The odd thing is, 1) I don't like Everyday Math, 2) I can easily agree with this article, and 3) trying to fix the problems exposed in the article seems to lead to EM.
Heh, I had this same thought. I've TAUGHT EDM, and don't like it generally or for mathy kids specifically, but there are certain aspects of it that are... well... TRYING to address issues that existed in "traditional" math curricula. I'd argue that they don't do it well, that they then ignore a lot of important stuff in the process, and that the sum result is a poorer math education, BUT...
Let's take long division. The partial-quotients method is a pain in the butt to actually use on any functional level. It does, however, guide not-quite-struggling-but-not-quite-getting-it kids through the process of manipulating bigger numbers using division and multiplication. It is, IMHO, a good things to sit and puzzle over and struggle with to really understand what's going on when you're dividing multi-digit numbers if you don't already have a conceptual idea as to what's going on. It's fiddly. It builds conceptual understanding of how numbers fit into other numbers, and how numbers multiply, and how the two are connected. If I had an otherwise math-OK kid who was struggling to understand exactly why big numbers behave the way they do when divided, or why an answer that's off by a factor of ten was incorrect ("this answer doesn't make sense because blah blah blah...")
BUT. BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT. It's not an effective way to actually divide. When I taught EDM, I watched my students, who I knew darn well were capable of dividing, laboring through the partial-quotients method. I taught them "traditional" division in a half hour, and because they all had a good understanding of how it worked, it just clicked. EDM, and I say this as someone who is not a huge fan as a teacher or parent, uses things that could be decent "learning process" tools, but just... doesn't go any further. If the learning is in the struggle, that's all well and good, but after students have wrestled with concepts and emerged victorious, there needs to be a moment where the students sit back, assess what they learned in that struggle, and then attain mastery.
EDM, in its spiraling "wisdom," never seems to get there. The kids wrestle with something (in this case dividing larger numbers), gain a bit of understanding, and then are whisked on to the next topic. So now you've got a group of kids who have an understanding of how to divide multi-digit numbers (hopefully), but haven't been guided to the point where they can use that knowledge.
"Exploring," aka fiddling around or struggling with the numbers or whatever else you want to call it, is a good thing. EDM just doesn't follow up that fiddling with a nice "now you understand what's going on, let's take a few days and learn an easy, fool-proof way to get this done." <-- All this and many, many other issues I have with the curriculum, of course.
