Do the math

The average American student can do many things that his or her parents cannot dream of doing: program a video cassette recorder; get a high score in any video game; download almost anything, legally or illegally, to his or her iPod, and multitask to an extent that makes one wonder how many brains are really in there. But when it comes to doing math, that same student displays the approximate level of intelligence of a paramecium.At least, that's what both national and international tests seem to show. American 8th grade students trailed those from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and many European countries in the recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. In the state of Washington, this year only about half the 10th grade students passed the basic math proficiency part of the state education test. A website, http://www.nychold.com/ webcite, has been set up so that concerned parents can find links to information about battles over math education in their home states. A reading and math tutoring system focusing on basic skills that originated in Japan, Kumon, now has franchises in many states and a global clientele of more than 4 million children in 43 countries.Perhaps in response to all this, in September of this year, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued a report recommending that schools focus more on teaching basic math skills and stop trying to teach dozens of different mathematical topics in each grade. This is the same National Council that, in 1989, issued a report that said exactly the opposite, so you'll forgive me for viewing their current statement with the same degree of unease that I might greet, say, an announcement by President Bush that we were going to do the whole Iraq thing all over again but this time get it right.That earlier report, and about ten years of experimentation in math education that preceded it, produced a curriculum that emphasized letting children find their own ways to solve