An Alberta mom has collected thousands of signatures on a petition asking Alberta’s minister of education to abandon “new math” and re-instate traditional ways of teaching basic mathematics.
Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies says she realized there was something wrong with the way math was being taught when her daughter, who is in Grade 3 and who once excelled in math, told her she now dreads it.
“I spoke to my daughter and realized she was hating math because she found it difficult to understand and she felt she had no ability to do math,” Tran-Davies told CTV News Channel Thursday.
“I found that unacceptable because I knew she was bright and quite capable of doing math.”
In 2008, Alberta Education overhauled its math program, putting less emphasis on traditional approaches such as memorizing multiplication tables, and putting more focus on understanding on how to find answers for themselves.
Students are now taught several calculation "strategies" to get to a solution, in the hope that they will discover a method that works best for them. But Tran-Davies and other parents say the problem is that schools are not encouraging kids to master any one method.
The result is that students become overwhelmed and confused by the need to grasp each approach and end up with a weak understanding of basic concepts.
Tran-Davies started a petition a month ago calling for changes, which has been signed more than 4,000 times. Earlier this week, Nhung Tran-Davies delivered the petition to Alberta Education Tuesday.
The Calmar, Alta. mother says conventional teaching methods that focus on memorization are more efficient and effective than “creative” problem-solving approaches, and give children the basics.
“We know through practice and experience that children can achieve mastery of the fundamentals through the basics – that is knowing the times tables, knowing long division, doing vertical math and having the ability to have automatic recalls,” she said.
She added it’s important that children not lose confidence in their math skills, so they aren’t tempted to cut themselves off from education paths that focus on math.
“If they gain mastery of the fundamentals, they will have confidence in their ability and have a solid foundation from which to build innovative and creative ideas,” she said.
Alberta Education officials say the new math system works because it acknowledges there are several ways to get an answer.
“It cannot be memorization on its own. There must be an understanding of what they are doing,” Alberta Education’s director of mathematics, arts and communication, Christine Henzel, told CTV Edmonton.
But University of Alberta math professor Vladimir Troitsky agrees with Tran-Davies that the “new math” approach isn’t working.
“It is a problem with children who cannot add and subtract. We see them at university and they have difficulty adding and subtracting,” Troitsky said.
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Serena Mah
