We Can Do by Moshe Kai with guest Robert Levy discussing Saxon Math.

[Robert Levy]

"In the UK, pre-schools and nursery schools have been told by the schools not to teach anything beyond recognising the letter names and numbers. I think also recognising and writing their own name. The schools want everyone to start on a 'level' so they can begin teaching all kids phonics and maths from scratch when they start Reception (Kindergarten) at 4/5. The teachers don't like having to re-teach those who haven't used phonics 'correctly' (or at all) when they come to school already sounding out words/reading. It is just so much easier when nobody knows anything and the teacher doesn't need to work with different levels at the same time!"

A couple of comments:  What we call Kindergarten in the states is Age 5/6.  Age 4/5 is still pre-school.  David had a lot of fun that year as he was reading fluently and his teacher Miss Linda, as she had them call her, had never dealt with a kid like that (I guess early learning is still very rare where I live).  As to starting the kids at the same level - that certainly makes life easier for the teachers, and they may have a point about having to de-program kids that get taught incorrectly - and if they start phonics at that age (i.e., Age 4) the kids will be good readers - providing they move out quickly, and don't drag it out for a couple of years, and I have read that the UK is done experimenting and is back to phonics.  In the states, we don't get to systematic phonics until the kids are 0, at which time most parents have already figured out that they need to get this material covered separately (prior to that it's Sight Words, through 3rd grade, as I understand it).

[MummyRoo]

My mistake - I assumed that since most K-level work I've looked at is about the same as the Reception-level work that they were equivalent.

Yes, thankfully they start phonics straight away in school. There are sets of phonics readers - hundreds and hundreds of them - and in most schools, the kids *have* to read every single one, whether they are easy or not. So even the good readers make slow progress, which turns reading into a boring and tedious part of early schooling for them.  It seems that the government targets are to finish phonics by the end of Y1 (age 6) but there are still lots of children failing to learn to read - I would have thought that phonics taught correctly should prevent this!

[Robert Levy]

To Arvi,

"Robert, Maybe I am asking a very controversial question but I want to understand your perspective on this
question. I truly appreciate your son's efforts and yours."

Thank you for the required bow, now on to your question.  LOL.


"But I feel that rather than going to college early, if your son had put lots of effort few more years then he could have got entry in Ivy League colleges or the ones like MIT or Stanford. My understanding is that  colleges like those provide so much scope and rigor that would put a student in the top few % of talents which is more beneficial for the student in the long run. I know very little about universities in USA and very little about Houston university, so excuse my ignorance if Houston univ. is also in the top tier."

Great question, and as long as you don't dig into his medical history (of which there is none, thankfully), or ask for his Social Security number, feel free to ask just about anything.  Nee1's answer did cover half of my answer, which was the location and keeping our family together.  My wife doesn't work (which is fine by me as Texas is a very low-cost place to live, especially with our life style, and I make plenty for all 3 of us), so, yes, she could have moved out with him, possibly to an Ivy League school, and believe me, she reminded me of that option.  As it is, we have Rice University in Houston, which is near-Ivy in quality and probably the best school in this part of the country.  David tried to take a math class there, my wife talked to them, and they still told him to take a hike - and not the first time.  The private school that I mentioned earlier, the 'best' one in Houston for K-12 years, also told us to get lost after they interviewed David for Kindergarten - it wound up that they didn't care whether he could read fluently or knew math, or whatever, they just didn't want him.  In both cases I was relieved, as Rice and the private school are across town, which would have been a pain.  We also looked at the Texas Academy of Math and Sciences (TAMS), which is a bit north of Dallas, making it a 5 hour drive for us.  He would have been 14 when he enrolled, while everyone else is 16.  The idea there is that you start college classes during what would be your junior year of high school (i.e., age 16) and get dual credit - then you can finish college at Age 20 (would have been 18 for David), rather than Age 22.  We never applied there, as I couldn't make it work in my head.  They had the kids live in a dorm and they just seemed to give them too much freedom for David to do well in, which leads to the next parts of my answer, which is that I'm not a typical dad and David is a typical American kid (i.e., tries to get away with as doing as little academic work as possible).

