Math Wars

I was watching 60 minutes last weekend. They did a whole segment on - what they called - Fuzzy Math. It's so discouraging when people knock the standards-based movement. Most of us who are encouraging mathematics to be taught in a thinking manner agree that people STILL need to find answers to mathematics problems. We even think that if there is a specific answer to a question - then people actually need to get that answer when they finish solving the problem. We may find that people don't always solve problems the same way, but if they are doing it in a way that is mathematically correct, then we think that is fine. It seems as though there's a right and a wrong way to teach mathematics. I think that there are as many ways to teach mathematics as there are people who are to learn mathematics. The bottom line is that we (at least I) would like people to know more than how to plug numbers into formulas. I want them to know when to use formulas; what it means; how to interpret the answers they get.