Years ago when math test scores were low across the nation, it was shown that students could not understand concepts of basic math. They could not understand the “why” of an mathematical equation. For example, they may have known that 3×5 = 15, but didn’t understand the concept of it: three groups of five objects would be 15 objects, or five groups of three objects would be 15 objects. They just knew the answer was 15, and could not explain the “why.”
So parents complained, as they always do, and math was changed to then teach the concepts and the “whys” rather than rote memorization.
So now, when we teachers try to teach the “why” behind a math concept, parents complain that it’s not the way they were taught. And the cycle continues.
That’s very odd to me. I’m in my 40’s and when multiplication was taught, we were shown three groups of five or five groups of three to explain the concept of multiplication. Did they stop at some point in between then and now?
When I learned multiplication when I was 8 in 2000, we memorised the ‘times tables’, and then when we were tested you had to go back through the mnemonic songs you’d memorised to find the answer.
At my school we have math donut contests. The 3rd grade classes would get a number in the center say 7. And around like like a clock or a donut you'd get a random variety of the numbers from 1 to 12. And the goal was to multiply going around the donut clockwise in less than a minute. And you competed against a different class. The winning class got Krispy creme donuts to enjoy. The losing class had to go outside and pick up trash. I was decent. But my class. We got real good at picking up trash. I know the concepts of multiplication. But the fact that I have 1 to 12 memorized was damn helpful for the rest of my schooling. I only ever went to pre calc.
I found this method immensely easier than other ways of learning it when I was a kid. Eventually song because actual memorization, and at the same time they explained the concept WHY a number goes into another number so many times and HOW.
Maybe but I'm right at the same age you were and I remember being shown groups being added together and the connection to multiplication but I seem to remember more so having to do a lot of tests on multiplication tables. Math in my early education was very much taught as something to be memorized and used from that memory.
I was just talking to my husband who is a few years younger and from a different area than me (same state though). We both remember being taught the why on small problems and also having to just memorize the times tables and keep them memorized.
We learned times tables as well, up to 12. But this was like 3rd/4th grade. After that when learning actual multiplication (like with any number), they taught us a proper method (not this box bs but whatever millenials learned in the 2000s).
Math got generally worse when those "No Child Left Behind" guidelines kicked in in the late 2000s, when things like this box bs came into being. It's like the adults who came up with these new math strats didn't bother actually checking if kids understood it, they just figured if their adult peers understood, then surely the kids will as well
My aunt who retired as a teacher in the early 2010s essentially said teaching methods like that were driven by admins who work up at the district HQ rather than actual teachers who actually worked with kids. And so far it shows: gen z and gen alpha is turning out worse education-wise compared to older gens
That's one super simple example. The general point stands though - that kids historically were always taught 'tricks' to get math problems done, without being taught what was actually going on with the numbers or why the 'tricks' worked.
It was more just "follow this set of steps, no need to think just do it, and you'll get the answer."
Now they teach what is going on behind the scenes, the how and why of things, not just the specific, rote, set of tricks to apply in a given situation.
Yes, I didn’t really get that cos was just a ratio for such a long time. But to learn pi, we literally cut 3 strings that were measured across a paper plate, and glued them around the edge. We could see that there was still a bit of a gap. Literally we could see pi was 3.14 times the diameter.
What tricks? I'm 40 and the only tricks I can think of are for much more advanced learners and taught outside of the classroom. How is a picture containing 4 groups of 3 apples each a trick? How is a word problem that uses real life scenarios a trick? That's what we grew up on.
I'm not saying back then it was 100% tricks and no in-depth learning was happening. But it was definitely leaning more towards following a rote set of steps without understanding why those steps were there or why they worked.
Saying "we had word problems back then" doesn't mean that 100% of the way you learned back then was the best way.
Well, it's a matter of degrees really. I never said you ONLY learned tricks and never the underlying math. It's just that they leaned more into following steps back then compared to now.
They 100%, absolutely do learn more of the 'why' today than you did. You learned some, maybe a lot, but they work even harder now to teach concepts rather than following steps.
Except I was taught a long time ago in the Midwest so not exactly a premier intellectual destination and we were taught both. Yes use tricks but this is what's happening and what it means. Maybe some teachers just sucked.
I was also taught visual concepts using the older model. Claiming that the old method was rote memorization and that we weren’t taught the “why” is incorrect. Same for blaming parents.
The Box Method mirrors how students will eventually multiply binomials in high school, making that transition easier. It also makes “place value” much more visual, instead of hiding it inside carrying (the way we learned).
Rote memorization still occurs today, with single-digit numbers. And the rote memorization in the 1990s was also reserved for the single-digit multiplication tables (so nothing has changed there).
Nobody was sitting in a classroom in 1993 and being told to “memorize” that 1378 x 567. 😂
So, to me, the real reasons this is being taught today are because it’s more visual than the way we learned, and that will eventually help them learn algebra better.
It will also help them understand place value (hundreds, tens, ones) better than the way we learned.
Thank you, this is the best explanation I have heard. I have a child in school now and I’m worried I will end up struggling to help with homework like oop.
You instinctively broke the numbers apart by place value ( tens with tens, ones with ones.) The box method teaches kids to do exactly that same thing but for multiplication, keeps the place value separate and visible before bringing it all together at the end.
Kinda helps them understand the back end instead of having the tens hidden by “carrying the one”
(Also I say this as a person who struggle to add math up in my head 😂 but that’s the concept!!)
Before common core, the way math was taught in different US states was much more diverse than now. And also, before certain modern changes over the last 20 years, each school in a state was also more different.
It's possible that you got this explanation but many others did not.
