Change Math Instruction?

To: msouth@shodor.org
Subject: Change Math Instruction?
From: "Lois Seyler" <ljseyler@ctdnet.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 16:58:21 CST
Full-Name: Lois Seyler

 Dear Mike,

        I too am working on a way to publicize my revolutionary new approach to
math education  - "Mrs. Seyler's Whiz-Band, Keep-It-Simple-Stupid Math."  It
uses paper and pencil "manipulation" of symbols.  It uses calculators and
computers.  It used manipulatives like Cuisinere rods and geoboards and
counting "tokens" (bears, sharks, coins, marbles, whatever).  

        It assumes that math starts with the concept of *quantity*, and that
quantities can be accumulated or seperated.  And that's it!  That's *all* of 
it, right up to where we start algebra. 

        Kids will no longer be required to learn "proprietary"
(read: publisher's/author's) labels for games, techniques, parts-of-skills,
etc.  They'll no longer be required to learn math "in translation."  It'll all
just be done in regular, old, generic American English.

        I get excited just thinking about how much simpler math learning will
become, when all we ask the kids to learn is math!  Heck, they can use the
time and energy they'll have left over to learn something *worth* doing in
translation - like a foreign language!

        Okay.  That's my idea.  What's yours?

                                                Lois Seyler
                                        enormously frustrated parent