Page 8 - Priorities #12 2000-April

Conversation With
nancy Newman
Ask the average person what subject was the toughest in school, and math will be at the top of lots of lists. More than a few of us got the message early on that math was something to avoid because we couldn’t succeed.
Fortunately, Woodside Priory’s Nancy Newman was blessed with parents and teachers who believed that she could succeed in math and science, and regularly told her so...and that made all the difference in the world.
From elementary school on, Nancy turned this love into her life’s vocation. Communicating her passion for math and science, as well as her belief in all her students’ abilities to use their “incredibly strong, incredibly powerful brains to achieve anything they want in life,” is Nancy’s number one priority in her job as Head of Priory’s Math Department.
In this “Conversation With...” she talks about the importance of math at the secondary school level, and the future of
math education.
L. McDermott
Why does math remain a required subject at the secondary education level, given the introduction of sophisticated computers and calculators that can solve most of the math problems the average individual would ever need to solve?
Many of my students ask the same question! My favorite explanation is that the mind is an organ that needs to be trained. At this level math is one very effective way to train students how to think. It’s learning how to solve problems from different perspectives, taking the mind through logical exercises that other fields just don’t do at the same level of detail. I tell them it’s jazzercize for the mind!
Do we still need to learn the fundamentals, skills that can be performed on a calculator?
Absolutely! Just as with any discipline, the fundamentals are the foundation of the training, and teaching of these skills needs to begin in the very early elementary years. A student who reaches high school math and cannot do the fundamentals without a calculator (basics such as multiplication tables, square roots, fractions) is incredibly handicapped. I call it math abused, and I think it’s teaching malpractice.
Are you in favor of standards and rubrics that spell out what these fundamental skills are at each grade level?
Yes. We just can’t let kids out of the chute without the whole package of skills, and standards define for every school what those should be. I cringe when a parent of a third grader tells me their child is learning about functions. I’ll teach them about functions and more abstract concepts when they reach the secondary level and are capable of more abstract thought. Please teach them the basics and more importantly, make it fun to learn. There are so many exciting ways to teach young children the fundamental math skills they’ll need for later success.
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I tell my students that math is Jazzercize
for the mind!