I don't know the intimate details of Everyday Math, so I can't argue for against it with any certainty. But it sounds an awful lot like the New Math, another one of the reinventions of math teaching we seem to want to go through every 20 years or so:
"The problem with Everyday Math is that it doesn't develop fluency in arithmetic," he said. "It does some conceptual things nicely, but without the fluency, it's not worth anything. If students have to scratch their heads when it comes to adding a half and a fourth in middle school, they're doomed in algebra."
So many education experiments seem based on a loathing of rote and drill. But memorization is still, after all these centuries, the best way to stick facts into your long-term meory, and the more the information revolution bombards us with more and more knowledge clutter, the more important it is to search through the clutter with some basics firmly entrenched.
Comments
Rote and Flash Cards...maybe not the "best" way to learn math...just the ONLY way!
;)
B.G.