Parents are Heroes: Nothing New Under the Sun

One of my all-time favorite reads in my adolescence was a book written the year I was born, called How to Be a Successful Mother.  This down-to-earth, no-nonsense book explained not only how to prepare for and care for a baby, but also how to cope with life as the mother of several preschool children while living in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment with basement laundry facilities, and using the bus for transportation.  (I take my easy life for granted!)  Later I discovered the same author had penned an earlier book, The Pregnancy Primer, in the 1950's, so I got a copy of that.  It was another amazing look into a past that I'd only glimpsed in episodes of I Love Lucy.

In both of these books, the author revealed a calm wisdom, a can-do attitude of working with what you've got, to do what you need to do, without complaints or hysteria.  I very much admired her attitude and pragmatism.  The fact that she recommended having your wine and ashtray ready before you sat down to nurse your baby-- well, that lent historical flavor.

So when I discovered Mrs. Featheringill had also written a book about math, I had to get it, too.  And again, she amazed me with her insight and intelligent prose.  (I have since learned that she also wrote poetry, and with her husband, owned a jazz record label  in the 1940's.  I would have loved to meet this woman, but she died in 1997 at the age of 81.)   Her basic point was, just because your child is being taught something you don't understand, doesn't mean you can't learn it.  You're plenty smart enough for the challenge.  Which was exactly her point in her earlier books-- don't sit at home crying because you've got three kids in diapers and no car to run errands--- just pack up what you'll need for the day and take the bus!   No excuses.

So, as parents and teachers now struggle with "Common Core" math,  railing against what appears to be poorly executed overhauls of a half-broken system, I again refer to the wisdom of Mrs. Featheringill and take a deep breath as I read her words from 1966:  "Math hasn't changed...The modern world has changed.  Getting ready to meet new kinds of problems, your child already uses "Higher Math" terms as he starts solving problems in kindergarten."

Granted, I don't recall solving any problems in kindergarten-- the only math I remember involved an annoying series of worksheets that had us circling sets of cows and pigs-- but I was in kindergarten four years after these words were published, so perhaps I did and just don't recall.  But the fact remains, she wrote this book in response to parents who were confused and frustrated with "the new math."  And today we again have parents who are frustrated and confused by another new math.

Will the confusion last?  Will our new math last?  Is it an improvement?  Was the old 'new math' an improvement over old old math?

Reading her book, I see striking similarities in the philosophy behind the change.  Proponents of the change were frustrated because students could run the algorithms but often lacked the understanding to apply them.  That's basically the impetus for Common Core (or in Arizona, College and Career Ready ) math standards now.  In theory, then, new math then and new math now are great-- and of course, getting students to understand concepts and apply them to real life is a worthy goal.  Unfortunately, the balance between understanding concepts, mastering algorithms and memorizing math facts is a delicate one.  Students need all of these skills to do math well.  And this truth is recognized by policy makers; there is actually an instructional model called Balanced Math that attempts to put all of these components together, so that students participate in math fact drill, algorithm practice, and concept exploration all in the same class period.

The problem is, it takes TIME to touch all the bases.  When I was homeschooling, I had the luxury of having each of my children working on two different math programs each day.  We would do a supplemental program together, such as Miquon or Key to Fractions,  and then they each did Singapore at their own level.  By middle school my daughter had caught up to her brother, but we still used one main program-- Math-U-See or Teaching Textbooks, and a supplemental curriculum, such as Key to Algebra.  I'm not even sure they noticed they were doing math twice a day; if they did, they didn't complain about it.  They had instructional time and independent work for each program, plus any math fact drill I assigned. We had all the time we needed, and if they needed additional explanation, I was right there.  They were probably spending a good 90-120 minutes on math each day.  In high school, their school used block scheduling, which allowed for longer periods of instruction as well.

Unfortunately, the elementary and middle school math teachers don't have the luxury of time.  In my years at the local middle school, the "fifty-five minute" class period I supposedly had for math was whittled away by the lack of a built-in passing period (the bell that rang to end one class was the start bell for the next, even if they were coming from across campus) and the housekeeping details of having students copy their daily objectives, stamping their agendas for homework completion, and attending to other business.  So the actual instructional time was much less than it looked like on paper.  Throw in the mandatory weekly, quarterly and end-of-year tests, and I calculated that the students had an average of three short instructional periods-- the equivalent of what my children used to do in a single day-- for each day of testing.

Kind of drove me crazy.  It wasn't so much that the objectives were unteachable, it was the frustration of needing more time to teach them.   And much of math is sequential, so that a student needs to have a good foundation in the basics before moving on to new material.  Unfortunately, the rush to have the students "solve problems" can sometimes mean they get short-changed on learning math facts and algorithms.

There is simply not enough classroom time to get everything done.  Just as the emphasis on "Whole Language" and "Six Traits Writing"  edged out phonics and handwriting, grammar and spelling rules in an attempt to make reading and writing more meaningful for the students, time that used to be focused on building a lowly, boring foundation of math skills is now spent constructing beautiful houses of math application.  But without a good foundation, these beautiful houses will fall.

So, as it was in the 1960's with "New Math," it falls to the parents to make up the difference. Which is why children come home from a long day at school with miserable amounts of homework. Which is why the academic gap between kids who show up to kindergarten never having been read to, and kids who have enjoyed regular read-alouds, only gets wider as the years go on.  Parents who may work two jobs to keep food on the table cannot (or make millions and will not) invest time in their toddler's intellectual development, and those same folks rarely feel capable of (or responsible for) helping with homework later on.   Happily, most parents I know are not like that at all.

How to Understand Your Child's New Math was written to another generation, but in its philosophy, it was written to parents struggling half a century later.  They are the same people.  They are the parents who are committed to helping their children succeed-- despite curriculum changes, despite time limitations, despite school funding shortages, teacher shortages, and everything else that threatens to interfere with the success of the next generation.

These parents are heroes.   Wine and ashtray optional.