Math Curriculum: Textbook Photos

A year's worth of Connected Math textbooks and teacher guides are on the left while the equivalent Singapore Math texts are on the right.

Friedman's latest ,where he demonstrates how other countries are "eating our kid's lunch in math" is well worth reading, as are these www.schoolinfosystem.org math posts. UW Math Professor Dick Askey has much more to say on K-12 math curriculum.

A few observations from a layperson who couldn't be farther from a math expert's perspective on this (in other words, I'm not a math expert):

• Children must be able to read effectively to use the voluminous Connected Math curriculum,
• The Connected Math curriculum has very extensive teacher instructions, while the Singapore curriculum is rather thin in this area. Does it follow that teachers using Singapore Math have far more freedom with respect to their instruction methods, or is the intention to make sure that teachers teach Connected Math in a scripted way?
• The Connected Math texts require more dead trees and I assume cost more than the Singapore texts directly and indirectly (transportation, packaging and the overhead of dealing with more pieces)
• The voluminous Connected Math texts have far more opportunities for errors, simply based on the amount of text and illustrations included in the books.
• Madison Country Day School uses Singapore Math.

There's quite a bit of discussion on Connected Math and Singapore Math around the internet. Maybe it's time to follow the www.heymath.net people (from India, China and Great Britain) and virtualize this while eliminating the textbooks?

Post your comments below.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 17, 2005 1:30 PM
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