The Ford government has decided that the way Ontario students are taught math is FUBAR. And their solution is GBTTB -- Go Back To The Basics. Martin Regg Cohn writes:
Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) test results show less than half of Grade 6 students (48 per cent) met the provincial standard last year, a one percentage point drop from the average over the past three years, with similarly discouraging declines in other grades.
That’s nothing to celebrate, and may be reason to recalibrate, but is it proof of Lecce’s unwavering hypothesis? The Tories keep trying to link declining scores to discovery math, which they blame on an ideological fixation best fixed by going back to basics.
“There is absolute causation,” argued Lecce, who has taken to appearing at news conferences behind a podium sign proclaiming himself “For the Students” — a variation, lest you forget, of Ford’s inimitable “For the People” slogan.
But is there absolute "causation?"
Discovery math is better known by teachers as inquiry-based math because it teaches students critical thinking to find a solution to a problem, rather than simple computations. The thinking was that rote learning wouldn’t take students far in a world of computers and artificial intelligence, where calculations are done at warp speed; applied problem-solving is where humans will still come in handy.
How did discovery math measure up? In 2010-11, the EQAO recorded a Grade 6 score of 58 per cent; the next year it was still 58 per cent, before declining a point in 2012-13.
If discovery math was so deleterious back then, why wasn’t there a dramatic drop in those three years? And if it’s so bad now, why has it declined so slowly — hovering at 50 per cent in 2015-16, holding steady for the next year, before inching down again over the past two years?
Before we ascertain whether discovery math is part of the problem, ceteris paribus — all other things being equal — we need to rule out other factors definitively dumbing down math scores such as, say, smartphones and video games that distract students and detract from homework.
The Fordians have fallen back on modern conservatism's panacea for every problem -- go back:
Like Lecce, the premier hates so-called discovery math: “Kids used to learn math by doing things like memorizing a multiplication table and it worked,” he said last year.
In its collective wisdom, the government’s education brain trust has jumped on the back-to-basics bandwagon as a solution in search of a problem. Memorizing multiplication tables may be important, but when did applied problem-solving become irrelevant?
The inability to think critically in order to find solutions applies to much more than math problems. If anything, it's the most pressing crisis we face these days. And Ford's government is Exhibit A when ones looks for illustrations of the problem.
Image: You Tube
6 comments:
Yes, students need to be taught critical thinking but I also think they need the basics. How often have you been frustrated by a store clerk who couldn't count money? How often have you seen grammar mistakes with words that breezed through a spell checker? There, their, they're. To, too, two. You can't play jazz until you learn the instrument. You can't tweak a machine until you have properly blueprinted it. Critical thinking and mastery of the basics go hand in hand.
I agree, Toby. There is a place for rote learning. But if students don't learn how to think, they're like people mumbling prayers and not knowing what they're saying.
It comes as no surprise to me that the Cons don't want to teach critical thinking. Authoritarians prefer rote learning, which teaches unquestioning obedience. We went through the same nonsense during the "Common Sense Revolution."
As an aside, I winced when I saw a photo of Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris' tour bus with "For the people" emblazoned on it. Someone needs to be more careful when choosing a campaign slogan!
Cap
I agree, Cap. By now, it's painfully clear who and what "for the people" means.
After five years of it, the high school educators were still calling it the "new math" when I graduated in 1969. The only guys from my generation who went any further were the memorizers and idiot savants.
It's easy to educate people to be idiots, John. It's much harder to teach them how to think.
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