Singapore Math boleh!

NYT article on US schools experimenting with the math program suggested in Singapore. Reading it prompts the question "What's the best way to teach math?". I think an important thing to recognise when teaching math to any kid is that you're not just introducing numbers and symbols, but to identify the fact that you're going to be introducing the kid to a new language and a way to neatly write out logic on paper. This perhaps should be a notion that educators keep at the back of their mind when trying to imbue their students' minds with math and relationship operators.

So then if we're going to teach math, we should think about it the same way as we would teach a kid a new language. Break it down, have the kids understand what each word means and how things are related. The harder stuff can come later, once you've established the basic building blocks. As with any language, the foundation is important. It doesn't matter if your vocabulary is highly extensive if you still don't know how to string the words into a sentence. In the same vein, getting the basics of math right, is important to advancing any further thought and education in later more complicated subjects.

On that note, people often say "oh I can't do math" and that seems to be a very odd statement to me. Maybe you can't do mental sums or complicated arithmetic that well, but people should understand and be able to do math since the language pins down the logical relationship between one object and another. The statement "I can't do math" seems to perhaps betray the fact that people don't recognise the mathematical language as a method for organising thought. To put it in some extreme terms, saying "I can't do Math" is like saying "I can't speak French", the latter statement invokes the idea that the individual has no concept of the French language, and is unable to express his thoughts and opinions in such form. Saying "I can't do Math" then, is like saying you don't know how to use Math to express your thoughts. yet, this can't be true since in everyday life, we can easily point out that if G is greater than B, i.e. (G > B) , then adding something positive onto G still implies that the final result is greater than B. (i.e. G+X >B)

So perhaps the stepping stone then is to recognise what Math is and to teach our kids with that notion at the back of our heads. This way, we might also be able to remove some of the mystic fear that people have about the subject and learn to become adept in using a very handy language.