But first, my job.  It's not going anywhere.  The Space Station program is managed in Houston, my company's work is based in Houston, so that's where I need to be.  My value in a new area would not be as great, if I even got work elsewhere.  In other words, I just wasn't interested in starting my career over, so I would be staying put, regardless.  Next is my wife - being an immigrant and not having an engineering background, her ability to ride on David's back to make him study was limited.  In other words, he could fool her any time he wanted by saying "Of course I'm studying".  I was tougher to fool, and took some significant steps to make it tougher for him to get around me (such as opening up his laptop and removing the wireless antenna from his laptop when he was picking up the neighbor's internet...something he still doesn't know I did).  So, I needed to be with him, just so he would study (and his nightmare semester that I mentioned earlier proved me right) - and I knew all that because I was (is) no different.  So that limited us to the Houston area.  Also, I like doing stuff with my hands, particularly relating to cars and our house, and I have decent skill level at it, to the point where we don't need auto mechanics and tradesmen.  I wanted to pass that on, as no one can predict the future and those skills can save people a lot of agony and money (in the case of our air conditioner once, it stopped working, and I had it fixed in 45 minutes - it was a capacitor that went bad, and I had a spare - it was summer so it was nice have it back on line that quick).  So I needed him around to learn that.

Finally there's the money end, and that is partially political for me, and partially greed (I admit).  The political part is that the private schools simply charge huge amounts of money for what is now a sliding tuition scale.  They have a "sticker price" which is probably double their cost for your kid.  They then make you fill out a federal form and they go run it through a program that weighs your income and assets, and gives spits out what your cost will be, and it's a combination of maybe tuition grants, loans, and work (for the student).  It has nothing to do with whether your kid is bright.  In fact, the Ivy League announced publicly that they were through will all merit-based scholarships about 2 years ago - so all financial aid is now need based.  In reality that means that what you pay in tuition at these schools is based exclusively on your income.  I don't buy a car that way, or a house, or a can of soup that way, so I was not about to do that for college.  They can shove it with their little redistribution schemes as far as I'm concerned.  (my mother has given me more stories from her days as a univeristy administrator that just get me angrier)

So it came down to keeping him local, and with a public college.  As it is, he did get a decent education at the University of Houston.  From what I can tell, they are selective, but in a different way.  At UH, they will admit people that may not be the top students, but they did not give them a pass.  In his engineering and math courses, during the early years, it was not uncommon for 80% of the students in a class to drop out prior to the end of the semester (they started with huge classes, but they were down to reasonable size for the second half of the semester).  They were that tough.  They gave you a shot, but it was up to you to take advantage of it.  I see a lot of merit in that.  His friends that graduated there all got engineering jobs in the oil industry, except one that joined him in grad school.  The ones that took the jobs, I suspect started about $80,000, the one that went to grad school with him got an offer for just over $100,000 (he's about to finish).  And once you start working at a large company where you went to school becomes a minor issue - so it's difficult to see much benefit, at least from a money standpoint, in the Ivy League.

As far as getting a better, more thorough, education, sorry, but he's not into answering all those deep questions that have sent philosophers banging their heads against the walls and screaming from the mountain tops, for millennium.  Just not into that stuff.  For him school is simply a path to a job, and UH does just fine providing that path, at least for engineering students.

[nee1]

Nee1 wrote:

PokerDad, point taken. But how about this story pasted by Chris1, still on that thread? Link - http://www.osaka-abacus.or.jp/english/soroban_experience.htm

I read this, but am not convinced by his comments that there is no purpose to learning the abacus. It is obviously not necessary and parents have to weigh the time they must spend to learn it vs. teaching other mental math techniques as say found in this book:  http://www.amazon.com/Mathemagics-Genius-Without-Really-Trying/dp/0737300086  A child can work through the book one day a week with additional mental math practice throughout the week. If I am to teach soroban, the reason for doing so would be the advantage rapid mental calculation provides a child. It will make so much of math work easier. Especially if a child learns to do it with precision and can tell if they have the wrong answer and "forgot to move a hundred bead". Time saved later on would be huge. But I am beginning to wonder if teaching techniques such as Arthur Benjamin has in his book would not be better than the soroban, or at least better for me as I have to learn myself and then teach it. The techniques Arthur teaches (some of them show up in the Jones Geniuses - though Dr. Jones takes it to a new level by memorizing all prime numbers to a 1000) have more uses than the soroban. That doesn't mean I am not going to do it, I am still in the "thinking" stage. regardless, you give your child an advantage by teaching some kind of rapid mental calculation.

