Humor Post #62 from the world’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Middle School Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –
Math scores ain’t so high in this country, if you can believe what all those international test results show. Now I’m pretty good at math, but I gotta admit, there’s a lot about it that could be improved. Like fractions, for instance. That’s what I’m going to rant about today. Okay, it’s not going to be a rant. I will be very calm and patient as I explain how THE WAY FRACTIONS ARE NAMED MESSES LITTLE KIDS UP RIGHT AWAY!
See, I was working with my little pal Jojo again. (You can see the last time I worked with the little guy here.) He’s the little brother of a friend of mine and I want to get it where he’ll be considered a junior genius. That shouldn’t be too hard considering who’s teaching him. So I figure I’ll help him get ahead in math. I can picture some scene where his kindergarten teacher is saying, “Okay, class, let’s practice counting up to 3,” and Jojo will go start asking her questions about atomic particle accelerators or 3D quark generators or something else I’ve taught him. All the other kids’ mouths drop open. The teacher will be just a little bit surprised.
At least that was the idea I had. I like to shake things up, ya know.
So since Jojo already knows how to count, I thought I’d start him off with some simple fractions. I got out a chocolate chip cookie — he likes those — and cut it in half. Then I tried to show him how there were two halves in a whole. But he immediately got mixed up with the word “whole” and asked why I wanted to put his cookie into a hole. “I don’t want my cookie all dirty,” I think is the exact quote I got. No, no, I tried to explain how a “whole” meant “one” and I was already getting the little dude confused. But I plowed on anyway.
The next step was to show him when the cookie was cut in two parts, each part would be called a “half.” That blew his little brain even more. So I showed how to cut a cookie into four pieces and each piece would be called a “fourth.” So Jojo asks, “How about if you cut the cookie into six pieces?” and I say, “Then each piece would be a sixth,” so he says, “So if it’s in two pieces, why don’t they call it a twoth?”
Now he had ME all messed up. What a great question! We have fourths, sixth, eighths, tenths, and all the rest. Now “thirds” and “fifths” might throw you off a little, but at least the first two letters are the same. But to change a “two” into H-A-L-F makes NO SENSE! And then there’s that plural of HALF which changes the f to a v. How’s a little guy supposed to learn this stuff? How’s anyone supposed to get it?
THE VERY FIRST FRACTION THEY GIVE YOU — THE ONE THAT SHOULD BE, YOU KNOW, THE EASIEST ONE — GETS YOU ALL BAMZOODLED.
They really should call it a “twoth.” But of course they won’t cause that would get kids mixing up fractions with teeth. (Which makes me wonder why they don’t call more than one half “heef.” But that’s a whole ‘nother thing to consider another time.)
So anyway, to help little Jojo and everyone else in the world who’s ever gotten mixed up learning fractions, here’s the new diagram I think should go in every new math book there is so EVERYONE CAN LEARN FRACTIONS WITHOUT GETTING THEIR HEADS ALL FLIPPED UPSIDE DOWN.
Go ahead, show this to your teachers and see if they don’t have to agree with you. But they probably won’t want to because that would rock their worlds too much, ya know.
So go have a great day (or night) and remember who’s doing his best to make the world make better sense for everyone.
That would be:
Dr. Crankenfuss
The Dude with the ‘Tude