The Math Book Every Parent Needs to Read
A review of "Traditional Math: An Effective Strategy that Teachers Feel Guilty Using" by Barry Garelick & J.R. Wilson
Parents: I bet the last thing you expected from me was a directive to go buy a math book, but here it is. Buy it, read it, then try gifting it to your child’s math teacher as a litmus test. If they graciously accept it, or even thank you for it, congratulations! You have found yourself a unicorn. More likely than not, they’ll look visibly uncomfortable, or worse: they’ll report you to the DEI Director, who will suggest you do some “reflection,” and confront your “privilege.”
Garelick and Wilson have subtitled their book accurately. Any K12 teacher working today, even one who would have accepted your gift a few years ago, has gotten the memo: “effectivist” teaching is out, “activist” teaching is in.
Today’s math teacher, or self-described “reformer,” rejects anything and everything “traditional” because they’re pursuing a new goal. Rather than teaching students to “use” math, today’s math teachers want kids to “inquire about” math, to find out what about math “interests” them. They don’t leave that up to chance though. Instead, these teachers prompt students to take an interest in math-narratives surrounding “social justice” by telling stories of struggle and strife in the students’ “community.” Children as young as 10 may be asked to consider the unfair advantages a rich family has over a poor one while comparing grocery budgets, or to “reflect” on the “math story” of road building projects, or public transportation in and around low-income neighborhoods.
In other words, today’s math teachers are activists; they are teaching a specific point of view about the purpose of math, which could be challenged or rejected outright by students increasingly capable of effectively doing their own math. It’s a lot harder to control individuals who can figure out for themselves they’re being lied to about “problems” represented by numbers.
What I love best about about Garelick and Wilson’s book is that it destroys the activist teacher’s arguments not so much by attacking those arguments head-on, but by selling us on traditional methods. Rather than tell us what is not happening in today’s classrooms, they show us what should be happening, and more importantly, while explaining why; traditional methods capitalize on the actual developmental phases of the human mind and psyche.
In contrast, the allegedly “progressive” activist teacher, who probably calls traditionalists like Garelick and Wilson “backwards,” rejects everything we have learned over the past century about the cognitive and psychological development of the human brain. Their teaching methods require a return to an almost medieval view of children as miniature adults. Adding paradox to this irony, the activist teacher treats her student mathtivists as if they are as easily traumatized by rote memorization of the multiplication tables as they are capable of solving world hunger. It would be laughable, if it weren’t so destructive to effective math education.
But Traditional Math doesn’t require the reader to understand, or even know anything about these activist teachers, or their methods. Instead, the book artfully, and implicitly rejects math (thought) reforms by expertly selling what works. The writing is easy to read, even for the lay-person, and makes teaching (and learning) math the traditional way seem like a lot more fun than the “Liberate the oppressed, and produce equal outcomes, or else” methods of the activist teacher.
The bottom line? Your kids math teachers aren’t using a book like this, and they should be, and if they won’t, you should do everything you can to change that, even if it means using the book to become your child’s effectivist math teacher!
Cat on a Book approved this message: “If I fits, I sits.”
Great point here:
"Adding paradox to this irony, the activist teacher treats her student mathtivists as if they are as easily traumatized by rote memorization of the multiplication tables as they are capable of solving world hunger."