Reply #104: I think donco6 has accurately described many of the main advantages [View All]

[FBaggins]

and disadvantages of the program.

A couple more I've seen:

One of the things I like the most is that the student picks up a number of different ways to address a problem and becomes more comfortable picking one that works in a given situation. That's a "real world" benefit. My wife had me watch that youtube video assaulting EM and for the first half (showing some of the non standard algorithms) and I said "that's not how I learned it but it's how I do them in my head - so that's cool"). The downside is that we all know that mom/dad are important in education and THEY didn't learn it that way. They're likely to look at one of the matrix multiplication grids and say "huh?". If we want mom and dad to help with homework... that's a problem.

I really don't like the amount of time spent using a calculator. You just shouldn't need a calculator for 4th grade math.

I love the "spiral" concept but I disagree that EM ever gets to the "mastery" level. In fact, the teacher's manual specifically says that practicing to mastery is a waste of valuable classroom time.

My largest concern is the reports back from the higher-level math teachers saying that they're getting students in who just can't multiply and divide. They just don't have mastery of the prerequisite skills. That's a real problem.

An easy summary:

At the "grammar" level you memorize basic facts
at the "dialectic" level you learn to connect/relate these facts to understand how they work.
at the "rhetoric" level is analysis and synthesis... IOW "what does it mean".

These levels are developmental as much as they are anything else. "Grammar" school was designed through 6th grade largely because that's where they are developmentally. EM skimps on the "grammar" (memorization/mastery/facts/whatever) and attempt to incorporate higher levels of thinking. That's a great goal... but perhaps not as well designed as it could be. Not every student is developmentally ready for that. (oh... and BTW since it's the topic of the thread... failure to be beyond "grammar" developmentally is perfectly ok for a 3rd grader... it isn't a disability. It's possible that this is simply the wrong curriculum for this particular child).