When listening to a worker describe how math is now being taught to his children, one part of me shuddered, the other wished I'd been taught in that way.
Having been child of the 60's and 70's I went through leaning phonetically, learning by memorization, and the phenomena of New Math fallowed by a dismal one semester of New English which quickly was tossed out. No doubt by all the F's we had in class.
Education changes and it needs to. When I was a kid there were no advanced classes. Likewise, there were to classes to help the ones struggling in a class. You were to work harder although I think it meant your parents were supposed to step up and push you harder.
We have since learned that not everyone can learn that way. And how many of retained the bulk of what we struggled to learn for test time? Done any long division of late? Any gradients, logs, quadratics, figured out whats a base, identified any split infinitives?
I signed up to Luminosity and was not surprised that I struggle to get any better with the "problem solving" game that has drops falling that house a short math problem. You type in your answer before it hits bottom. If you can think on your fingers and toes fast enough.
We don't do this sort of brain work as we age. The people you buy carpet from will tell you your square feet. Your spell checker will attempt to put out a correct word. Heck, we don't even have clock faces to see if its a quarter till yet.
The one demise that worries me is schools not teaching cursive. Sorry, that is very wrong. How can you read your grandparent's letters, the recipe your Mom jotted down in a cook book. The notes left in the family Bible? Not only that, cursive is one of the systems by where our own identify comes through in the slant and the use of large swirling letters, little circles to dot the i or the invention of a way to bypass half the letters in your last name and streamline your signature.
Cursive is a poor cousin to caligraphy. It is one part of the art you come up with to express your ideas. Creativity is not just limited to art class (if you are lucky enough to find one). It is also a way to pick up the thoughts of others, those little notes left by family, the recipe that everyone enjoys at Thanksgiving and now no one knows how to make.
