Originally Posted by pj67coll

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I was wondering how folks on this forum were taught basic math in grade school. A few hundred years ago when I was of that age if you wanted to add say 89 and 16 you would write 89 and then 16 beneath the 89. Add 9 and 6 and get 7 (oops sorry, that'd be 15 ) so have a 5 under the 6, carry the 1 to he first column and add 8, 1 and 1 and get 10. Thus the answer of 105. I'd try to write it out numerically but I'm to tired to stuff around with that now.

Now my stepdaughter whose a special needs kid and despite being 12 is way behind in math, as well as many other things is being taught a method of addition that to be blunt looks utterly dumbass to me.

Instead of each number under the other they are all simply written out like a regular sentence. Such as 89 + 16 = and then by some weird rigamarole of separating the tens and ones you add them separately in columns beneath the problem and then stick em all together. So you add 80 and 10 and get 90. And you add 9 and 6 and get 15 and then you add 90 to 16 and you get 106. Seems to be massively lengthening what should be a pretty simple two column addition to me.

Needless to say with a kid that's only hardly beginning to grasp what I think of as the "traditional" method of addition having this curve ball thrown at her seems damm stupid to say the least.

What do others think?

- Peter.