Talk:Singapore math/Archive 1

commitment to a high level
I hate streaming as much as the next student, but I think the accusation that Singapore does not have a "commitment to the education of all children at a high level" is misleading, especially when in the US large groups of students are blatantly ignored anyway. John Riemann Soong 14:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Problem in the third feature
In particular, "The use of bar-models in teaching problem-solving (a form of pre-algebra) rather than the trial-and-error methods being practiced in the U.S. national curriculum." The Singapore method does use most of the NCTM methods in the examples with exception of graphs and pictures as graph drawing is introduced in the secondary school circulum(sic, can't remember) and pictures are only reserved for weak students as it is considered highy ineffecient in a test environment. Xenonym (talk) 07:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Federal-focus
This article seems to primarily compare this to the United States... which if it does because the primary notability of this is its comparison/difference is fine — provided it makes that clear. Currently it just looks biased. Also note that there are two "nations" going on here, so #3 in the list explaining how the country's method doesn't meet the national method (Of the US) sounds a little strange. 68.39.174.238 17:18, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I get the impression that they don't call it "Singapore Math Method" in Singapore. I think they call it plain old "teaching math" there.  Here in the U.S. (and Canada) it gets that name to differentiate it from all of the other approaches to teaching math.  A couple of labor unions and political groups are pushing it.  This may be as global as it gets.  WhatamIdoing 19:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing, you are right about calling it just "teaching maths". No special distinction here.Xenonym (talk) 07:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * To add to the comment above, I believe that is correct also: there is no "Singapore Math Method" except in the US. It is a kind of "brand name" that has been developed on certain curricula used in Singapore and it is used to promote and also disparage other competing education reforms.  In the U.S. it is promoted as the math taught in Singapore, but that doesn't really make sense.  Sure the "Primary Mathematics" textbooks from the Singaporean curriculum is the basis of the method, but there are a lot modifications and differences when people do "Singapore Math" in the US.    Singapore Math Method is popular among traditionalist home schooling parents, and more could be said about that.  Anyway, I removed the tag as it seems based on a misconception.   --C S (talk) 06:37, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Inaccurate introduction
The introduction to this article is not accurate. As it stands now, it portrays Singapore Math as a "traditional" method opposed to reform mathematics. As Xenonym has pointed out, Singapore Math actually uses many ideas from reform mathematics (NCTM). It is true that many in the general public are under the impression that Singapore is "traditional," but this is an oversimplification. In some respects Singapore Math is traditional: the textbooks are simple and straightforward; there are no projects and few open-ended tasks; the method lends itself more easily to traditional direct teach methods than to reform methods such as group activities. On the other hand, it does not fit Wikipedia's definition of traditional mathematics in that it is heavily focused on conceptual understanding and problem solving rather than rote memorization of procedural skills. According to the Singapore Math website, there are two main distinctives to their method: (1) It is a "problem solving curriculum" with an emphasis on thinking skills and conceptual understanding, and an omission of tasks requiring only "plain recall" (this is more in line with reform than traditional math), and (2) the content has been reduced to only the most essential content. It is this second point which has gained the attention of American educators. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP), for example, cited Singapore Math as exemplary, not because it was "traditional", but because it represented their ideal of a lean curriculum covering only the essentials. The goal of a reduced curriculum according to the Singapore Web site (and approved by the NMAP) is "to provide room for teachers to implement key initiatives", such as thinking skills and technology. This addresses the commonly cited problem (lamented by both traditional and reform educators for decades) that the American math curriculum is "a mile wide and an inch deep."

The adjective "time-tested" is POV (reform educators would say time has proven the opposite about traditional methods), but more importantly seems to indicate that this introduction is serving to bolster traditional mathematics rather than provide an accurate, neutral description of Singapore Math. A few other POV points occur in the remainder of the article. The "clue words" method, for example, is a key feature of some traditional mathematics programs and is strongly repudiated by reform mathematics and likewise rejected by Singapore math. But in this article the "clue words" method is presented as a feature of "US schools", giving the impression of being a reform idea, especially considering that Singapore Math is presented in this article as a "traditional" program.

I know Singapore Math is frequently championed by traditional educators so I thought I better explain this problem on the talk page before making changes. (Believe it or not, some reform educators think highly of Singapore math too.) --seberle (talk) 12:58, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I have made changes to describe SM as its publishers describe it. --seberle (talk) 15:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Response to Inaccurate Introduction
Dear Seberle,

I am sorry, but the introduction seems to me much less accurate and informative after your edits than it was before.

In order to give an adequate description of SM programs we need to understand that they are not products of the US education system and so should not necessarily be squeezed into the familiar conceptual scheme "fuzzy math" vs. "drill and kill".

First, by interpreting "traditional math education" as a term from US math wars, you narrowed down the common-sense meaning of it. In a large part of the World (say, in Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as in China, Japan, Korea and Singapore) math education was not seriously affected by the US reforms, and in this sense remains traditional. Certainly, it is not (and was not) based on rote memorization, but is based on problem solving and conceptual understanding (because on what else a sensible math education can be based?) As an example, take a look at this 19-century "1001 tasks for mental calculation" So, you are probably right that the link to the Wikipedia definition of "traditional mathematics" is inappropriate here, but it is not a good reason for changing the meaningful description of Singapore Math curriculum as coming from the old tradition tested by several generations of people from a half of the Globe.

