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

[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?