Erick Erickson is sad. Or mad. I can't tell. We'll just call it "smad" to make it easier.
Why is he smad? Because the Common Core-based math book his third-grade daughter brought home contains four different ways to understand subtraction.
Here's the page out of her textbook that he's smad about:
Run! It's maths!
What in the world is wrong with that page? Well,
according to Mr. Erickson:
The picture above is from my third grade daughter’s math book. This is the only page that explains that method for subtraction. There are, for the record, four ways to subtract that my third grader must learn.
This is the only page explaining that method. This is the only example. The very next page goes to arrays. The page after that goes to multiplication. This is it.
The traditional method of subtracting, borrowing and carrying numbers, is derisively called the “Granny Method.” The new method makes no freaking sense to either my third grader or my wife.
Let's unpack this smadness below.
From Erickson's screed, you may have accidentally come to believe that the standard method of subtracting - borrowing numbers from higher values - is gone and has been replaced with this and the other three ways his daughter must learn subtraction. That's fair. Because what Erickson failed to mention in his haste to deride this discomforting, alternative method of subtracting numbers is that it's supplemental. We'll come back to that in a second.
So, what is the actual standard in the Common Core curriculum? After reading (and believing? What's wrong with you?) Erickson's smadness, you may be surprised to learn that students are required to be able to "fluently add and subtract multidigit whole numbers using the standard algorithm." Does that sound like the "Granny Method?" It should, because it is.
Granny! We missed you!
None of the four, new, subtraction methods that Erickson, his wife, and his third-grader can't figure out are supposed to replace the standard method. They are
supplemental.
What Common Core includes, and what apparently scares Erickson and others from the right-most end of the political spectrum (he sends his daughter to a Christian private school to "escape this madness.") is the idea that we're no longer just teaching kids that things are what they are. We're teaching them why things are what they are. A second- or third-grader learning subtraction may be able to go through the motions of the standard method of subtraction without understanding why she's borrowing from the tens column to subtract the ones from each other. This new, counting-up method may help a student understand how subtraction actually works and the relationship between the different values.
Children do not all learn at the same speed or in the same way. Some may grasp the standard method of subtraction right away. Others may only understand when they see the counting up method. Still others may need to use one of the other alternative subtraction algorithms before they really internalize the concept. Providing alternative ways to understand that same concept is not "absurdity" (and let's all pause for a moment to appreciate the "absurdity" of a "visual editor at The Daily Signal and digital media associate at The Heritage Foundation" commenting on math curriculum). It's a reasonable approach to making sure teachers are provided with the tools they need to teach every student, regardless of how that student's mind may work.
What we really have here is another instance of the right expressing fear of an educated populace. In a conservative world, if I may paraphrase Tennyson, it's not ours to reason why; it's ours to do and die. Just like in Jefferson County, where the school board passed its resolution to enact a curriculum review committee to review the Advanced Placement U.S. History framework and the middle school health curriculum (sex ed), critical thinking is seen as subversive instead of virtuous and uplifting.
And yet, strangely, that's exactly what he accuses this textbook of doing:
These people want worker bees in their cogs. They want automatons. They do not want productive, independent citizens.
There's some textbook projection for you. (Pun intended.) Can't be an independent citizen if you didn't learn subtraction the right way!
So, Erick - don't be smad that your daughter's classmates at her Christian private school are being provided with multiple opportunities to understand subtraction. You'll just have to up her Ayn Rand intake to make sure she's properly prepared for the competition of other kids being up to speed on third-grade math.