Thanks for that insight, Sonya. I've known about Authur Benjamin, but I never thought about using his mental math strategies as an alternative to soroban. Now that you've mentioned it, I'll check his strategies in more detail, to see how it works, and  to see if I can use it as an alternative. Thanks again for that insight, Sonya. I'm checking up his book in more detail now. 


EDIT - On  Amazon.com's book preview of Authur Benjamin's 'Secrets of Mental Math', it shows that  'Mathemagics: How to Look Like a Genius Without Really Trying'  is the older form of  new book 'Secrets of Mental Math'.
In other words, get 'Secrets of Mental Math' rather than 'Mathemagics: How to look like A Genius without Trying.'  Same book, different titles. The former is the new version, the latter is the old version. Hope that helps.

[PokerDad]

Just a quick observation about the whole "doesn't know numbers" argument.... this is the same argument that gave us TERC Investigations. Too many teachers in high schools and college were noticing that kids sucked at math and they said "They don't understand numbers".... so.... the geniuses that head our schools decided to improve upon a failing system by giving us TERC. Wow.

I'd argue, on the other hand, that mastery in mathematics will give you all the "understanding" of numbers you could need. It seems to me that one or two slight comments against a proven method has scared people out of a potential method that could speed up math acquisition... the same argument has certainly chased away common sense in our schools. Mastery is mastery, that's the bottom line, and it takes WORK

[Robert Levy]

To Poker Dad,

Wow.  I looked up "TERC Investigations Suck"  on Google (always a good way to get to see the dark side of anything), and I got this video:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1YLlX61o8fg&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/1YLlX61o8fg&rel=1</a>

I was about to cry for this poor girl, but the video has a very happy ending, as her parents took her math education into their own hands.  If you look hard at the TERC technique, you'll see the intent of it was to avoid forcing the kids learn anything beyond single-digit counting, in order to do large arithmetic problems.  In other words, to use their method to add 8 plus 7, she draws out 8 shapes, then 7 shapes, then counts them all to get 15 shapes.  She never needs to actually know that 8 plus 7 equals 15.  So they make the problems an order of magnitude more complex (and thus more subject to failure), in lieu of having the kids learn their number facts.

Obviously I'm trusting whoever uploaded the video to be honest about it, but nothing in it surprises me.

[PokerDad]

Yeah, pretty bad. But if you can suspend your brain for a second, you might see why the teachers actually like the method. You see, in the "stacking" example, the child just goes through a systematic process of adding digits. She might not even understand why she carries the 1, she just does it. The argument was that doing this method focused too much on mechanics and not enough on conceptual understanding.

I'm not buying it and neither is anyone else around here...

My point is that saying something that utilizes mechanics will lead to lack of understanding numbers is the very same argument the national council of teachers of math (though I might have the organization incorrect, so don't take it as truth that it was them) that brought about these "improvements"... yeah, you'll understand how to break a number into components but woop-dee-doo. The kid that masters the "stacking" method will understand numbers just fine after a while (though may not understand it when 5 or 6 years old or when very first taught); a 9th Dan in soroban understands numbers just fine. I really think it's the same argument, made primarily by those that didn't understand the method in the first place.

One of the most damning chapters of Sowell's "Education in America" was when he started talking about exactly who, on average, goes into the teaching profession. Hint, it's not exactly the Nobel laureates if you know what I mean. I know three teachers within my family - one says she doesn't understand math, one feels as though TERC needs to be balanced at some point, the other is a complete dumbs****t... it's no wonder that the system is now cranking out failing math students at an ever increasing rate... and those in other countries love all the jobs getting outsourced because the subsequent crops of graduates are effectively innumerate.

[Robert Levy]

PokerDad,

Agree, and I had mentioned it also in an earlier post, regarding who now goes into teaching, and what is expected of them.  Just from a political end, I'm an engineer, so I'm able to do math.  There are millions of engineers in this country - and there are likely hundreds of thousands who are either retired or unemployed.  The vast majority of us could teach early math in our sleep - but we don't, because we're not 'qualified' to do so (i.e., don't meet cert standards) - and those that are qualified would never be trusted to teach in a way they think would work (i.e., memorizing more than just counting) - so we don't.  We leave it to the 'professionals', like you just described.