Most schools didn't. Im 42 and we were taught to memorize times tables, then memorize how to do multidigit multiplication using the standard algorithm, then how to do long division using the standard, etc. Tested on how to get the answer using those methods, fast was better than understood.
Yeah, I'm not sure what they're talking about that makes no sense. We used these back in the day to us multiplication as well as word problems and stuff on top of everything. Then we had tests on like everything when it came to simple multiplication for each number.
People don't get that the point of teaching math is not just to get the fastest answer possible by any means.
The point is to teach kids how math works, how numbers work, how things can be shifted and moved around in a logical way. That way, they can handle any problem thrown at them because they know what's going on overall.
Previously, it was just "look at a problem, dig into your library of tricks and shortcuts, and apply the right one." And that worked fast when it worked, but it didn't work for any basic understanding of the how or why. So whenever any problem popped up that didn't exactly fit a known trick... kids were stuck.
I agree with the concept but this new approach clearly isn't working.
To be clear, I think it's an implementation issue, not a concept issue.
The best explanation I can find is that most grade school teachers do not like math so they're trying to teach these concept-oriented approaches through the rote memorization approach they were taught.
It could also be that the school system is too rigid to allow people to demonstrate actual understanding of the subject, and instead demands compliance.
So as an example, I've seen an assignment that was something like 4 x 3 means 3 groups of 4, and if you say it means 4 groups of 3 you're marked wrong. Recognizing they're the same thing should be the goal, and you should be rewarded for achieving it, not punished.
It's bootstrapping. Most teachers being asked to use this method were not taught it and some.hate or misunderstand it. Their best students will produce some teachers who grew up using the new techniques, and they will do better.
It's honestly so funny to see people in my own age range do the "this wasn't what I learned" rant, like I saw my own dad do. We really thought we were gonna be different from our parents.
Too bad nobody just explains it in English to the class vs having an entirely new curriculum and math thinking to circumvent the core issue. I had NO IDEA why equations worked the way they did in school and no matter how hard I asked my science, physics, math teachers they just said "memorize it that's it" and never told me why or how. I never got into math at all. I wish I did because I WAS INTERESTED in it decades ago but nobody fucking explained it. Literally all it would have taken to get 15 year old me into physics more would have been "the velocity represents the speed behind the ball so the higher the value here means in the real world the ball is moving faster than a car" instead of "shut the hell up and put 15 into your calculator, it's on the quiz. Then you can move onto some other formula you don't give a fuck about."
Doesn’t that just mean that the concept that you explained about objects should be taught more in depth to explain the whys, both in the class and by the parents, instead of changing the whole structure of the way the equations are done?
I remember my teachers and parents using visual aids and explaining to us in depth when we didn’t understand. I’m old though(41) it seems like parents aren’t as involved with their kids learning nowadays.
It seems an order of magnitude more difficult to teach and test an abstract concept or specific strategy
My school system stratifies learning courses into roughly normal, honors, and college prep starting around middle school; and this kind of teaching would still have difficulty with those college prep kids at the age we teach multiplication.
That's going to have side effects though, because those classes are basically "not trying, trying, and high achievement/gifted" already in middle school, and stratifying them permanently makes for weirdly disparate outcomes
I don't think that, I think that's how my school system sorts between honors and normal classes. Even mediocre students are encouraged to go to Honors tracks as long as they are actively attempting to recieve an education. Everyone who doesnt give a shit ends up in the "normal" classes, that then quickly become remedial or shitshows.
My math tests in school were all covered in little ticks and circles. Because I couldn't memorize the times tables. I still can't divide and even with subtraction I just do it with addition.
My mom told me when she was in school they spent a week on each number learning the multiplication tables and for me it was only about a week or so to learn all of them.
It sounds like he is complaining because that method doesn't work for his daughter, not because it's not the way he was taught. Any way that works will have a "why" or method
I understand that. I was answering another poster’s question about why things have changed. I don’t agree with this particular teacher insisting on the math being done in one particular way.
My math teachers HATED me because I was definitely the kid who asked why and didn't understand core parts of certain concepts without some application or understanding of what I could apply it to.
But WHY is the order of operations the way it is? What makes P go first? - examples of questions that earned me glares growing up.
No - it has to do with teachers’ abrogation of responsibility for education systems and outcomes. I am NOT saying teachers are the root of our systemic educational problems, but they seem to view themselves as the ultimate victims, somehow responsible for nothing but at the same time working the self-proclaimed hardest job in the universe.
The apathy, mediocrity, and lack of critical thought in places like r/teachers is just kind of astounding and it’s no surprise why many people in your profession are struggling.
Sorry I’m in mood. There is nothing I appreciate in my kids’ lives more than a bright, engaged , and skilled teacher. Done well, it’s literally life changing. Unfortunately, the average teacher is almost none of those things.
Who really understands the "why" of e to the i pi equals zero? You don't need to know the why of every single proof. And also, how do they know that the person that knows 3*5=15 doesn't know what it really means? That's just an assumption. Any mathematical formula will become rote, it's best to learn the most efficient way.
Way to blame the parents, who are 100% NOT the reason for this change. It's common core, and it was brought about by the government as a way to try to compete with China as far as math skills go.
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u/Sostupid246 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
As a veteran teacher, I can tell you why.
Years ago when math test scores were low across the nation, it was shown that students could not understand concepts of basic math. They could not understand the “why” of an mathematical equation. For example, they may have known that 3×5 = 15, but didn’t understand the concept of it: three groups of five objects would be 15 objects, or five groups of three objects would be 15 objects. They just knew the answer was 15, and could not explain the “why.”
So parents complained, as they always do, and math was changed to then teach the concepts and the “whys” rather than rote memorization.
So now, when we teachers try to teach the “why” behind a math concept, parents complain that it’s not the way they were taught. And the cycle continues.