The New Math

Before her birthday party began, I reminded Little Girl that she should do her homework, if she had any. There was a pause while Little Girl processed the injustice of having HOMEWORK on her BIRTHDAY, but because she had pizza, cake, and presents to look forward to, she mustered the goodwill to attend to her homework first.

She read the instructions without too much trouble—demonstrating great improvement in her reading skills, to my great relief—but was stymied by one word in particular, "model." And while I managed a decent explanation of the definition of "model"—with my dad's helpful input—I, a former math major, was utterly flummoxed by the term as it was used in the context of Little Girl's grade-school mathematics homework.

Little Girl, you see, was supposed to write a "number story" based on a picture, and then prepare the "number model" that went with the story. I knew from past experience—namely, Little Girl's very own description of her school activities—that a "number story" was a mathematical means of describing a picture. For example, if there were a bunch of cats and a bunch of dogs in a picture, a corresponding number story might be this: "6 cats sleeping. 9 dogs playing. How many animals in all?"

It hadn't occurred to me to question the terminology before, because as I think most people who've conversed with young children know, if you get to the point when you actually know what they're talking about, you consider yourself so damn fortunate that you're not about to borrow trouble by digging deeper into the origins of the terms. But now, faced with the inexplicable and unclear "number model"—something I couldn't decipher AT ALL from the context in which it was used—I was beginning to wonder ... a lot of things.

Fortunately for Little Girl's homework, I had been apprised at her school's recent Parent Orientation session, that there were often "Family Letters" which accompanied homework assignments, and thus I went straight to her backpack to check for such. I quickly located "Unit 2: Addition and Subtraction Facts," and found a handy "Vocabulary" section at the bottom of the very first page. Then I read the definition aloud for my dad, my daughter, and me ... and that's when all hell broke loose.

"'Number model,'" I began, reading verbatim. "'A number sentence that shows how the parts of a number story are related. For example, 5 + ("plus sign," I said for the benefit of the listening audience) 8 = ("equals sign," I clarified) 13 ...'"

"Oh, I know what to do now!" Little Girl interjected, and shot out of the room like the sugar-powered rocket she would very shortly resemble, around the corner, and into Mom and Dad's office to make very short work of her assignment.

I stayed, clutching the Unit 2 Family Letter and beginning to ooze a bit of steam out of my ears. I glanced over at Dad.

"Isn't that ..." and I moved next to him so I could stab the offending "number model" with my finger—the better to POINT IT OUT, my dear—and then I continued, "... an EQUATION?"

My dad slowly raised his hand to his chin and in a posture not unlike that of The Thinker, but with a healthy dose of sarcasm injected into his tone, he said, "I know what this is. This is THE NEW MATH."

I beat the ridiculously renamed "number model" term and its unnecessarily confusing definition into the ground that evening, dominating the first few minutes of the party's conversation with a monologue—though The Exotic Neurotic contributed stunningly supportive commentary to it when she arrived—devoted to the perils of making things "new" in name only, through the process of changing the associated terminology. The Exotic Neurotic extended the theory from its educational roots to its workplace applications, tying it neatly into the "reorganization" that she'd recently endured, in which nothing but employee designations had actually changed.

Unschooled in the educational process, I can only hope that there is some real and objective data which predicated these changes in mathematical terminology. I suppose I could stretch my mind past its normal elasticity and see the point that "story problem" is a much more ... well, PROBLEMATIC ... term than "number story." However, I fail to see where "equation" was offensive or otherwise detrimental in the slightest, and certainly I cannot agree that "number model" is either clear OR concise, as the fact that one mathematics major and one Professional Engineer could not decipher it without a freakin' GLOSSARY OF TERMS.

I think it was Shakespeare who said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet (or some such rot), but I have to believe that even The Bard would smell the stench of a "number model" a mile away from an equation. What's next? Should we rename "gravity" to "ground glue?" What about changing "petroleum" to "dinosaur goo?" I'll grant you that when terms are confusing, we look to definitions—yes, sometimes several of 'em—for clarification, but since when do we decide to alter the terms themselves? And WHO, exactly, gets to decide these things? 'Cause I want in on THAT committee, even if I have yet to learn how to truly confuse the issue ("ground glue" and "dinosaur goo" make more sense than "number model," and as a bonus, they RHYME).

One thing I know for sure is that when I thought I was in homework hell last year, I was obviously mistaken. Oh well, live and learn ... the new math, among other things.