December 2022
Welcome to EFM's December Newsletter!
News
Why is So Little Being Done? Early math education is essential, and yet is largely ignored. Why is that? This month's column is born out of my intense frustration looking over the landscape of what has been done, and what is likely to be done, in the area of early math education. If this situation disturbs you as much as it does me, please do something – perhaps write to a colleague, newspaper, foundation, or government entity; maybe start some conversations on the subject; maybe provide support to entities attempting to make a change; or maybe join EFM. Maybe help convince the Education First Lady to speak up about early reading and math. Here is a link to a PDF of this newsletter should you feel moved to forward it on.
Next month I'll go back to discussing new ideas about fun math games and puzzles during the early years.
Happy Holidays! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading this newsletter and to wish you and the ones near and dear to you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
Early Math Education
A child’s level of math preparation when entering school is one of the strongest predictors of general success for all their school years. Unlike early reading, which helps develop later reading, early math helps develop both math and reading skills. Early math vocabulary and reasoning develop skills that a child will use across all academic areas.
In spite of this fact, each year, hundreds of thousands of children enter school across the United States hopelessly behind their peers in math. Families often have not been told how to support their children’s math development before reaching school age or understand its immense benefits. As most schools teach math as a collection of dry facts and routines to master, this weak early math background can lead to failure, discouragement, and a hatred of math throughout the school years.
We are failing these children mathematically during their first six years, the most important learning years of their lives!
Early math: reading’s neglected sibling
The message of early reading, that a good parent reads with their children, has broad acceptance. A similar national campaign concerning early math does not exist – parents rarely realize the essential early contribution they can make and so they leave math for the schools to handle. When parents do attempt it, most have no idea what it means to “do math.” Instead of discussing and playing with math together, they give their children flash cards, workbooks, or apps on electronic devices. Children brought up this way may gain some early math skills, but they will see math as a boring and isolating experience.
The essential importance of math skills is also downplayed in our society. It would sound preposterous to say to a child having difficulty reading, “That’s okay, I was never good at reading either.” However, when the difficulty is with math, people are comfortable saying, “That’s okay, I was never good at math either.” Why is this acceptable?
Every family in the world should be reading and doing math with their children starting as early as age six months. This is not happening and there is remarkably little being done about it!
How schools fail us
The problem with early math education starts with schools. Our elementary school teachers typically lack respect, are underpaid, have large classes, and receive inadequate training and support. This holds true for all elementary school subjects, so why does it hit math so hard?
It is no secret in the educational community that while elementary school teachers care deeply about their students and teaching, many of them dislike math, are uncomfortable with it, and fear teaching it. One math education consultant recently confided to me that visiting elementary math lessons is often a cringe-worthy experience. It has not helped that every ten years the latest math education fad is foisted on these teachers, who then receive little or no training on how to teach math in this “new and improved” way.
This unfortunate math environment in schools is not new. It has produced a society filled with generations of people who have learned to hate math and have no appreciation for what it might offer them. The subject makes them feel inadequate, and they fail to see its relevance. These people go on to become the next round of teachers and parents. The consequence of this cycle is alarming: the most recent national math standards scores show that 64% of fourth graders and 74% of eighth graders are not proficient in mathematics.
What’s being done?
The current state of early math education programs in the US is dispiriting. There is a scattering of nascent government programs, foundation funded programs, and independent programs – all tiny tugboats trying, without any mutual coordination, to change the course of the huge supertanker of math education. Here are a few examples:
Two small state programs that are moving forward in good directions are California’s Early Math Project and Utah’s STEM Action Center.
Research efforts aimed at improving early math education are beginning to proliferate. Stanford DREME, Erikson Institute, the Center for Family Math, and TERC are a few active research centers. These groups study important questions and publish papers. The problem is, where are the organizations that will use this research to make meaningful change?
There is some interesting work being done in the area of mathematical storybooks, a convergence between reading and mathematics. Marlene Kliman at TERC, David Purpura at Purdue University, and Early Family Math are examples of groups making progress in this area.
Groups are also advancing math education as a means to empower students and improve equity. Zeno Math and The Algebra Project are examples of organizations doing good work from this point of view.
Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival has sponsored hundreds of math festivals, a great way to introduce children to the fun and beauty of mathematics. If schools taught math in a way that emphasized play, discovery, and exploration, there would be no need for these festivals!
While these efforts are admirable, it is striking how few of the people involved in early math programs are professional mathematicians. Imagine a group of non-artists getting together to create art programs! While many backgrounds are essential for creating early math programs, surely one of them is the deep understanding that professional mathematicians have. This lack often leads to programs that involve only basic skill building and leave out essential areas such as problem solving and deeper pattern discovery. Paul Lockhart wrote A Mathematician’s Lament about the barren quality of what so many consider to be a basic math education.
If after reading this description of educational disarray you were hoping for answers, you will be disappointed. This is a very hard problem made nearly impossible by an almost complete lack of national and state leadership. I have been involved in many informal meetings among private groups of math education specialists desperately hoping to gain a foothold addressing this issue. However, without leadership to unify these disparate voices, these meetings have been little more than frustrating exercises.
More needs to be done, but what?
Even if I could give you the ideal way to handle curriculum, teacher hiring and pay, teacher training, teacher resources, classroom size, and teacher mentoring, it would be nearly impossible to find the funding and it would still take many, many years to change the existing teachers, schools, and culture. There are some lovely ideas for incorporating game-based and play-based learning (e.g., Math for Love or Early Family Math) and thinking classrooms (Peter Liljedahl), but these ideas are only partial answers.
The recently announced Gates Foundation $1 billion four-year math initiative sounds promising. However, the initiative involves only schools, leaves out early math with families, and looks at creating yet another curriculum change.
Improving family involvement in early math education is similarly difficult. Families need to feel that doing math with their children is as essential a part of their day as reading with them. Families need to care about it, find the time for it, be given the tools to do it, and feel empowered. This requires a large support structure and a huge change in culture.
A simple and highly effective change, which requires no extra time or effort for families, is to develop the habit of ”math talk.” Sharing with their children the math that is naturally going on throughout their day, whether it is counting fruit out loud or describing and comparing features of things, will make a huge difference. While this is in no way a complete answer, it is a good place to start, and it is ripe for a national campaign.
We are long overdue for national leadership for early math education. Who will take on this challenge
If you have any questions or comments, please send them my way. I would enjoy the opportunity to chat with you. Also, if you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting us in any fashion, I would love to talk with you about ways we can work together!
Chris Wright
December 18, 2022
Chris@EarlyFamilyMath.org
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Early Family Math is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, #87-4441486.