– In Alberta (Canada), parents, grandparents and educators are pushing for a change to the current math curriculum, the so-called “discovery method” which gives focus on the needs of students’ individual competencies and skills. Around 200 concerned people gathered in April at the Alberta Legislature for the cause. Among them, grandparent and former teacher Audrey Russell said: “The solution is we go back to the basics. We learn how to add, subtract [and] multiply.”
– A former dean with the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta, Ken Porteous, agrees with the group. “This new age math is really mythical in my opinion,” he said. “I’ve studied a good deal of mathematics and there’s really nothing to discover. You need to be able to do those very routine operations very quickly in the most efficient way possible – and they’ve been being done that way for centuries. Why do you we want to change them?”
Image: Orbital Mechanics (Wikipedia)
