The 74 Million Reasons to Talk About Education – Mark Keierleber
“Since the 1980s, schools in Singapore have taken an innovative approach to teaching elementary math — a curriculum that focuses on problem solving with pictures and diagrams. Before the switch, the country’s math students “weren’t even registering on the charts as far as international ratings go,” says Dan Brillon, director of Singapore Math Inc., a company that distributes Singaporean math textbooks in the United States. Within a decade, Singapore “shot to the top.” In the U.S., Kevin Mahoney said he hears it all the time: “I’m just not a math person.” But it doesn’t work that way, said Mahoney, a math curriculum coordinator at a school near Boston who helps to implement the Singapore math curriculum at schools across the country. And students and parents in Singapore know it.”(more)