Parental Resistance to Educational Change

The greatest challenges facing parents stem from their own school experiences. Every adult has been educated in some way, and the methods their teachers used usually shape the values they carry with them and color their perceptions of how education “should be.” These learned values are very powerful and can be seen in the ongoing controversies that manifest in social media regarding the Common Core State Standards and math instruction, for example. The notion that there is a critical-thin...

 We Teach Kids Mathematics in the Wrong Order

The familiar, hierarchical sequence of math instruction starts with counting, followed by addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division. The computational set expands to include bigger and bigger numbers, and at some point, fractions enter the picture, too. Then in early adolescence, students are introduced to patterns of numbers and letters, in the entirely new subject of algebra. A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, w...