Homeschooling Badly: Why Math-phobic Homeschooling Parents Frustrate Me

Howdy, folks!

I never cease to be amazed by the sheer repetition of articles on homeschooling mom blogs that claim that parents who are really bad at math personally can totally homeschool math through high school through a few easy tips.   I mean, you'd think I get some kind of callus after a while, but I'm still horrified each time.  Amy at Raising Arrows wrote a post to advertise "Teaching Textbooks" that lead off with this admission:

It’s not a story I like to tell…

The one about how it took me 3 tries to pass the test to get into College Algebra.

Or the one about how my math score on the ACT brought down my entire score.

Or the one about how I would have had a 4.0 if it hadn’t been for…you guessed it…MATH.

So, when it came to homeschooling, math was the ONLY thing I was worried about. Sure, I could add and subtract, multiply and divide (as long as you didn’t throw a lot of extra stuff in there!), I could use fractions and decimals well enough to bake a cake or figure a tip, but higher level mathematical concepts made my eyes cross and run for the nearest calculator – even though I had no idea how to make the calculator do what I needed it to do to solve the problem.

Allow me to translate this into what it would sound like if she was admitting a similar level of unease with written English:

"It took me three tries to get into English 101 - General Composition.  Thank goodness!  Anything lower is considered remedial classes that don't count towards graduation credit.

My Language Arts score brought down my whole ACT test score! (ok, that statement might explain why it was so hard for the author to get into College algebra, actually, since she doesn't understand how averages work.)

I would have had a 4.0 (at some unstated educational level) if I didn't have to take English!

English was the only thing I was worried about when homeschooling.  It's not like you need writing in any other subject areas!  I can conjugate most tenses, use punctuation pretty well, write a 5-sentence paragraph, and spell most words (as long as you don't throw a lot of extra stuff in there!).  I can write a note to my spouse or my boss in a pinch, but higher level writing concepts make my eyes cross and run for the nearest dictionary - even though I had no idea how to make the dictionary write that college paper for me."

Let me explain how I created that paragraph.  Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fraction and decimals are covered in 5th grade or below.  I looked up the Common Core standards for 5th grade writing and inserted those into Amy's introduction along with the correct college course equivalent for College Algebra  which is generally the lowest entry-level math class that can count for graduation credits.

Can you imagine the level of outrage homeschool parents would have if a public school math teacher admitted that they were just barely functional at 5th grade math while teaching 5th-12th grade?  Oh, wait.  That can't happen in schools with certified teachers!  The minimum course of study in my state to teach secondary school math is a college minor in math which means the teacher would have to have passed calculus I and II plus college statistics.  Instead, homeschool parents console each other with the idea that no one is really good at math and since no one is good at math the parents have no responsibility to raise their personal math skills before teaching their kids.

Her first tip is to focus on the basics because basic math skills like addition and subtraction are the basis of all higher math.    That idea is true - but terribly misleading.   There are large conceptual jumps between basic addition, addition including "lots of extra stuff", adding like terms and adding two equations.   To use a history analogy, she's telling parents to just focus on dates of events because dates of events are the basis of history.  For English buffs, she's telling people to just hammer home vocabulary because words are the basis of reading and writing.

She leads off the basics section with the same hoary chestnut of comfort that all homeschool math deniers drag out at some point:

There’s no escaping the fact that it actually is true that only a select group of people will go on to use the concepts and equations taught in higher level math classes.

Yup.  The first group is people who want to pass out of College Algebra - which is a pretty huge swath of people in collegiate programs. 

 The second group would be all people in college degree level jobs in medicine, science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, agriculture, computer science, data analysis and education along with specialized careers in law, art restoration, archeology, and business off the top of my head.

I speak English, conversational ASL and broken Spanish.  My kid is very young, but I do not comfort myself with my lack of linguistic prowess by saying, "Well, not many people really use proficiency in a second language on a daily basis".   After all, he may well make a good living as a translator or an analyst if he learns more languages from the skilled teachers he will meet in school. 

I don't - but apparently homeschooling parents who are afraid of math are willing to close off entire career paths rather than learn some more math on their own.

Her next two points are a digression about using manipulatives followed by the idea that parents shouldn't move on in math before their kid is ready.  I like manipulatives.  I thought the basic benefit
of homeschooling was that the pace of the class could be tailored perfectly to the student; guess I was wrong about that!

Her fourth point is that math-phobic parent-teachers just need to find a program that teaches their kid instead of the parent.   She lays out the ideal program (e.g. Teaching Textbooks) for us:

You need a math program that is self-paced and doesn’t require a lot from you. Even better, it should grade itself and offer a multi-faceted approach to teaching math. We use Teaching Textbooks for this very reason! I needed a curriculum that my kids liked, was easy to use, and gave me time to focus on other subjects with other children.

That sounds like a lovely program for the parent-teacher and a potential nightmare for the student.  A lot of traditional schools use computer-based math programs for students in junior high now.  Those programs are self-paced, feature computer-based instruction and automatically grade classwork and homework assignments.  The main difference is that there is a certified teacher in the room who can individually help students who are lost after the instruction section.   What happens when a kid has the same problem at home - and the parent is dropped in to the middle of a math topic? 

