Math: Slow Down!

                                                    Slow Math

                What is It?  Slow math is the teaching of mathematics at a pace much slower than what is taught in schools and other curriculums.  Slow math is a direct challenge to the idea that math must be studied everyday and early on in order to be prepared for higher math.   In slow math, a fifth grader can be learning basic multiplication.

In our house, my fifth grade daughter uses a Melissa and Doug abacus to do her basic multiplication; and I prefer it this way.  I prefer it this way because she is not learning multiplication facts out of context.  She understands that 8 x 4 means eight bars of 4 beads on each bar.  Or she can draw out eight bags and fill each bag with four circles and count the circles to get 32.   She also understands that 8 x 4 means 4+4+4+4+4+4+4+4.   Mathematics is about relations and calculations are done by understanding how figures in a problem relate to each other.    Fast math is so obsessed with memorization early on that many kids (not all) completely lose any concept of how numbers relate to each other.

                What does the research say? Well, the Sudbury schools have no required courses.  Many of their students’ first math class is in 10^th grade and it’s a course to prepare them for the SATs.  Their results? Their students pass just fine.  Students who have never had a math class until 10^th grade, pass the SAT after a 20 week crash course in math. 

                There was an experiment done in a district in 1929 in which math was removed from the curriculum until 6^th grade.  By the end of 6^th grade, the students had caught up to their fellow students in neighboring districts. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school

              In fairness, I know that we cannot fully compare the outcomes in 1929 to 2017.  For example, kids in 1929 might have been exposed to more real life math as they may have learned certain skills such as knitting and woodworking that use basic math.   Kids might have been more likely to use (or see their parents use) scales to measure ingredients. These details do make a difference, but I think that the point that delaying math instruction does no harm still stands.

                In our homeschool, math has been a part of the learning process, but it has been more of an elective.  My daughter did work through the Red Workbook in the Miquon series using Cuisenaire rods in first grade.  We did not continue with the program as I wanted to give math workbooks a bit of a rest.  A concern that was brought up was that sometimes with spiral learning (as done in Miquon), students sometimes don’t get a full grasp of some of the fundamentals of math and this can cause some problems later on.

                One thing that we did do a lot of was math games – in particular, Money Bags and Sum Swamp.  We also read a biography of Ada Byron Lovelace and she has watched the movie Hidden Figures many, many times. 

              We’re not following a math curriculum this year. I write out math problems for her to solve and then we discuss how she solved them.  Sometimes she has memorized the correct answer and sometimes she uses her abacus to find the answer.  I don’t mind if she uses the abacus because I’m happy that not knowing the answer is not a reason to quit or leave the space blank. If she doesn’t know the answer, she knows how to find out the answer.  She is also learning the trick of “If I know that 3x3 is 9, then (counting on fingers 10, 11, 12)  3x4 is 12.  Again, it’s about understanding and recognizing mathematical relationships.