| Realistic
Math Makes Sense for Student
By
Eve Torrence
I
am a mathematician. I am a college professor. I am a mother. From
all three perspectives I have been following with interest the
controversy over the current mathematics education reform. Last
year I had an experience that finally brought clarity.
My husband, who is also a mathematician, and I had a sabbatical
at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. We enrolled our
eight year-old son, Robert, in a local Dutch school. In doing
so we were unconsciously starting a very interesting experiment.
At home Robert had been experiencing a traditional mathematics
curriculum where a great deal of time and effort is spent on learning
the carrying and borrowing algorithms for addition and subtraction.
The mathematics curriculum at his Dutch school was very different.
The students were working on problems at the same level, but they
were encouraged to develop their own techniques for doing the
problems. They were not taught the carrying and borrowing algorithms.
This approach has been used successfully in Holland for almost
thirty years.
At the same time Robert was adapting to a new curriculum, I was
studying at the Freudenthal Institute at the University of Utrecht—a
world-renowned center for research on mathematics education. I
was learning that the curriculum he was experiencing is called
Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). In RME, the mathematics
is introduced in the context of a carefully chosen problem. In
the process of trying to solve the problem the child develops
mathematics. The teacher uses the method of guided reinvention,
by which students are encouraged to develop their own informal
methods for doing mathematics. Students exchange strategies in
the classroom and learn from and adopt each other’s methods. I
also learned that much research has been done on this approach,
that it is based on what we know about child development and the
development of numeracy, and that it is this body of research
that is driving the math education reform in our country.
When we first arrived in the Netherlands and I began to learn
about RME, I spent a little time quizzing Robert on how he would
solve a few addition and subtraction problems. I was shocked by
the rigid attitude he had developed at his school in the U.S.
When asked to do any addition problem with summands larger than
20 he would always invoke the addition algorithm. He would sometimes
make mistakes and then report an answer that made no sense. He
was putting all his confidence in the procedure and little in
his own ability to reason about what might be a sensible answer.
When I suggested there was a simpler way he could think about
the problem he became upset and told me, “You can’t do that!”
After a few months in Holland, I began to see an amazing difference
in Robert’s number sense. He was able to do the same problems
more quickly, more accurately, and with much more confidence.
For example, I asked him to solve 702 minus 635. He explained,
“700 minus 600 is 100. The difference between 2 and 35 is 33,
and 100 minus 33 is 67.” When he tried using the algorithm he
made a borrowing error and became very frustrated. I asked him
to compute 23 times 12. He explained, “23 times 10 is 230, 23
times 2 is 46, 230 plus 46 is 276.” This multiplication problem
was much harder than anything in the curriculum at home. I was
very impressed with the flexibility and range of methods he had
developed in only a few months.
What happened to Robert in those few months has had a profound
effect on my perception of learning and on Robert’s understanding
of mathematics. My child learned to think. He learned he could
think. He was encouraged to think. He learned to see mathematics
as creative and pleasurable. This independent attitude towards
mathematics will remain with him forever and serve him well. It
is this fact that has convinced me of the value of de-emphasizing
algorithms in the elementary years.
Unfortunately, Robert is once again back in a school that focuses
on the teaching of algorithms. The other day as we were driving
to soccer, out of the blue Robert asked from the back seat, “Mommy,
wouldn’t it be crazy to do 5000 minus 637 using borrowing?” I
smiled proudly at him and said, “Yes, honey, it would.”#
Eve
Torrence currently teaches at Randolph-Macon College.
Education
Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001.
Tel: (212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919.Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express
consent of the publisher. © 2002.
|