BTW the word "time-tested" (although it may sound disturbing to a reform math educator) legitimately refers to this large-scale experience.

So, the previous description of SM was, apparently, not to bolster a partisan view but to restore the common-sense (as opposed to math-war-inspired but otherwise inaccurate) usage of the word "traditional" with respect to math education. And your list of features of SM which make it look traditional confirms that this usage is correct.

Furthermore, making connection between SM and the US reform on the grounds that SM emphasizes conceptual thinking is invalid. Any sensible math education emphasizes conceptual thinking. The emphasis of the US reform was on higher level thinking, and as far as I know SM does not claim to help at that.

Next, you accurately quote two of the "official" features of SM as described by the Singapore Ministry of Education. However in the context of this article this description does not serve its purpose.

The 1st claim - that it is "a problem-solving curriculum with emphasis on thinking skills" - is probably what every curriculum says about itself, and is totally uninformative (especially that it comes from the creators of SM).

The 2nd claim - that in 1999 the curriculum was reduced - is a fact of the history of Singapore math education. What is called SM in the present article is already reduced.

The fact that those tasks that require only recall were reduced is interesting, but it does not link SM with either traditionalists' (i.e. traditional in your sense) or reform curricula, for both kinds (take e.g. Saxon and Everyday Math) contain many tasks that would have been reduced on these grounds.

Another claim - that SM is "minimal" or has only "most essential content", and that this is the main feature of SM, boils down to one frequently quoted phrase about mile and inch. It is OK in this article to quote this phrase, but there is no need to endorse this obviously shallow and misleading slogan. As you know, Primary Math has passed the certification in CA, which means that it is just as wide as it is required of other curricula in CA. It is certainly not "minimal" (e.g. such topics as "tessellations" or "volumes of cuboids" are not required, and some others such as "graphs" and "data representation" in early grades are required in US standards but could be easily omitted). In any case, it sounds too simplistic to assume that minimizing the content makes a program exemplary - so, if SM causes serious interest of the public, there should be some other, deeper reasons for this, and this article is supposed to identify them.

In your explanations, you regularly refer to "math educators", but the public that actually endorsed SM was composed not of math educators. Madge Goldman and her Rosenbaum Foundation, which arranged for the US edition, were advised by Richard Askey, Vladimir Retakh and Israel Gelfand. PD for first pilot programs was led by Yoram Sagher. The leader of the use of SM in Israel is Ron Aharoni. Curriculum development textbooks based on Primary Math were written by Tom Parker and Scott Baldridge. All these people are research mathematicians, as there are many mathematicians among those who use this program for homeschooling. Your corrections misrepresent the reasons why these people endorse SM.

Finally, "clue words", although repudiated by reform educators, are broadly used by American teachers who often simply don't know how else to approach word problems. So, regardless of what impression about the US reform it might mistakenly infer, the phrasing in the text was correct. By removing it, you rendered the description of this feature of SM meaningless: to describe a distinction, one needs to mention alternatives.

I hope this explains why I essentially restore the previous version. Borisovich (talk) 14:21, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Most of your edits are fine. Thank you for restoring previous edits in a non-POV way which I think is acceptable. Most of the article is fine. I will just question two points. First I am not sure what you have accomplished by suppressing the publishers' understanding of the Singapore Math method. You may disagree with them, but it is still valid in a Wikipedia article to report what the publisher believes about their own work. I actually agree with much of your evaluation, but in order to keep Wikipedia neutral, our opinions should not be used to decide what to report and what not to report. The publisher's own description of their books should be included in this article. Perhaps you could write it in a way that makes it more clear that this is the publisher's own (and perhaps biased) opinion?


 * Second, if you suppress the reason why the National Math Panel believes Singapore Math to be exemplary, you should delete the entire reference to this fact. You may disagree with the Math Panel's thinking, but the fact is that this (and Singapore's success on international tests) is the only reason Singapore Math was cited in their report. By deleting what the Math Panel said leaves the reader under the impression that the Math Panel reviewed Singapore Math (they did not) and are in agreement with all of the features of Singapore Math. Their precise statement was, "The Singapore standards (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2006) provide an established example of curriculum standards designed to develop proficiency in a relatively small number of important mathematics topics, as validated by a recent analysis (Ginsburg et al., 2005)." --seberle (talk) 22:46, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I removed the statement since I didn't find it in the Report - please restore if you find. The phrase you quote is about curriculum *standards*, not the textbooks. But it is not correct that Singapore is mentioned in the report only for those two reasons you stated. The 200 page comparative study by AIR of Singapore and US math education systems was available to the Panel, and the report itself also mentions that harder problems are used more often in Singapore than in the US. Borisovich (talk) 11:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Spiraling
The description of spiraling in the current article seems suspicious to me. The way I've heard it used, "spiraling" means that future topics build on past topics, thus automatically incorporating a review of them. If you think about what a spiral really is, it becomes apparent that the correct term for what the article calls "spiraling" would be "revisiting" or "circling" rather than "spiraling": each new coil of the spiral is a level above the previous coil. Otherwise you get a circle, not a spiral.

