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[quote=Anonymous][quote]I'm curious about the academic and professional backgrounds of those who criticize EDM on this board. Can you share some of your actual expertise in mathematics education or mathematics itself so we can better understand where you're coming from? [/quote]

Taught medical, graduate and undergraduate students.  Teach pre-K, primary and secondary (my kids).  I do not have a graduate degree in Math.  My educational background-extensive.  I'll spare you the alphabet soup of professional and graduate degrees.   I learned Math many decades ago.  The subject at lower levels has not changed much in the last century and a half.  The only thing that has changed today is the US marketing of primary and secondary school math education,  the increasing size of textbooks covering the [b]same[/b] material coming out every 2 years (as if the half-life of math knowledge recycles every 4 years), and the amount of money the industry is raking in while kids outside the US continue to out perform our kids in mathematics.  I think someone is getting conned (think wall street con artists).  I made damn sure it wasn't my kids.

It is a hilarious sight indeed to watch diminutive elementary kids daily carting around these worthless tombs in luggage on wheels!   It give Sal Khan much credit.  He left the hedge fund world to give kids all over the world an opportunity to learn and understand primary and secondary school math (among many other disciplines) for free and without the frills (frill-free).  No EDM.  No worthless editions of 800-page gorilla Math textbooks that no 6 to 11 year-old actually even reads much less many of their erudite parents on this board.

Do you actually think elementary school children from India, Asia and Africa would actually embrace EDM to study math?  I doubt it.   I was  proactive in supporting my kids' math education, the way it worked for me decades ago, when I recognised how poorly the subject was taught and presented in elementary school.  We did not use the school EDM text books, just returned it, dust and all, at the end of the school year.  The authors had a way of expanding 80 pages of information into 800 pages! We did not use graphing calculators despite the recommendations for in class work, homework, quizes, tests and the like  (the kids are computer and calculator savy for their enrichment and extracurricular fun and play time).  You'd be surprised the buy you get from them sitting in a classroom with classmates 4 years their senior and arriving  at solutions to problems faster and more accurately than the rest of the class hammering away on some TI-84.  I am even told these kids find this aid useful for the PSAT and SAT?  The disadvantages, in the short and long run, are plainly obvious.  And, in general, my personal experience and the results over the last decade confirm this.

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