Richard Bollard typed thus:
> On 3 Nov 2004 04:22:31 GMT, peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Peter
> Moylan) wrote:
>
> >the Omrud biomed:
> >>Peter Moylan typed thus:
> >
> >>> For a minute there I thought this was a reference to Cuisenaire, a
> >>> method of teaching primary school mathematics that was briefly
> >>> popular in about 1960.
> >>>
> >>> My sister, the only one in the family to have suffered through this
> >>> fad, used to think it was called "poison air".
> >>
> >>Not suffered, at least in my case. In my school, it was used only to
> >>stretch those with advanced maths abilities, to demonstrate the use
> >>of bases other than base-10. I learned to do base-8 (and base-6)
> >>arithmetic at the age of 9 - this may have laid the pattern of my
> >>later career.
> >
> >At my sister's school it was all the children - of about 5 or 6 years
> >old, as I recall it - and with a teacher who possibly didn't see the
> >point. I can see that useful things could have been done with the
> >rods _after_ learning basic arithmetic, but having to learn things
> >like 'green + green = red', with the hope that the children will later
> >deduce from this that 1+1=2, was an exercise in futility.
> >
> >I still believe that my sister could have become good at arithmetic
> >if it hadn't been for Cuisenaire. I get very annoyed at educational
> >fads that attempt to introduce the abstract ahead of the concrete.
> >Children's minds don't work that way.
>
> We had them. I don't recall anything useful about them except that
> they were fun for building log forts out of. The little white ones
> were a pain.
I agree that they had nasty sharp corners, but they weren't intended
to be used internally.
--
David
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