It’s been reported before that Americans’ math skills are in decline, especially in comparison with other developed countries. In fact, experts warn that if these trends continue, American competitiveness in the global marketplace will start to decline. In this context, as the New York Times reports, education officials are not reversing their policies to place a greater emphasis on basic math skills:

For the second time in a generation, education officials are rethinking the teaching of math in American schools. The changes are being driven by students’ lagging performance on international tests and mathematicians’ warnings that more than a decade of so-called reform math — critics call it fuzzy math — has crippled students with its de-emphasizing of basic drills and memorization in favor of allowing children to find their own ways to solve problems. . . .

“When my oldest child, an A-plus stellar student, was in sixth grade, I realized he had no idea, no idea at all, how to do long division,” Ms. Backman said, “so I went to school and talked to the teacher, who said, ‘We don’t teach long division; it stifles their creativity.’” . . . It was a report from this same group in 1989 that influenced a generation of teachers to let children explore their own solutions to problems, write and draw pictures about math, and use tools like the calculator at the same time they learn algorithms.

Normally, as a parent of a young child myself, I tend to support educational policies and curricula that encourages students to be creative and expressive, rather than constraining them to fit into traditional models of learning that overly emphasize achievement scores. However, in this case, I happen to agree with the “back to basics” approach. I’m all for art, physical education, music, etc., but I also think it’s unacceptable that children today aren’t taught long division.

Yes, everybody can get the right answer more easily by using a calculator, but reflecting on my own experiences, techniques such as long division don’t just teach you the right answer, but also teach you that there’s a method by which you use to arrive at the answer -- a method and discipline that can be applied in many other subjects and more generally, areas of life, as well. Sure, this type of methodical technique has its limits but should not be discarded altogether.

Ultimately, I think there’s a time and place for everything -- be sure to include opportunities for creative expression, but also make sure that students have basic, fundamental skills necessary to succeed in our increasingly competitive globalized society. We might wish that this wasn’t the case, but this is the reality in which we live, like it or not.