While talking to my mom on the phone after the first few days of classes here at USD, she began questioning me about how the homework load was so far. I began to list off my classes and the corresponding assignments. When I informed her that I had to write a paper for Algebra class, she stopped me mid-sentence. We were both unfamiliar with the idea of a literary assignment being allocated by a math professor. I am more of a right-brained, creative type of person, so I delved into the assignment, highlighter in hand. After reading the article, I felt the need to call my mom back to explain to her the often overlooked but imperative connection between literacy and mathematics. Our initial confusion is addressed by the article's author, Edwin E. Moise. According to him, math in elementary school should impose less of the "drill-to-death" method. Children at that stage in life have an innate learning process which Moise refers to as "psychic intelligence". While observing a child, one may notice that they are like blank slates, running around, using all of their senses to soak up anything foreign to them. They are products of their environment. They want to know who, what, when, where, and why all of the time. Math classes at that level begin to discourage that uninhibited curiosity by teaching students fixed steps to reach a specific solution. All of the sudden, much like some parents, teachers begin to answer children's cries of "but why?" simply with "because". As the student progresses into high-school and college, formulas must be memorized and practiced over and over again. If the student's solution is the same as the answer sheet's solution, then the process is not questioned. Calculators are useful tools to eliminate some of the "drudgery", as Moise calls it, from math, but just like their more advanced cousins, computer science programs, calculators must be used properly in order to not impede students from actually understanding the processes and steps that are being undergone in these machines.
