier for kids to learn? I dont know the answer to that question, but it is an empirical question that research can pretty easily answer, but anecdotes about how a particular person learned or thinks about math are pretty irrelevant. Personally, with my bias as a liberal artsy math major, I think we should teach math for its broader benefits, not just its instrumental value. If we are only teaching math for its instrumental value then we might as well just have one semester of smartphone calculator skills and be done with it -- given the absurd amount of computing power now available to us theres not much reason to teach people to calculate by hand from an instrumental perspective.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 17:37:03 +0000
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