My favorite bit, though, is the fact that she claims Teaching Textbooks is a multifaceted program.  I went to the website to check the program out; it's simplistic in the extreme.  Students read the textbook, watch the instructional media then complete self-grading problems and tests.  The term "independent learner" is used so many times that I feel like the sellers of the curriculum want to be clear that failure is due to the student's lack of independence rather than poor curriculum  or the lack of a teacher.

I cannot find a document for any of the levels in Teaching Textbooks that explains the layout of the curriculum for a level or the entire series.   I am always suspicious of any curriculum that fails to include a scope-and-sequence document (also known as benchmarks or learning standards or any one of a dozen other educational jargon).  These documents show exactly what topics are to be covered in each class, what level of mastery is expected and what order topics should be introduced if topics build on each other.  This sounds complicated but the actual document could be as simple as these examples:

• A kindergarten student will be able to correctly identify diagrams of squares, rectangles, rhombuses (diamonds), triangles, circles, hexagons and octagons.  They should be able to draw squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles accurately.  
• A second-grader will be able to add two two-digit numbers.
• Third graders will memorize the multiplication tables between 1 and 12.  Students will begin multiplying two digit numbers by a single digit number after multiplication facts are memorized.
• Chemistry students will be able to determine the number of protons, neutrons and electrons for neutral atoms based on the periodic table.  Once the previous skill is mastered, chemistry students will use charges to determine the number of electrons in ions while recognizing that the number of protons and neutrons remain unchanged.

I dislike Apologia Science intensely - but they do include scope-and-sequence documents for their curriculum while Teaching Textbooks cannot be bothered to write up the end goals for their curriculum which I find distasteful.

Next up, Amy sets the minimum high school requirements in the state as the bar to aim for when educating kids in math and then touts consumer math.   I like consumer math as an option for high school students especially those who are not planning to move directly to college or post-secondary training - but her idea of consumer math worries me:

Can they figure a tip? Can they figure tax? Can they quadruple a recipe? Can they measure a room? Can they figure a dilution rate or divide up a paycheck. These and other math life skills will most likely be more important than any Algebra they learn. In fact, many states allow Consumer Math as a high school math credit. I honestly believe this ought to be a requirement in all states.

Psst!  Let me give you a hint.  The reason Consumer Math is not a mandated graduation requirement is that those of us who passed Algebra I and II - also known as College Algebra - already knew how to do all of those things prior to high school.   I remember taking the PSAT as a junior in high school and being bored during the math portion because the math was so basic.  The hardest problem was solving the square footage of tile needed around the outside of a pool which requires using the quadratic equation to solve.  That took me about 5 minutes because I took the time to check my answers.  Like all the other math examples included so  far, she's trying to pass off 5th grade math as high school level work.      Really, Amy's examples are only interesting if you start to stack them together.  For example, measure the square footage of a series of rooms that are made of irregular polygons with bay windows and determine the overall cost of flooring for three different options including sales tax.    Next, determine the cost per bimonthly paycheck if the flooring is financed over 12, 24 and 36 months at three different interest rates.. Finally, determine the cost of installation based on a table of wages per worker given by the teacher.  That's high school level Consumer Math.

When I was reading her post and writing, I realized that Amy's kids really might be better off with an outside math teacher since she labeled the next point as "4 - Find a math resource for when your child is stuck".   The advice for finding someone who gets math to explain it to your kid in a pinch (and presumably for free) is decent.  The issue is that there are no points labeled 1-3 anywhere...and the one labeled 4 is the sixth point.   Granted, it's probably just poor proofreading, but I'm a bit freaked out now.

The seventh point (labeled 5) recommends using popular media involving math like "Numb3rs" or "Odd Squad" to motivate kids.  I think that's a good idea; my husband and I grew up on PBS' "Square One" show which was an amazingly nerdy attempt to make math fun and accessible.  Every few years, I dress up as Kate Monday from "Mathnet" for Halloween.

The eighth/sixth point is that students really like being able to teach their parents' math!  It's great for the kid and the parent! 

I'm doubtful that this is a universally positive experience for the student.

 For me, I found it rough once my parents weren't able to help me in math any more when I was an upperclassman in high school.  I'm sure I could have taught them some math - but why?  I appreciated their moral support and knew that I'd get whatever problem I had straightened out the next day by my teacher who was excellent at that level of math.   In a similar vein, I appreciated when my students taught me some colloquial Spanish, kept me up-to-date in various music genre, or brought me various science issues to solve - but I never expected them to teach me how to balance an equation.   After all, I was responsible for being able to teach them the curriculum, not the other way around.

We agree on her last point: don't let your dislike of math poison your kid's math experience.  For parent-teachers who can do that, more power to them!  Personally, I'd like my son to have the same chance I did to learn math from people who find math to be gloriously fun rather than a tolerable part of life.   I think students deserve to be exposed to teachers who live, breathe and think in their subject of choice.  Not every teacher is like that - but I found that I was touched with how excited various teachers would get about art, music, languages, math, science, history, theology or language arts.    I'm never going to be a great 2D artist - but I loved seeing professors show students how to improve their works.  I'm not much into poetry - but reading the works of my teachers blew my mind.  Or the time one of my theology professors went on a tangent about the nature of the Trinity that made me realize that there were entire areas of theology that were beyond my understanding.  Listening to math teachers discuss how to solve math problems that I couldn't conceptualize let alone solve was amazing.  And I wanted to have the experiences that the science teachers gained through labs, field studies and academic research.