The vast majority of mathematics education in the elementary world is calculating and procedures. We spend years teaching our children how to add, multiply, divide, and work with fractions. When third grade unveils word problems, our children freak out. The idea of having to think and reason, explore and fall, is completely foreign to the world of mathematics for them. This is a tragedy. Some people never outgrow their fear of word problems and when asked about mathematics at the elementary level, reveal that they have believed the lie:
I don’t need to learn math, because as an adult, I’ll just use a calculator.
This myth is seen most in children who truly struggle with calculating. Their parents buy them a calculator and they realize that their elementary math is mostly just typing in numbers. Why would they ever need to study mathematics if the computer will do the work for them? If your children’s mathematics curriculum is mostly intent on calculating and not on number sense, then you are at risk of believing this myth.
The fact is that the study of mathematics is so much more than mere procedures and calculations. As Paul Lockhart says, we continually go to the edge of the unknown and we are continually stuck. Unfortunately for our elementary students, the only way for us to truly be able to explore the world of patterns, mystery, and infinity, is to first understand the world of numbers. Understanding numbers and their place in this world is exactly what our elementary mathematics programs should be focused on doing and it’s why so many years are spent calculating. The only way to truly understand numbers is to know how they behave in different scenarios. What does 8 do when I have 4 of him or when I split him into four groups? We are studying numbers when we learn how to use them in computation and when we explore the meaning behind the computation. As the true nature of mathematics, comprehending the gap from a word problem to the procedure can be the hardest thing in the world, but it’s totally worth it.