My son was taught at home to do maths the traditional way - the way I was taught. At school they started teaching multiplication using 'partitioning'. This was a disaster and my son started to struggle. The thing is they used this method as a means to teach place value, then later on move to the traditional method. What better way to get kids to jump through hoops, master a skill then say 'forget that, it didn't really matter'. So next time teacher shows them something they think 'does this one matter? Should I bother learning this one and putting some effort in?'
