New Math

I remember when I had to suffer through this. New Math. It was taught during the 1950’s—1970’s. It was supposed to be a dramatic change in the way math was taught, emphasizing “discovery learning.” Students worked in groups to invent theories about the problems posed in the textbooks. The goal was get past children only learning to pass the exam. It was to expand on memorization of arithmetic and practice teaching for understanding.

Parents and teachers complained that it was too far outside the student’s ordinary experience and therefore they were falling behind on learning math at all. In addition, parents were having difficulty helping their children with their New Math homework. Parents were actually attending their children’s classes to try and learn it.

In his book Why Johnny Can’t Add: the Failure of New Math, Morris Kline stated that it ignored completely the fact that learning math is a cumulative development, that you need to learn the rules of math in a progression. It was impossible to move forward until you first understood the beginning rules.

In the Pixar animated film Incredibles 2, which was set in the 1960’s, Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) can be seen wrangling with New Math in his son’s homework, and promptly describes it as making no sense at all, and then went onto ridicule it “I don’t know that way! Why would they change Math? Math is Math! MATH IS MATH!”

So New Math was deemed a failure, and everyone went back to learning good old fashioned Math!

I also remember around the 1970’s the United States tried teaching us how to be on the metric system. Gosh, math was fun back then! (Dripping with sarcasm!)

Math follows specific rules. Rules have predicted outcomes. Like 2+2=4.

But in God’s realm, 2+2 can equal 5! Why? Because nothing is impossible with God! I’m pretty sure if God had an alias it would be: a.k.a.—I created Impossible! Since He created everything, is anything beyond His scope? Nope.

“Not one promise from God is empty of power, nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37 [TPT]

“Jesus responded, “What appears humanly impossible is more that possible with God. God can do what man cannot.” (Luke 18:27 [TPT])

“Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish this. He will achieve infinitely more that your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.” (Eph. 3:20 [TPT])

So what are you stressing over, or worrying about? God eats impossible for lunch, and does so every day! You can count on Him to help you with whatever it is you might be struggling with.

He wants to have a deep, personal relationship with us, and that included helping us with all the “baggage” we deal with. He just wants us to ask Him for help in showing out the impossible in our lives. Then by doing so, others will see the impossible being handled and will ask for help too.

And, the only New Math involved here, is God’s problem solving abilities.

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