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I know I've posted this before, but once isn't enough with this baby.
Here it is in all its glory.
Wholeism
To the ordinary person — a parent, say — this diagram is a mystery.It's pink.
It's blue.
It has strands.
Two sets of them.
We have no idea what it is or what it means.
So today I was thinking....supposing for the sake of argument this thing means something to the people who made it.
What would that something be?
I think it's wholeism.
This diagram is probably intended to express the Romantic conviction that math is a whole, and that whole things must be taught wholly.
The diagram acknowledges that math has separately identifiable parts, but says to us that these separately indentifiable parts aren't really parts.
They're strands.
And they're interwoven (sort of).
Into a whole.
You're looking at whole math, folks.
19 comments:
Does "number sense" basically mean arithmetic?
I think "number sense" stands for the ability to have a clue if your answer is right when you get it (that is, recognizing if it's off by a few factors of 10, or negative when it's supposed to be positive, etc).
My husband David notes that this diagram would be much cooler if the strands were woven.
My husband David notes that this diagram would be much cooler if the strands were woven.
ROFL!
Would this be “Kitchen Tablecloth Math”?
Just for the record, I HATE this diagram!
When I first heard “strands” many years ago, my first reaction was WTF? Do they think they’re helping parents with this type of language?
"Do they think they’re helping parents with this type of language?"
Form over substance.
If they were architects, the buildings would look pretty, but they would all fall down. For students, when the internal structure fails, they are long gone.
I hate the word "strand" even worse than the word "share". Maybe even more than the word "model" as in "how would you model this problem?"
"My husband David notes that this diagram would be much cooler if the strands were woven."
And that would imply integration!
Something there is that doesn’t love a strand...
A parent.
By the way, is a strand the same thing as a developmental continuum through cognitive stages? A child grows in number sense like a plant grows toward the sun?
Kitchen Tablecloth Math
heehee
I loathe this diagram.
In a loving kind of way.
I can't quite get enough of this diagram, as a matter of fact.
When I first heard “strands” many years ago, my first reaction was WTF? Do they think they’re helping parents with this type of language?
I have the answer to that.
No.
By the way, is a strand the same thing as a developmental continuum through cognitive stages?
oh, probably
Actually, I'd say this is a pretty good representation of wholeism.
Math is one big whole; we'll teach the whole thing wholly.
Yes, we admit, math has separately identifiable parts, but they're not really parts.
They're strands.
And they're interwoven.
Into a whole.
"Math is one big whole; we'll teach the whole thing wholly."
Apparently there was some sort of transcription error here. The result seems to be (in practice):
"Math is one big whole; we'll teach the whole thing holey."
Math is one big whole; we'll teach the whole thing holey.
No more scholastic enstupidation!
I'm attempting to plug the Venn diagram hole today.
Catherine,
A post about Venn diagrams from my now defunct old blog.
http://classicalcynicism.blogspot.com/2006/05/venn-diagrams.html
What has Whole math done for our kids is it a good thing...?
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