Thinking about mathematics

It's more than 2+2

Is common core gone yet? I’m really not going to capitalize the “c” in those words.

For us in Montessori, this latest iteration of changes is just one more step in the wrong direction. I’ve seen math education deteriorate since the 1970s and “new math” initiatives. If you hadn’t heard of it, you missed nothing.

Sometimes parents tell me they want worksheets “because Montessori doesn’t have regular math” and such. I feel so sad because math education isn’t worksheets. Children fill out these worksheets and have no idea what is going on.

Parents want to skip the plane geometry cabinets at age four because the cabinet is sort of expensive. They don’t understand that flash cards do not provide the same sensory understanding of the shapes. By the time they figure it out, their child is in 2nd or 3rd grade and the sensitive period for this work has passed.

Math understanding for children is not the ability to fill out equations. It is the ability to understand what is happening. To see the patterns when they make different quantities with the beads or fractional circles. To fit the construction triangles together to see a different shape emerge. To use their hands and brains to create a base of deep understanding, so they can discover theorems for themselves.

Montessori mathematics and mathematics preparation has outlived and outlasted all these changes. What I struggle with now is explaining the beauty of our math work to parents and grandparents who have never been able to enjoy math. Few people enjoyed calculus, trigonometry, or geometry in high school, so most of you have flushed it from your memories.

I like Eddie Woo, an Australian math teacher, because he describes math education in a way that inspire everyone.

Some decades ago, during one of those periods when Americans were losing their homes because unscrupulous banks sold them adjustable rate mortgages with balloon payments at the end, I couldn’t take it anymore. Parents at our schools kept getting these mortgages because they didn’t understand how the mortgage payments would change.

During a PTA meeting, I took out all our Golden Bead material to do a demonstration of one of these dangerous mortgages. I compared the payments of a regular mortgage and an adjustable rate mortgage.

Some months later, a mother came to me to say that I saved her from getting one of the adjustable rate mortgages. She said, “I just kept seeing all those piles of Golden Bead cubes, so I couldn’t do it.”

But that is all disaster avoidance. I wish I were better at inspiration. So, I share the video above!