So with this definition of "spiraling" (which I think is more correct), the Singapore curriculum actually does a very good job of spiraling -- review is built automatically into learning new topics, which are connected to previous ones. YZEMA (talk) 04:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You are quite right. I think this is part of the "traditional" propaganda that permeates this article. The reform view would say that it is traditional teachers who keep reteaching the same material year after year because the students cannot remember procedures that they learn by rote without understanding. I think we need to clear all POV from this article and just present Singapore Math as it is and as its publishers explain it. I have deleted the erroneous sentence.


 * The spiral method is often misunderstood. It is based on Jerome Bruner's idea that children can learn any math concept in an "intellectually honest" way at any age. For example, algebra as commonly understood cannot be taught to first graders, but first graders can learn about patterns, unknown quantities, arithmetic properties, and other algebraic ideas. As children progress, they can be taught these concepts at deeper and deeper levels. Spiraling of course has nothing to do with reteaching, which is sometimes necessary, but always an indication that something was not taught right the first time. Both traditional and reform educators would probably agree that some reteaching is necessary in the current American curriculum because it is so vast and there is so little time to master the material. --seberle (talk) 18:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Dear Seberle, I agree that the alternative meaning of "spiraling" (the one you removed) is a misuse of the term, but so was the point of the text removed by you: That in contrast with SM, many US curricula which characterize themselves as "spiral," are not. E.g. Everyday Math is considered "spiral." As far as I understand the idea is that different groups of students in the same class pick different aspects of the topic and progress with different pace upon revisiting it. This "spiraling" is not the same as in SM, where each topic is taught to mastery in the first visit and is revisited only at the next level. To emphasize the distinction I restored the sentence and provided a reference hopefully illustrating this point. Borisovich (talk) 10:28, 21 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Borisovich (talk • contribs)

Since the term “spiral” is in use with two entirely different meanings, it is best to avoid the term altogether. It is important to point out the need to assign students to the appropriate level Singapore Math textbook, since this is not a common practice in the U.S. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The new paragraphs (#2 and #3) provide further clarification of this important feature. Para 2: Demands on instructional time are an important consideration for teachers. Mastery of fractions and word problems is a good indicator of readiness for Algebra 1. Para 3: The sample sixth-grade word problem is an important illustration of the problem-solving skill attained by students in Singapore Math. It is also important to highlight this particular challenge in transitioning to Singapore Math, and to offer a practical remedy. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Criticism
It's not explained currently whose "criticism" is given in that section. It seems to me that an encyclopaedia shouldn't offer its own criticism, but can discuss criticism of others provided suitable references are given. Giving references is always important, but it's especially important in the case of "criticism". There aren't any references now -- they should either be added, or the criticism section deleted. YZEMA (talk) 04:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The category heading “criticism” should be replaced with a more neutral label like “other issues and observations,” since the comments in this section don’t identify shortcomings of Singapore Math but do raise issues that should be considered by potential adopters. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Edits to Introduction
It is the primary level Singapore textbooks that have been embraced in the US as “Singapore Math.” The scope and sequence is exemplary because of the content focus – i.e., in-depth understanding of essential math skills. The exceptionally clear and simple explanations are good for all students, but especially for ESL students. The neutral word “adapted” is preferable to “enhanced” because the inclusion of nonessential math skills is a degradation, not an enhancement. The phrase “extra math topics that are currently popular in most state math standards” is an effort to avoid pejorative labels like “fuzzy math” and “pretend statistics.” JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Alignment with State Standards
“Noncompliance” should be replaced with a more neutral term like “alignment,” since Singapore Math’s minimal emphasis on nonessential math topics is noncompliant with current state standards (particularly for statistics) but compliant with the emerging consensus. Readers should be told that the Singapore Math textbooks are not focused strongly on preparing students for their state math tests. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Probability, Statistics, and Data Analysis
Probability, Statistics, and Data Analysis deserves special mention because American textbooks and state standards give this so much more emphasis than Singapore Math. Readers need to be told that the current American emphasis does not include the most basic building blocks of statistical analysis, and that the emerging consensus looks like Singapore Math. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Teacher training
Montgomery County did not discontinue the program for the reasons cited, and did not claim that those were the reasons. They discontinued the program because they wanted a test-prep math curriculum (my judgment). The reason they gave (my recall of public statements) was that it was a 3-year pilot, and the 3 years were over. Their evaluation found that students in the Singapore Math pilot schools outperformed those in the controls schools, and achieved higher-level math placements in middle school. See http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2003/SingMathExecSummaryYear2.pdf JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Expenses
The discussion on expenses needs to include the other elements of the cost-quality-convenience trade-off. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Cultural differences
The paragraph does not suggest any reason for supposing that students from different cultures should respond differently to the distinctive features of Singapore Math. However, this vague suspicion is in people’s minds, so it may be better to dispel it rather than ignore it. JohnHoven (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)