Is it any wonder regarding the results we're getting?

[Korrale4kq]

This thread has had me thinking a lot. And I actually think I personally like learning the traditional algorithms, becoming competent, if not to mastery, THEN being mind blown when I see how it works. I have been watching a lot of math videos lately and actually been seeing how stuff works and feeling wowed and loving math even more. But, I don't think some of the things I have seen would have helped me learn or have made an impact if I didn't know the traditional way of doing it.

Edited to add: I honestly think that teachers who learnt thing traditionally are having the same reflections that I am having. They are seeing HOW and WHY the algorithms actually work. And they are being seduced by it and thinking, wow it is so easy. But in reality it isn't any easier, at least to a new student because they didn't know how to do first.

It is like breathing,  We know how to breath,  but to have it broken down scientifically and understand how oxygen is pumped into our blood and how co2 is expelled it awesome to know. .... Or maybe I am just that much of a nerd. But if someone tried to read me breathing by explaining all that I would be dumb founded.

I know that breathing is an automatic thing, but I can't think of a better analogy now. Walking or running or hitting a baseball might be a better one.

[Robert Levy]

To Korrale4kq,

"This thread has had me thinking a lot. And I actually think I personally like learning the traditional algorithms, becoming competent, if not to mastery, THEN being mind blown when I see how it works. I have been watching a lot of math videos lately and actually been seeing how stuff works and feeling wowed and loving math even more. But, I don't think some of the things I have seen would have helped me learn or have made an impact if I didn't know the traditional way of doing it."

If that's  the case, I shall vaporize from this site, as my job is done.  Just kidding.  I think you hit on something very much at the root of our problems.  The case for Whole Language was made by saying if the kids (that can't read) are exposed to the great works of the past, they will pick up reading by assimilation.  We also know that's simply BS, but that was foundational basis on which Whole Language was pushed - that kids would appreciate the great works and learn to read just from that.  Millions of kids later, we know that simply doesn't work any better than explaining to a kid how a car works and then expecting him to design and build one on his own.


"Edited to add: I honestly think that teachers who learnt thing traditionally are having the same reflections that I am having. They are seeing HOW and WHY the algorithms actually work. And they are being seduced by it and thinking, wow it is so easy."

I know you're talking math, but the reading analogies are what keep popping into my mind.  In the case of reading, adults simply say:  "I read by sight, I don't sound out words, so why should my kids have to".  To answer that, THEY DON'T have to sound out words.  Once David knew a word by sight, I never, ever, dreamed of making him still sound it out.  But it takes time to get there, and that's where I diverge from these people.  I simply wanted to give him the tools to either sound out words, or get very close to that (for the tougher words)...rather than guessing.  Most adults simply don't remember how they learned to read.  I did, but only because my speech was so bad (only my mother and brother could understand me through first grade), that they were stuck having to start from scratch and teach me sounds.  So I learned phonics, but only be sheer luck.


"I know that breathing is an automatic thing, but I can't think of a better analogy now. Walking or running or hitting a baseball might be a better one. "

There are plenty of analogies.  Yes, I can appreciate (to an extent) a great work by Picasso, but being shown those works, for years, will not get me any closer to be a great artist.

[Robert Levy]

To MummyRoo,

"Yes, thankfully they start phonics straight away in school. There are sets of phonics readers - hundreds and hundreds of them - and in most schools, the kids *have* to read every single one, whether they are easy or not. So even the good readers make slow progress, which turns reading into a boring and tedious part of early schooling for them.  It seems that the government targets are to finish phonics by the end of Y1 (age 6) but there are still lots of children failing to learn to read - I would have thought that phonics taught correctly should prevent this!"


That's half the game, the other half is how serious they are at it.  When David was in pre-K, at Age 4/5, his class was covering one letter-sound a week.  They didn't even make it through the alphabet that year, much less blends, much less words.  That was it.  It was  a good school overall, but they simply were not interested in teaching 4/5 year olds  how to read...so it's still understandable that kids can be taught phonics but at such a slow rate that they likely forget what they already learned, when they have to apply it.

