what are they teaching them in schools

[psocoptera]

So I'm volunteering for J's class. First grade math. They're working on "9 in all", making a table of all the combinations of blocks and marbles one could have if one had "some blocks and some marbles" and 9 total. Thing is, they're supposed to start with 9 of one and zero of the other, and while I like the mathematical insight that "zero is a number", as one kid said in the discussion and the teacher repeated, I feel like in real life, when talking about actual objects, "some" is understood to refer to a positive quantity, and isn't the whole point of story problems to get them to think about what these numbers really mean? I mean, if I call a restaurant, and they say their menu changes daily depending on what's available but there are always 9 choices, some meat and some vegetarian entrees, and I show up with my vegetarian friend and they're like "today it's 9 meat and 0 vegetarian because 0 is a number", my response is going to be more like "you're fucking kidding me" than "oh isn't that mathematically clever". Sanity checking is even more valuable than numeracy, people!

Comments

[irilyth]

Sounds like a great opportunity for talking about context-sensitive input/data validation. :^)

-6 is also a number, but I don't want to go to the restaurant where they have negative six vegetarian entrees.

You could generalize this to other examples of how "some" is fuzzy and context matters. If I say "some of us can see the movie today, and some will have to wait until tomorrow", and it turns out that there are nine seats free today, all of us go today, no one has to wait, and that's great! Whereas if I say "some of us will play on the green team, and some on the purple team" dividing that 8 - 1 is also probably not the best bet.

"'Some' isn't a number, and when you need to figure out what range of numbers it might include, you have to think about the context" sounds like a great lesson.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Heh, if I'd bothered to read the comments before leaving one I'd'a just +1ed this.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

The ability to apply terms effectively in different situations is valuable, too. I think the question of whether "some" should include zero, and whether the answer is always the same, would be a great discussion to have with first-graders.

Then again, I managed to get my ass expelled from a Waldorf school for instigating this kind of rule-challenging discussion too often, so.

[q10.livejournal.com]

Yeah ... that is not a very good semantics for ‘some’.

[q10.livejournal.com]

Newspaper Tour Guide: And each paper contains a certain percentage of recycled paper.

Lisa Simpson: What percentage is that?

Newspaper Tour Guide: Zero. Zero is a percent, isn't it?