Math curriculum is something that is difficult to review if you’ve only been using it for a year. I can’t say what I will think as time goes on, and math is such that how the whole curriculum works together is really important. One good year isn’t going to cut it. But, with that said, I can honestly say that, after reading a number of chapters from Arithmetic for Parents, I have a huge new appreciation for MEP Math.
Let’s just say that MEP is starting out right. I’ll explain using only the Reception Year and Year One. {As I read more of Arithmetic for Parents, I might have more to add to this discussion later on.}
Let’s Start with the Ideal
Here are some quotes from Arithmetic for Parents that explain what the ideal math curriculum — and the ideal math teacher — will do.
The teacher’s role in this process is to guide the student so that he experiments with the principles in the correct order. {p. 9}
- [K]nowledge is established in layers, each relying on the preceding one. The secret to proper teaching lies in recognizing these layers and establishing them systematically. {p.18}
- Something happens in the mind of a child when he is counting. {p. 19}
- Everybody can make forward steps if they are small enough. {p. 25}
- A first-grader should count as much as possible. This is the only way to establish the concept of number. {p. 28}
- [L]eave the “<” notation to the second grade. {p. 29}
- In general, the main concepts a child should be familiar with when preparing for the first grade are concepts of relation: “before-after,” “up-down,” “more-less.” {p. 42}
- A good textbook … presents the fraction, right from the start, as a part of all sorts of wholes: part of a square, a rectangle, a small circle, a large circle, and part of a group. {p. 52}
Does MEP Meet This Criteria?
As I’m reading, I find myself nodding my head over and over and thinking, Yes! MEP does this! And this, too! It’s so exciting to me. Now, granted, MEP doesn’t save the “<” notation for second grade, that’s true. But over all, MEP does seem to accomplish the big picture of what Aharoni thinks should happen in the teaching of math.
Aharoni starts off saying that it matters in what order we introduce concepts, and also that we not skip steps. MEP takes nothing for granted, and I think that, at core, this is why it works. I was shocked to find that things that I thought were obvious to my children were not, and I was so thankful that MEP bothered with things that seemed insignificant on the surface.
One of the things I quickly learned last year when I took my third grader back to MEP Year One because she was struggling so much was that she didn’t get certain basic principles — for example, she didn’t know left from right, and she wasn’t clear on before and after. This was strange to me because she used these terms correctly in daily life. But in his book, Aharoni says:
One should remember that the child’s grasp of these principles is usually vague and intuitive, and therefore they have to be taught again, this time explicitly. {p. 41}
Because my firstborn child didn’t need explicit instruction for things like that, I never noticed that our math program at the time was actually incomplete because it didn’t cover any of these principles. But neither of my girls were flourishing in that program, no matter what I did. When I put them in MEP, they were asked to think about these ideas, to place objects before or after other objects, or to put something on the left or right side of their pages — lo and behold! — their little brains suddenly turned on.
Aharoni is right. These basic principles come before formal math. All that time, I was putting the proverbial cart before the horse without realizing it, and my math program at the time was aiding and abetting me.
I’ve been doing the MEP Reception Year with my six-year-old kindergartner this year, and almost every day I think how much I wish I had known about MEP and done it with A-Age-Ten when she was this age. There is so much counting and finding that I almost can’t stand it, but Aharoni says that counting makes “something” happen in the mind of a child, and I believe it.
I’m tempted to say that in some ways MEP’s Reception Year is actually what Aharoni is envisioning for first grade, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing if we were to start it, say, in late kindergarten and carry it on through part or most of first grade.
Final Thoughts
Arithmetic for Parents isn’t just affirming my curriculum choice, of course. I’m learning a lot about teaching math well, and that’s important, because the curriculum is only my tool.
Charlotte Mason once wrote:
Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the text-book and few subjects are worse taught…
— Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education {p. 233}
I’m not only learning to teach math better, I’m actually learning to understand math better. And coupled with a great curriculum like MEP, I feel like our math program is in a very good place.
In fact, I’m even having E-Age-Thirteen try his hand at some MEP this summer!
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