[Korrale4kq]

Robert,

I had a  phonics reading analogy ready but thought it might be fa fetching.
We teach our kids 44 phonemes, what they look like and expect them to memorize them. Later they blend them. Voila. When you think about it, pretty elementary, but it does nothing to explain how reading actually works, or I guess langauge in general.  You have a pretty good formula that you apply over and over..... With exceptions.

I learnt to read with phonics. And I have taught with phonics. But my son is a pretty competent whole word reader at a K-1st grade level. He has had rudimentary phonics instruction and he will have more in time. When he is older and doesn't struggle so much with it. But he is doing pretty well with intuiting phonics. And he is reading a lot, so has lots of practice. He learns the word jump. He comes across the word jumping while reading. I tell him what it is. He later is able to read the word running, swimming, and a variety of other verbs with the -ing suffix.
I have thought about reading a lot with the whole word and phonics debate and initially I thought I was a phonics reader because that is what I was taught with (as we're nearly all Aussie kids in the 80s, thanks why Aussie teachers were in demand in the US a decade ago) but the more I think about it, I thought I was a whole word reader.... But now I have decided that I am a chunking reader. I don't sound out words anymore. Even unfamiliar words. Infact when I read them I look for small known words inside of the words. And I have realised that this has contributed to some odd pronounciations.

[Korrale4kq]

MummyRoo,

That is sad about the incessant phonics readers drilling. The thing I have found about phonics readers is the they bore older kids and are hard to comprehend for younger kids. And the stories don't have any substance initially. Yes, at first there is a sense of achievement to be able to read a first book. But when the book goes like this....

Mat sat.
Sam sat
Cat sat.
Mat, Sam and cat on a mat.

There is little to make the child want to read more. And very little to excite the child to learn to read. So i certainly see why there is failure. My son detests those type of phonics readers.

 I will type out the first book that my son (2 yr) read.

JUMP ROPE
"I have a jump rope," he said.
"That jump rope is for you to play with."
"It is in the box of toys."
"That is it on top of the bat."
"You have to jump in and out of it."
"You have to jump for a long time."
"It is fun to play jump rope."
The End.

He loves this story. He love the conversation between the little girl and boy illustrated on the pages. We talked a lot on out jump rope afterwards. He was entertained and he wanted to read the book again and again. 6 months later he still likes the book. But I limited him reading it because I don't want him to memorize books.

I should add.... There are some amazing phonics readers out there. Usborne (lucky Brits) make some amazing ones. But they are usually not the ones that are available by the hundreds in schools.

[Robert Levy]

"Korrale4kq "

I have thought about reading a lot with the whole word and phonics debate and initially I thought I was a phonics reader because that is what I was taught with but the more I think about it, I thought I was a whole word reader.... But now I have decided that I am a chunking reader. I don't sound out words anymore.

I doubt any parent on this sounds out words much - we're all sight readers now - the only question is initial learning, and how was that done.  I think in many cases, parents simply don't remember how they learned, so they think it's how they're doing it now.  I'm taking a Russian class at work.  It's a voluntary class, and it's all phonics, they don't dream of throwing us a bunch of weird looking words and expecting us to remember them by sight, without knowing the sounds of their alphabet - and if they tried it, I'd get up and walk out, and so would everyone else.  In fact, they don't even have names for letters - just the sounds (at least the way we're being taught).  Backwards "R" (я) is not called "Backwards R-ski" or something, it's called "ya", because that is its sound.  It's all phonics.

[Robert Levy]

To Korrale4kq ,

"Mat, Sam and cat on a mat.
There is little (in those phonics readers) to make the child want to read more. And very little to excite the child to learn to read."

I'm with you 100% there.  I never used them and actually didn't know they existed or how to get them (thankfully).  We started with letters, then blends, then simple words.  From there it was right to children's books.  It was slow at the beginning, but before he read from a page, I made him learn the difficult words.  I knew which ones, and we would work on them separately.  Once he knew them pretty well, we'd go back to the book and read that page (which could still take a while).

I'll be the last person to support "Mat, Sam, and cat on a Mat" - his first book was "Walter and the Tugboat".  It was a real story at least and wasn't trying to teach him phonics at the same time.

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