Math Education of Elementary Teachers: A Challenging Issue.

As Piaget stated, "Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves." (Papert, 2001, p. 2) And customarily, we teach math too quickly to our students in the United States of America. Following Piaget’s work, there has been a general awakening to the fact that children are active builders of knowledge and not empty vessels to be filled with facts. However, there remain to be introduced major changes in our classrooms that would break the tradition of introducing essentials and grant the students time and encouragement to master mathematical ideas. We need to realize as educators that practicing the art of making theories may be more valuable for children than achieving “meteorological orthodoxy” (p.2) On the same note, we also need to realize that materializing this vision calls for better prepared and more flexible math teachers. This paper is an attempt to analyze the various issues encircling the teaching of mathematics in elementary schools. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards and Achieve expectations along with Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) recommendations are used as a lens to verify answers to the following concerns: where to begin reforming the math education and why; how well prepared are our elementary teachers to take up the challenge; and, what will it take in terms of elementary teacher preparation to bring about a long-lasting reform. Analyzing the matters around the murky state of elementary math education, one finds a ray of hope in terms of some promising suggestions and recommendations that, when executed in their entirety and suitably, assure an improvement beyond the elementary school to all levels of math education in America.