Dear Ms. Fink,
Having found myself favorably
impressed again by your comments at the Board meeting last night, with respect
to the teaching of mathematics in District 2, I hope you will consider the
following comments constructive criticism.
In the first place there are at least
two different points of view to be considered with respect to the TERC
curriculum; how it is seen by
professional educators and mathematicians, and how it is seen by
parents. Leaving to professionals their debate, I mean to
consider the question solely from the point of view of parents here.
In this spirit then, to my mind the
first and most important thing, if we are to have a useful discussion, is to be
clear what exactly the TERC curriculum is.
Last night you heard praise by a
parent from PS158 for what was called
"TERC", but it was a TERC
that was represented as having a computational
component. And I myself have heard
similar praise of what was called "TERC", by a parent at PS11, who is
having her daughter tutored in mathematics at home!
The lesson here is obvious - forgive
me for taxing your patience by stating it - no meaningful debate can occur so
long as people use the same word to refer to different things.
One further thing I should like to say
to this point, is that at a
presentation Lucy West gave about TERC
at PS11, two years ago, a series of figures were shown on an overhead projector
which were said to prove that students taught solely according to the TERC
method did best in exam results, and that students who were taught according to
the "old", or "algorithmic" method, did much less well, but
that students who were taught not exclusively either way - who were taught
according to a "mixed" TERC and algorithmic approach - did very badly
indeed. The audience, parents that is to
say, were then assured that if we cared for our children's education we would
never mix the old math, the only math we all of us know, with TERC, on pain of
doing damage to our children's chances of excelling in mathematics.
As you might expect, this was met with
a mixture of confusion, wonder, and dismay, by most of the parents
present. (Virtually
all of the parents with whom I spoke.)
To sum up: clearly mathematics is being taught
inconsistently both within and between schools in District 2. (You'll recall Lucy West's claim that it was
because mathematics was being taught inconsistently in District 2 when she
arrived on the job here, that she adopted the TERC curriculum in the first
place. I say "she" because, as
I mentioned last night, the answer to the question where is the record of
deliberation preceding the adoption of TERC that she gave to me was,
"there is no record".) And
while I think it would be fair to say that some inconsistency is both
inevitable, and not in itself an objection to the teaching of any subject, for
after all, different
teachers and different classes have different strengths and
weaknesses,
and so teachers should be allowed some discretion in their
approach, and the tempo they set, and so on.
Yet I also believe that parents,
generally, are in search of an answer to the question whether TERC can usefully
be supplemented by something like traditional computational means in order to
ensure their children grasp what on Monday night last were called "basic
math facts".
Now if the answer to this question is
"yes", as in light of PS158's
practice, and the experience of those whose children are being
tutored seems to indicate, then the only questions remaining are when will
District 2 notify the parents of this fact?
And when will we see TERC supplemented, with some consistency, in
District 2? And when will parents and
children have a book, as the teachers do presently have workbooks, by reading
in which they might learn something of how to help their children when they
have problems with mathematics?
In conclusion I will add one further
point to ponder: last night Mary
Somoza said to one of her colleagues,
that the fact is no teacher in
District 2 will publicly denounce
TERC, whatever their feelings. And on
Monday night we heard from a District 2 teacher on the panel, that any teacher
who doesn't want to teach TERC should leave the District - this from a woman
who began her remarks by stating that she was born and educated in Romania, so
the audience will know - she said - what kind of education she got.
My point is simply this: learning
takes place, as I believe the
history of science, and the
I trust you won't take my remarks here
amiss: and forgive me for saying, once more, that your own comments last night
to this issue were very welcome to me.
Yours sincerely,
Garry Dobbins