If you saw the movie or the trailer to Incredibles 2, you probably chuckled at the scene where Mr. Incredible gets exasperated trying to help his son with math homework.
His son, Dash, holds up the textbook titled “New Math for Life” and tells his dad that he is doing the math wrong and he should do the math “this way.” Mr. Incredible yells, “Math is math!”
This scene strikes a chord with many parents because their children are learning to do math in ways that are unfamiliar to them. When they try to help, their kids exclaim that they aren’t doing math correctly. Parents ask, “If this method worked for me all my life, how could the method suddenly be wrong?”
These parents ask a valid question. Any method you can use to solve a math problem correctly is usable. Usable methods just aren’t always the best methods for learning or for effectiveness. Your child may need to learn a different method than you are using to deepen their mathematical understanding and/or to do math more efficiently.
If your method to solve a problem is more efficient than the one your child is learning, they probably just are not yet ready to learn the more efficient method.
Your child might be learning alternate ways of solving problems to find the way that works best for them. Not everyone’s brain thinks the same way, so schools often present several ways to solve a problem. Each child can explore methods to find their own preferred method. For example to add and subtract mentally, some kids imagine a number line, while others may imagine an abacus or see the pips on dice. Try to keep an open mind about methods and you may expand your own understanding of math.
So, yes, math is math! Math is a language to describe quantity. Like most languages, you can use various expressions to describe the same thing. If your child (or you) is struggling to learn math, come check us out! We teach the “new math” and the “old math” because it is all math.
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