March 2025
Welcome to EFM's March Newsletter!
It is essential that every caregiver in the world reads books and does math with their young children!
EFM believes in every child’s mathematical right to equity, opportunity, and personal fulfillment.
News
EFM is 4 Years Old! – Time flies and children grow up. Four years ago I was just putting out our first materials on the internet and wondering what kind of reception they would get. It is so wonderful to see what a team of people dedicated to an important cause have created since EFM started up. We are far from done with achieving our goals, and we welcome your help.
March 14 – Pi Day – International Day of Math (IDM) – This newsletter is going out a few days early to be ahead of the celebration. Last month I mentioned that the people behind the movie Counted Out have special plans for Pi Day. The people behind the IDM have dubbed this the year of Mathematics Art and Creativity. Check out their ideas online.
Celebrating EFM Volunteers
Everyone at Early Family Math is an unpaid volunteer. Our volunteers have been essential for helping us reach people around the world. For the last five months I have been recognizing some of our wonderful volunteers, and I will continue that tradition this month.
Vinicius, Nadja, Gabriel, Daniel, Gilmarcos, Gabriela, Angelo, Fernanda – Portuguese
Several languages bring up an interesting question for EFM – Which dialect or regional version do we support? We want to support everyone in the world, but EFM is too small to do human translation for all versions of all languages. For Portuguese, we have settled on Brazilian Portuguese, though my hope is the difference with European Portuguese is similar to the difference between British and American English.
Why is Early Family Math Needed?
and
Why Aren’t You Outraged?
As I discussed in earlier newsletters, studies show that doing early math in the home is highly predictive of a child’s success in school, through all their school years and in all subjects. Other studies show that a caregiver doing Math Talk in the home is a key element that predicts successful math preparation going into school. Finally, still other studies show that caregivers will take action if they are convinced that doing math activities in the home is essential and is something they can do easily.
That makes building programs to support early math in homes one of the most efficient and effective ways to improve social equity!
When I wrote “Why is EFM needed?” what I’m really asking is “Why isn’t this already being supported by every government and large corporation on the planet?” Why isn’t it an incredibly obvious course of action?
Early math and reading should be universally supported as a high-priority, fundamental right of all world citizens! Yes, there are higher priority needs, such as food, shelter, safety, healthcare, and emotional support, but early education is just below those basic needs and is potentially so much easier to solve. Why is so little being done and why is EFM, a tiny organization with essentially no funding, able to make a difference?
Why aren’t you outraged by this state of affairs?
I know there is no shortage of things we can be outraged by. Still, how can you ignore a need so obvious and so conceptually simple to fix?
EFM seeks to address this. We are giving a voice to this need and connecting with others doing good work in this area. We provide free resources to families and educators in all communities around the world to make early math available, practical, playful, and sociable. When the day finally comes that some governments, foundations, and large corporations wake up to this need, our materials are ready.
Other Reasons Why EFM is Needed
There is something striking about the relatively few early math programs and materials that exist. With alarmingly few exceptions, they provide impoverished versions of math that are limited to learning basic routine math. Sure, basic mechanics and understandings are important, but there is so much more to math than that. Of all the educational disciplines, classroom math is done the least like what professionals practice in their work – and shockingly few people are aware of this.
As Paul Lockhart points out in A Mathematician’s Lament (both a book and a free PDF available all over the internet), most math programs are designed to teach the worst possible version of math in the most tiresome way possible. Using his comparison, would you spend all the pre-college years teaching music by only teaching the reading of notes, chords, and scales? Would you not also teach singing, and playing and listening to music?
Doing nothing but note reading, chords, and scales is exactly what is going on in most math programs, and it’s a cultural tragedy. Math has so much more to offer every child.
Francis Su wrote “Mathematics for Human Flourishing,” which describes beautifully the depth of what math has to offer. In addition to math’s beauty and its ability to inspire wonder, it is a powerful tool for building personal virtues. He speaks of society’s need for math, just as it needs parks, museums, and concerts.
So much of what math can bring to a person is completely lost if it is taught as a sequence of boring formulas and mechanics. What is learned about oneself while persisting and struggling with a math problem can be learned in few other ways in school. The revealing of unexpected beautiful patterns fought hard for and earned are very fulfilling moments. Every child deserves to have such experiences.
EFM provides games and puzzles to be done in social groups because we believe these activities and environments are engaging ways to naturally involve a child with problem solving, and because we believe that, to be fulfilling, math should be playful and challenging.
Why is Early School Math needed?
About a year ago EFM started developing a free app, Early School Math, to be a tool to assist early math teachers. The need that was initially brought to our attention was teachers being hired in many rural parts of Africa who had no experience, no access to professional development, and little or no resources. Upon further study, we realized that this need extends to many parts of the world including parts of the US.
How can this be? Why is math education, something so important individually and societally, left with so little support in so many places?
EFM’s response is to create a resource that is exactly what teachers need and no more. We are creating something useful whose design is not dictated by bureaucratic demands to check every box or fulfill every well-meaning standard – it is responsive to actual, practical needs. In addition to those teachers with no access to resources, there are also too many math teachers who are overworked, undertrained, and under-supported, who don’t have time to read 20 pages to pick up one possibly useful idea.
Wrapping Up
I wish I lived in a world where EFM was not needed. I wish that everyone recognized that every child deserves a good math education in the same way they realize a child deserves to read and be read to. Building on its progress over its first four years, EFM will continue to work to change our world. Will you join us?
If you have any questions or comments, please send them our way! We would enjoy the opportunity to chat with you. Also, if you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting us in any fashion, we would love to talk with you about ways we can work together!
March 12, 2025
Chris Wright
Chris@EarlyFamilyMath.org
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Early Family Math is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, #87-4441486.