Common Corpse Curriculum Clumsiness

Tom Lehrer: New Math with a nice whiteboard illustration.

(I tried to leave this on the previous common corpse thread, but the browser got closed and I lost the text. Gosh, browsers are stupid.)

I probably heard this in the early 1960s, since I was a big Lehrer fan, but I must've forgotten about it by the late '60s when what I think of as "new math" was introduced.

Lehrer first demonstrates two "old" techniques for subtraction. He mentions an age and institution bias on which you'd learn. The "carry the one" made both me & Milady blink absently. Carry the one, in subtraction? These are what I would consider "tricks" — not that they don't work.

What he calls "New Math" is what I (public schools, Oklahoma) and Milady (Catholic schools, Chicago) learned, which I think is called "grouping." Yes, it is intended to let you understand what you are doing, borrowing from the tens to subtract in the ones column. Is it just that it's what we were taught that this seems like the right approach? Still requires full "flash card" knowledge.

When I was in 9th grade, they introduced "New Math." (Or is it New New Math?) I was an "A" math student, and I got it immediately. At first, I thought this was pre-Algebra or something, but, no, it was just what we'd call "factoring." My thought, in 9th grade was, yeah, I get it, because I have this great grounding in traditional math; kids in the future are going to be totally lost.

Modern common corpse curriculum is like New Math dumbed down and made into awkward, often indecipherable, word-sentences designed to make people feel stupid, as far as I can tell.