The explanation I saw in defense of this moronic approach was that this new process helps the learner see what s/he is really doing when subtracting. Gee, back in my day, we used the simple phrases “take away” and “subtract from” to explain subtraction. And a five minute demonstration with apples, marbles, books, whatever, demonstrated pretty clearly the nature of subtraction. The additional explanation that the new way is exactly what cashiers [used to] to when making change for customers implies that what we’re trying to do is educate a bunch of kids to become cashiers. What a fraud.
So let’s see here now – we take one subtraction problem and turn it into five addition problems. I would need more toes to get through all this added ciphering.
The explanation I saw in defense of this moronic approach was that this new process helps the learner see what s/he is really doing when subtracting. Gee, back in my day, we used the simple phrases “take away” and “subtract from” to explain subtraction. And a five minute demonstration with apples, marbles, books, whatever, demonstrated pretty clearly the nature of subtraction. The additional explanation that the new way is exactly what cashiers [used to] to when making change for customers implies that what we’re trying to do is educate a bunch of kids to become cashiers. What a fraud.
It seems pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it?
So let’s see here now – we take one subtraction problem and turn it into five addition problems. I would need more toes to get through all this added ciphering.
Exactly!