School Books
On three separate occasions recently I’ve been in a grade school, talking to some of the kids and teachers. I’ve looked at dozens of the books they’re using and I’ve come to one conclusion. Schools are treating nine-year-olds like four-year-olds. Textbooks are over-simplified.
They’re teaching kids that life is a coloring book.
Textbooks are a big business…lots of money…and the publishers who put them together don’t dare offend anyone or they’ll lose business.
This one isn’t called just Mathematics, it’s called TheMathematics Experience. No book ever written by a committee is much good. This one has three senior authors, one senior consulting author, thirteen plain authors (they must be junior authors), twenty-three critical readers, three multicultural reviewers and twenty-eight field test teachers.
They probably make the kids wear rubber gloves so they won’t catch an idea in here.
This is called Invitation to Mathematics. I don’t know what ever happened to arithmetic. Two times three equals six. Well, that’s true but one whole page of a picture of a muffin pan to prove it?
Here’s a book for very young children called How Did Numbers Begin? I was interested in how they were going to explain how numbers began. I looked through here and this is what I found. “When did people start using numbers? No one really knows.” So how come you called your book How Did Numbers Begin? if no one really knows.
Some of these books are attractive. They look good but it’s as if the schools were afraid to tell the kids that some of the things they should learn are hard and might even take some effort.
I went to one class of fourth graders. They were supposed to be learning mathematics from a game they were playing. They each put down a series of numbers on a pad, depending on which square of the game they landed on after they threw some dice. When the game was over, I asked one of the kids to add up her numbers and she said, “Well, I have to wait until one of the others kids finishes using the calculator.”
No one should be allowed to use a calculator until he or she can add and subtract without one.
Years ago educators decided that just memorizing things wasn’t a good idea. Well, maybe, but I don’t know anything I ever got out of school that’s been more help in my life than memorizing the multiplication tables up to 12 times 12.
If I have to go to 12 times 13, I keep a calculator handy.
From Andy Rooney, Years of Minutes, pp. 234-235.
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