Word: mathes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...laying out the floor plan-arithmetic-new math begins not with the names of numbers but with real objects, such as beads, stones, sticks. By manipulating objects in collections (or "sets") the child learns crucial ideas. He may be asked to remove pairs of objects from two collections, for example. When both collections run out at the same time, he begins to grasp the idea of equality. When one runs out first, he learns about inequalities...
...right: one 4, one 2, one 1, adding up to 7, each digit is twice the one to the right; one 4, one 2, one 1, adding up to 7. Similarly, 5 is 101 (one 4, no 2s, one 1). Once they are well grounded in the new math concepts, even small children can easily "carry" and "borrow" with large numbers. They simply "regroup" by tens...
...math teachers also make use of the "number line," which shows the sum of same-size jumps from point to point...
Adult Sixth-Graders. Most Americans dread math because teachers have long used strong-arm drills to mask their own ignorance of the subject; even now more than half the states do not require a single college math course for certified elementary schoolteachers. Taught rote computation, children have usually lost all curiosity in the process. As an instance, most kids must still wait for third grade to tackle such "carrying" problems as 39 plus 3, even though first-graders can easily do it by counting 40, 41, 42 on their fingers...
...Math is not only vital in a day of computers, automation, games theory, quality control and linear programming; it is now also a liberal art, a logic for solving social as well as scientific problems. How much more of it Americans might have is suggested in the new Cambridge Report, a manifesto by 25 top U.S. math users and teachers who hammered it out at Harvard. To lift the national logic level and stamp out mathematical illiteracy, these experts argue that sixth-graders can and should attain a competence "well above that of the general population today." For high school...