I tutor my friends kids in math from time to time. A while back one of my friends kids was here from Texas, and needed help in algebra 2. I was told that his main problem was in graphing rational functions (ie (x^2 - 2x + 1) / (x + 4) ) kind of stuff. I hadn’t done that kind of thing since high school, but I thought about it for a few minutes and came up with a plan.
Apparantly the class had been working on this for several weeks, and my first question was, “how did your teacher explain how to do this”. He went into quite an in depth lengthy confusing list of nonsensical steps the teacher had taught, and I immediately understood why it was so confusing for him. I showed him in a very simple manner how to go about it, at which point after a few problems he exclaimed...”Whoa! Really? It’s that easy? You explained this to me in like 30 minutes, where the teacher did nothing but confuse the entire class for 3 weeks?” He did a few more dozen problems with no issues. Then I made up some more and had him do them the next day to make sure it stuck. I then had him when he got home teach some of his buddies so it was sure to stick. He got an A on the test.
This is very revealing. You know teachers didn’t make that stuff up by themselves.
It seems that some of the smartest, most devious people in the country concoct that bull. Let’s give NCTM a round of applause. National Council of Teachers of Math.
New Math. Reform Math. Always, they find the slow, confusing methods for teaching everything. (The antidote is John Saxon or similar.)