Thanks For Nothing, New Math

I am continually frustrated to this day by a pivotal event which took place in my life way back in third grade. Mrs. Powell, the blue haired monster, ruled our third grade class back in the early seventies with an iron fist. She was hard-line on old school teaching methods, especially in arithmetic class. She droned in fundamental concepts like rote memorization of the times tables with drill sergeant authority and cold, heartless reality. Then she died, I guess, 'cause after Christmas break she was replaced with a young flower child lady who made us call her by her first name.

And arithmetic was abandoned in favor of the New Math concept.

We were taught to think about the reasons for doing math and we played games to make math fun. From then on I was fucked. I didn't enjoy math more...I just learned to play the system and feigned enthusiasm and effort. She and several teachers in subsequent years thereafter let me slide as long as I was trying. This was the crux of New Math teaching.

At least as interpreted by the idiot (or, more likely, lazy) instructors of the Woonsocket public school system.

Today, I made a crock pot full of chili and for fun I wanted to figure out how economical the six portions it panned out to were. (Huh? That sentence was structured awkwardly...I guess I was a victim of the New Grammar as well.)

I calculated that the entire pot of chili cost $10 so I just simply wanted to know how much each of the 6 bowls cost. To my shock and awe, I realized I couldn't figure it out in my head. I tried to do the division on paper and I couldn't do that either. I was functionally retarded. I couldn't divide 10 by 6!

I went to websites designed to teach basic math concepts like long division and I was flummoxed.  What is this stuff? I vaguely recognized a little of it. Then I read about this new math crap, concepts like set theory and base-n computation and this too rang a bell. That's it! I was a child victim of a Math Schism!

My school system was still teaching New Math throughout the seventies alongside the traditional methods. With some teachers doing it one way and others the other way, it makes sense now why I sometimes walked into a math class at the start of a new year and needed to "catch up" to the concept of that teacher's methodology. Some years it was "New," some were "Old." And I was the one left out in the cold.

In an article I read about this topic, I stumbled across this rough timeline of math teaching concepts throughout the years. LOL!

1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?

1970 (Traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. What is his profit?

1975 (New Math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $1.

(a) make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M

(b) The set C representing costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of the set M.

(c) What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?

1990 (Dumbed-down math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Underline the number 20.

1997 (Whole Math): By cutting down a forest full of beautiful trees, a logger makes $20.

(a) What do you think of this way of making money?

(b) How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?

(c) Draw a picture of the forest as you'd like it to look.