from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
Mathematics education in North America has gone through two major fads in the last four decades. The first was the "New Math" in which mathematicians decided how to teach mathematics without regard to teaching methods. The second was the "New New Math" in which mathematics teachers decided how and what to teach without regard to mathematics. In neither case was the radically different curriculum tested with students before it was adopted in most areas of the U.S. and Canada. In both cases it failed and produced several generations which hated mathematics.
The Asian "Solution"
Another suggestion is that we should study Far Eastern methods from China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan for clues to teach math. Children from these countries regularly score much higher in mathematics than children from North America. In fact, if several schools from each place are studied, it is not unusual to see the worst Asian schools scoring higher than the best North American schools. Much has been made of these results, but the fact is that Asian students get much more mathematics instruction per school year than North American students. One survey of school hours found that Grade 5 children in Taiwan had almost 5 times as many hours of mathematics instruction as children in comparable American schools. Students learn by doing and Asian students have many more opportunities to do math.
Charles Greenwood and his associates have studied schools for decades and found, among other things, that students in regular schools have very little opportunity to respond, especially in basic skills. Greenwood also found that increased opportunity to respond was correlated with improved school performance. This is an adequate explanation for the Asian results. Asian students get more practice and do better on tests. There is no magic in Far Eastern teaching methods. The solutions to the problems of teaching are in the scientific literature, not in the supposed superiority of teaching methods of other countries.
Cheerio and ttfn.
Grant Coulson
