This story didn’t make it onto my link encyclopedia because I just saw it but it’s both funny and sad, folks. An economist was taken off a plane for engaging in a highly subversive pursuit of. . . algebra.
And then these people go and vote.
Scary Algebra
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe he was one of those perverts using the Common Core “New Math” method — which has actually been around since at least the 1960s, when secondary education the the U.S. started going to hell.
If that was the case, Homeland Security should have at least roughed him up…
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I agree that the person who came up with this crazy thing provokes violent impulses. I’m not surprised nobody in this country can do simple arithmetic in their head.
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Lest you think I’m being too harsh, take note of how ridiculously many steps the New Math takes to calculate 32 – 12. Most people with an education above the 6th grade can do that in their heads instantly. If you HAVE to the old math, it takes two steps:
1.) 2 -2 = 0
2.) 3 – 1 = 2
So obviously the “2” and “0” together = 20. (Piece of cake,)
Here’s how the New Math geniuses teach it”
Notice how a very simple tw0-step equation has been expanded into at least TWICE that many steps. (Really, beyond absurd!)
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Do you have a link that explainst he rationale for this idiocy?
Basic arithmetics seems like a prime place for rote memorization first, analysis later.
As for the 1960s and eduction I think one of the luckiest accidents of my life (filled with such) was that I was taught to read through a version of the phonics method rather than the horrifically awful ‘whole language’ method (still around despite decades of abject miserable failure).
I’m sure I would have been labelled with a dozen different learning disabilities if I had to deal with whole language ‘methodology’. Memorizing purely visual images is not something I’m good at.
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I have zero understanding of this weird image at all. It makes my brain feel clouded. Who comes up with these idiotic methods?
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In early elementary school, at a parent-teacher conference, my teacher told my mother that I was failing phonics. My mother (fully knowing the answer to this question), asked about my reading. “She reads above grade level,” the teacher answered. “Then why does she need to know phonics?” my mother countered.
I taught myself to read by using the whole language method; to this day, I really don’t get phonics.
This story has two morals: the first is that anecdotes are not data. The second is that there is no one best way to teach reading. Different students have different learning styles, strengths and weaknesses. There is no reason not to teach a variety of methods, both phonics and whole language have their place. The research shows this.
As for the best way of teaching arithmetic and math, I have no opinions because I am not at all familiar with the research on teaching these subjects. The only thing I do know is that math research lags behind reading research.
Educators and educational psychologists have tools to help tease out what a student’s reading difficulties are. Is it letter and sound recognition, is it a paucity of vocabulary, is it fluency, is it comprehension, and so forth (comprehension difficulties being the hardest to mitigate). But the corresponding tools for math challenges are not yet well developed.
All this said, yes, it is frightening that there are people so paranoid that someone writing something they can’t read causes them so much alarm.
The person who was so alarmed could have asked the scribbler what he was doing — it could have been an interesting conversation! Fear cuts all of us off from so many things. Including gathering the information needed to use our franchise wisely.
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It sounds like I need to research what phonics and whole language are.
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That image looks like you’re adding by counting in your head. Except if I were to count in my head to solve that problem I’d first subtract 1o and then 2. It just looks very confusing to add four figures sequentially in my head instead of subtracting two. (My working memory means that it’s easier for me to use Excel to add things together than to punch in numbers in an old school calculator; YMMV.)
If you don’t have a number sense it might help; but then again you still would have memorized several addition facts already.
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