In the Alberta province of Canada, teachers, tutors and professors are complaining that the “discovery” method – that some people call the “new fuzzy math curriculum” – adopted by the government, is stealing the confidence and dreams of the students. A group of teachers and professors are calling for a return to the conventional method which involves the learning, practicing and mastering of the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in elementary school.
– It seems that today’s math is more about words and theories than about numbers. John O’Connor, a math instructor in Edmonton, said about it: “Students have been cheated by not having been taught the basic fundamental skills that are essential to an understanding of the subject. Memorizing multiplication tables and mastering long division are as fundamental to Math as learning the alphabet is to reading and writing.”
Image: Portrait of Nuremberg Master Johann Neudörffer and a Student, by Nicolas Neufchatel (Wikimedia)
