Critically Speaking

Dr. Anna Stokke: Why Johnny Can't Add

Dec 10, 2024

28:06

In this episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Anna Stokke discuss the decline in math education, noting that students lack basic arithmetic skills, hindering their ability to grasp complex concepts across multiple subjects. Dr. Stokke highlights the persistence of ineffective teaching methods, such as constructivism, despite evidence supporting direct instruction. She advocates for a return to systematic, explicit teaching methods to build a strong foundation in math. They also stress the importance of parents questioning educational practices and seeking evidence-based research.

Key Takeaways:

Math is cumulative. It is like a ladder. To teach a student algebra, they need to know what happens before that.
If you don't learn the basic math at the time you should, times tables, for instance, you should really know by the end of grade three, and then you don't get that fixed, it's just going to snowball.
Memorization practices are sometimes called drill and kill. However, if students don’t get that practice, they will fall behind early on.
There is a lot of evidence from cognitive and neuroscientists that learning basic mathematics actually contributes to your problem-solving abilities for a range of different problems, not just mathematical ones.

"The decline in math is well documented in North America. We don't know why that is, but it's fairly clear that these changes in education seem to correlate with the decline in scores. It's very concerning, and I think we could turn it around if we'd focus on more of a bottom-up approach, building the foundation and using good instructional techniques." — Dr. Anna Stokke

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