Though the grade XII student's reading and writing were good, her skills in addition and subtraction, multiplication and division were still at a Grade V or VI level. When she asked one of her teachers for help, she was told to use a calculator.
Her deficiency proved to be a handicap once she started working. Employed for a time by an insurance company, she was slower than her colleagues in serving customers. Then when she got a restaurant job, she couldn't balance the till. Finally, in the spring of 1998, she decided to improve her job prospects and enrolled in Toronto's Frontier College for math tutoring. Now 23, she is studying with flash cards to make up for what she missed in school.
In 1996 nine-year-old Jacqueline Chisholm was a bright Grade III student at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Vancouver. She was a good reader but struggled with basic arithmetic. Her mother, Grace, first noticed the problem when the two were playing cribbage and Jacqueline used her fingers to add up her points. When Grace mentioned this to Jacqueline's teacher, she was told that it wasn't something she should worry about. Nevertheless, Grace enrolled her daughter at the local Kumon Math & Reading Centre, which offers after-school programs. Now after two years of drill in basic calculations, Jacqueline is one of the best math students in her class.
DISMAYING RESULTS
In 1992 Lou D'Amore, a high-school science and chemistry teacher in Etobicoke, gave a 1932 Grade III math test to his Grade IX class. Only 25 percent answered all ten questions correctly. The following year, 2,436 Canadian students ranging from Grades V to XII tried the "D'Amore test"--with similar results. Only 27 percent of those in Grades X to XII managed a perfect score.
D'Amore disturbing findings are confirmed by a host of other studies. A 1994 Statistics Canada report on literacy and math skills found that 48 percent of Canadians lacked the necessasry abilities to function adequately at home or at work. In Winnipeg, in 24 out of 56 schools, the average student scored less than 50 percent on the 1997 provincial math exam. And last year, when Grade III students in Ontario were tested, 46 percent ranked below a level deemed acceptable by the provincial education ministry.
Kids without strong math skills will be shortchanged in today's job market, says Cheryl Gorman, who works with the Conference Board of Canada, an Ottawa-based organization representing more than 600 businesses and institutions. More and more, jobs are being created in industries where science, technology and math skills are needed, and being lost in those where they aren't.
Twenty years ago, Gorman points out, an auto mechanic needed to be good at working with his hands. But today 80 percent of engine repairs involve computers, so math and technical ability are also required. Many other trades are going the same route. Electricians, machinists, tool-and-die makers, and plumbers are among those who need Grade XI or XII algebra.
The 1994 statistics Canada report further underlines the importance of math in our economy. About 30 percent of the unemployed and more than half of adult Canadians who reported no income were at the lowest level of numerical literacy.
"Unfortunately, in Canada it's socially acceptable to be poor at math," says Malgorzata Dubiel, a math lecturer at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University. "People say 'I'm no good at math' almost with pride."
"Canada isn't producing enough competent graduates in the high-tech area," adds Eric Newell, vice chairman of the Conference Board of Canada, and co-chairman and CEO of Syncrude, Canada's second largest supplier of crude oil "Less than seven percent of our university grads are engineers," he says, "while in other countries the number is 23 percent. We haven't got our priorities right."
According to Suzane Messier, of the Toronto-based Institute of Canadian Bankers, the financial industry is facing the consequences of poor math training head on. In 1997 the institute developed a textbook and a course to cover skills normally learned in high school - such as how to convert decimals into fractions. Some of their students are college graduates. We used to think that when people came out of univeristy they could read, write and count," says Messier. "We've learned that some cannot."
WHO'S TO BLAME?
The most obvious cause of this situation is the glaring shortage of specialist math teachers in Canada. There is evidence that many kindergarten to Grade VIII teachers have studied no math at all since leaving juior high school, let alone university-level math.
Says Thomas Schweitzer, formerly senior economist at the Economic Council of Canada and author of a 1995 paper called The State of Education in Canada: "It astonishes me that it's taken for granted that any teacher can teach any subject."
