There is a general complaint that my schooling suggestions are too “Big” and too far “Out-of-the-Box” to be worth considering. I know that we’re a society that looks to apply a Band-Aid and “kick the can down the road.” But the bleeding system, curriculum, and methodology, must be addressed.

Our outcomes, by many disparate criteria, have been disgraceful. Combined federal and state funding of education far exceeds the military budget (and even, in current dollars, the military spending at the peak of WWII.)

The problem is that we don’t know what we’re doing or why we are doing it. This has led many to say that public schooling has degenerated to daycare for kids and welfare for teachers.

It is said, that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Also: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" is to the point. Outcomes will not change unless the system changes.

Educators say the “problem” is that homes are not doing their job. Really?

In the early 20th century, in New York City, most immigrant families did not speak English, had few books, and took no part in their children’s education. The schools did it and did it well.

It was the schools’ job to provide what we called the “three Rs,” and much more besides in general science, history, geography, and civics.

If it can’t be done today, then why are we spending all this money on required training of teachers, their salaries, and benefits? And that for a work schedule of short hours, and under 200 days on the job.

First and foremost, let’s get rid of all that homework – at least until high school. It further privileges the privileged.

Permit me to focus on arithmetic – my expertise. Long ago, after my PhD, I abandoned pure mathematics when I realized that the failing of our schools in arithmetic was measurably atrocious, while being easily and painlessly remedied.

I’m skipping first grade, assuming that kids can count. But not that they have mastered any addition facts or skills. (Early primary and secondary will be considered in another column.)

“Arithmetic Lab” precedes scratching out numerals with a pencil on paper.

Supply students with low-end, 4-function calculators. They should be uniform so instructions will be identical for each. (No “on yours do such-and-such.”) Supply each student with about 50 uniform counters. Cheapest would be pennies which still can be found at about $1 per hundred. The lessons progress from counting up to 10 then 20 with the pennies; then demonstrating that the calculator can “count” {1; +; +; =; =; =; …} on most models.

Introduce addition: 2 – lay out 2 pennies, 3 – lay out 3 pennies, how many altogether? Count the five of them. Then on the calculator {2; +; 3; =} and see the same result as with pennies – “5.”

There, you’ve done it. Taught addition. And provided a tool that will give answers. No memorization of “facts”; that will come automatically in due time. Almost no one will keep punching buttons to add two small numbers.

For multiplication: rectangular array of pennies; say, three rows of 4 each. Count them (12). Add three 4s on the calculator – (12); add four 3s – same answer: 12. There you’ve done it again, taught multiplication and the commutative law (3x4 = 4x3) as well. And so it goes.

Guess what … This can easily be done at home – at the proverbial “kitchen table,” even out of doors.

I “see” the doubts in your mind as I’ve heard them out loud from the many hundreds of elementary teachers I’ve instructed, tutored, and coached. “They shouldn’t have calculators before they learn to do it the (ahem) ‘real’ way.” Therein lies the crux of most of our problems in schooling. The world has changed since about 200 years ago, when we baked, not-the-best methods, into now moribund, doctrinal, faith-based initiation rituals for getting answers.

Consider this: would you want the Teamsters Union to require, that before driving a truck, you demonstrate skill in backing a wagon with a team of horses? Would you want a back-hoe operator to have to have spent a thousand hours digging trenches with a pick and shovel? And would you want every local driver to have hiked to and from Kingston, before being allowed to drive Route 209?

And… “What would the person do on a desert island w/o the calculator?” Let me tell you. Not only is it unlikely that the person will need to do much arithmetic beyond counting on the fingers, it’s rather unlikely that pencil and paper and a flat writing surface is available. In the math puzzles it’s always coconuts, but in reality in the primitive cultures, free of math anxiety, they used pebbles because they didn’t have pennies.

If fact, the word calculate (and calculus) comes from the Latin word for pebble. Ancient counting boards used pebbles for arithmetic and were covered with sand to keep them from rolling out of place. And it is this sand which in the Arabic and Hebrew: “abq” in Greek became the name for the abacus of, later, Oriental fame.

Abacus: For base ten work, later in the child’s development, the Chinese/Korean/Japanese soroban, pictured above in a modern Malaysian version (the kind I use in teaching), is the way to develop tactile understanding of the modern world’s arithmetic system – and strangely, Roman numerals and Babylonian methods as well.