Originally Posted by Val
Originally Posted by Old Dad
Upon entering the next grade they started the whole process again! We simply informed the teacher that our DS would not be returning those take home worksheets, there was simply no way we were going to support such unnecessary poor use of his time, it wasn't a discussion, it was a simple statement of fact.

Well, I took a page out of your book on that one.

DS11's math teacher was forcing the kids to do something called "additive subtraction." Why sixth graders in a pre-algebra class need to learn how to do basic subtraction is a topic for another day. Anyway, the school's method involves writing sentences to the right of the problem, along the lines of:

234       9+5=14 Carry the 1.
-149       4+8=12 Carry the 1.
 85       1+0=1

(Something like that, anyway.)

Teacher claims that this method is "faster" than the standard algorithm. DS wouldn't do it in class, and using the standard algorithm, he got the correct answer first.

So she started sending it home as homework. DH and I signed a note saying (essentially) that DS would not be doing additive subtraction, and that, as they say, was that. Happily, she just sent an email giving him "permission" to use regrouping.

You're right that middle school (U.S.) math is absurdly remedial. But don't be too dismissive of other methods. Converting a-b=? to b+?=a is quite sensible (as long as the stuff you wrote on the side can be done as mental math without writing it).