Another problem is the popular "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards of School Mathematics" championed since 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in the United States. The NCTM approach favors learning by the use of physical materials: interlocking cubes, elastic bands on peg-boards, coloured plastic discs. Calculators are permitted from kindrgarten to Grade IV.
Marjorie Gann, an elementary school teacher and freelance writer in Toronto, disagrees with this approach. Her Grade V daughter, who was taught the NCTM approach, got the highest possible mark in math, but Gann discovered that the youngster had great trouble doing two-digit muliplication. "What my daughter hasn't got," says Gann, "is the speed that comes with practice."
Michael Maloney is director of QLC Educational Services in Belleville, Ont., and the author of Teach Your Children Well. He tells of a Grade VIII student who came to him for tutoring. When she arrived, she could only do ten single-digit multiplication problems in a minute.
Maloney says: "If it takes you six seconds to figure out what three times nine is, you don't have a foundation of skills. My student didn't know things that she should have learned in Grade II or III." After four months of tutoring, Maloney's student was solving 60 single-digit multiplication problems a minute.
Lou D'Amore believes another problem is the "spiral curriculum": If you keep reintroducing the same subject, kids will pick it up when they're ready. "The theory goes that if they don't learn multiplication in Grade III, it's okay because they'll take it again in Grades IV, V, VI and VII. That just isn't the case. The kids who know it are bored; those tho don't are never given the attention they need to learn it once and for all."
"SPIRIT OF MATH"
Education experts insist that the situation is not hopeless. There are schools that effectively teach math.
Zion Heights Junior High in North York, Ont., was the winner of the 1998 Pascal math contest - the University of Waterloo's competition for Grade IX students. For the last six years, the school has ranked first, second or third. To win the contest, Zion Heights students beat out 45,000 students from 1,500 other schools. The school also won the 1998 Atlantic Pacific Competition, an international contest in which over 90 schools from around the world compete.
Zion Heights owes its success to teacher Charles Ledger, who began developing the school's math program about 20 years ago. He was spurred to do so "because we were getting kids in Grade IX who still couldn't multiply or divide." The program, which Ledger called Spirit of Math, consists of a short daily drill in basic number facts, problem-solving exercises and a nonspiral curriculum. Most Canadian juinior high schools teach geometry, for instance, by devoting a few weeks to the topic every year. At Zion Heights geometry is taught only in Grade VIII. But the students spend four months on it. "They learn it really well," says math teacher Sandra Larosa-Fox. "We don't need to waste time in review, and we can expose our students to very challenging problems."
In the mid-'70s, David Thompson Secondary in east Vancouver was one of the worst in the city. Fewer of its students entered university than from any other school in the Vancouver area. And when they did, says Geroge Bluman, head of the math department at the University of British Columbia, an A student from David Thompson performed at about the level of a C+ student from other schools." Its reputation was so bad that parents in the neighborhood avoided sending their children there.
Then along came Cary Chien, the first British Columbia math teacher to be given the Prime Minister's Master Teacher Award. His enthusiasm and dedication transformed the place. Once students master their basic skills, he gives them an interesting problem to solve each week. "My favourite exercise is to ask the students to calculate the odds of winning the 6/49 lottery."
Chien's efforts have paid off. In 1996, all David Thompson graduates at the University of British Columbia who enrolled in math courses passed and 29 percent had A standings.
In 1997, its students were first in Canada in the Cayley contest, a University of Waterloo competition for Grade X students. They also topped all other British Columbia students in the Euclid Competition, the University of Waterloo contest for Grade XIIs.
"It's important to challenge students," says Chien. "If you don't, you will never find out what they're capable of. And they are often capable of much more than you would expect."
Eric Newell agrees. "The United Nations consistently rates Canada as the Number One country to live in. We've got a vested interest in attaining high skill levels in math so we can continue to enjoy the standard of living that we've got."
Are you concerned about the way our children are being taught math?
This year 2001, the United Nations voted Canada 2nd or third best country to live in.
Ontario schools failed the three R's.
Year 2002: Ontario and other Provinces failed the three R's, with Maths the most failures. But Ontario & Quebec did better than the other provinces. The 16 years olds failed more than the other ages. And French students did better than the others.