In response to my interview with Linda

Linda's response regarding homework, and how it is often too difficult for the students (making them feel like failures) reminded me of a conversation I had with my father, who lives in Wyoming and who is a part-time substitute teacher (as is my mom).

He said that my nieces school had taken up some kind of "inquiry" approach. Immediately, when he said it, I thought of CMP; he could not verify that this was the exact name of the program, but said it sounded as though they at least are similar. The problem with it, in his mind, is that this is being implemented at the elementary level. Rather than teaching times tables and making sure that students can do simple arithmetic, the questions ask that students come up with multiple answers to questions; for example, "show 3 ways to add 2+2" (not an exact question from the book, but what I took from my father's speech). Now, anyone who has taken educational psychology has some idea about cognitive stages. I believe that small children (elementary age) are at what Piaget would identify as the concrete-operational stage. This is not the stage of abstract thinking. Some students will do very well with this approach; others will not. I assert that I would have probably fallen into the group that could not--indeed , it is only as an adult that I suddenly see all kinds of overlapping connections in math that I did not see when I was young. Anyhow, the school's new approach means that my niece, who is a very smart young lady and who works very hard to do well in school, finds herself crying over her math homework. Why on earth should a fourth grade student be crying over math homework? And I don't suggest that she is smart merely because she is related to me--you can just ask me about some of my other nieces and I will verify that they are not smart. My dad said it sounded like a load of "poo" to him that fourth grade students were still learning basic arithmetic as part of this new approach. He said that he learned long division in second grade when he was in England and that when he came back to the states the next year the teachers were worried that he might be behind. HAH!

I guess what I am saying is that it is hard for me to believe that the approach is going to cure our problem of scoring low in math as a nation. Perhaps I will see in a decade whether or not that approach is working with my niece . . . until then, I will remain skeptical.