Seattle School Board Rethinks Fuzzy Math Concepts

I'm in fourth grade and doing a lot of math. The people who write the "fuzzy" math books don't care if you get the right answer, they just care that you try to solve the problem in the right way. In my class when I get an answer wrong, it's marked as wrong, and I have to fix it.

In today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer there is a story about how the Seattle School Board is having second thoughts about "reform" math textbooks.

The two recommended books are "Connected Mathematics Project II," an updated version of the curriculum used in many Seattle middle schools, and "Interactive Mathematics Program" for high schoolers.

Both use a more "conceptual" or "reform" math teaching style, which aims to help students better understand math by helping them reason out concepts themselves. Reform math also emphasizes estimating and being able to analyze whether the answer derived is correct and reasonable.

Proponents of the teaching method say it makes lessons more relevant for students and helps build a solid foundation for studying more advanced math. But critics say the approach lacks the structure and the practice problems necessary to help drive home key math concepts. They would like to see a return to more traditional skill-based curricula.

I'm glad that the Seattle School Board is holding off on fuzzy math textbooks. The right answer doesn't always matter, like the moral of a story, but in math, spelling, and grammar, you can't change the way "through" is spelled, or that 4/5=1/5+16/20.