INTRODUCTION

MATH HEALTH

OPERATIONS

Why a Math(ematics) - Lite(racy) Project:
Tulsa is often regarded as being a most "average" American city. So, roughly half of its working-age adults suffer from having less than an age-12 level of math-literacy ... or from having personal fears about math ... or from both. Included are many thousands of parents who are unable to effectively math-coach their own children ... even in lower school math (below the high school level). Also included are hundreds of local school teachers.

For life in a modern metropolis, basic literacy In mathematics, requires competence in common-sensibly dealing with the mathematics that most adults routinely meet in daily life. It also requires knowing the important elements of lower school mathematics as personal common sense ... well enough to effectively math-coach youth and adults. Parents or teachers who cannot guide children (or others) to make personal common sense of lower school mathematics do not actually know it ... regardless of how well they might score on scholastic tests.

In the Tulsa area, many thousands of adults are woefully deficient and educationally disadvantaged in basic-literacy math. [About 150 thousand have not finished high school. The Tulsa area has thousands of adults who came here without American schooling, and who cannot easily learn from mathematics textbooks.]

Many math-deficient adults do not seriously suffer, but many thousands truly are math-needy ... because their math deficiencies shackle them away from fulfilling their duties, or block them from their needed personal progress. Today, Tulsa does not offer its math-needy adults any viable way of overcoming their mathematical barriers.

Among Tulsa's math-needy adult Tulsans, at least 50 thousand adult Tulsans are math-suppressed or even math-impoverished ... too math-illiterate and math-fearing to qualify for non-menial employment or for educational opportunities. Most dropped out of school ... and the American curriculum in mathematics was a major factor. Today's "school math" makes so little common sense to students that it leads millions of future adults to believe that they are mentally "inadequate" ... which erodes children's reasons for continuing to be students. Such a belief also undermines one's self-image, self-respect, self-esteem, self-confidence, aspirations, hopes, potentials, and even social values.

Daily and painfully, math-suppressed adults are frequently reminded of their math deficiencies. Especially as parents, they grieve about seeing no viable way of learning the math that they need to know. Unless/until they can attain mathematical metamorphoses, they remain too alienated from curricular mathematics to brave more school-type math courses ... even if provided by computers or by the internet. They typically could not keep up with the pace of scheduled math courses ... nor fit curricular class schedules into their life styles ... nor afford tuition + books + transportation + childcare + study time. They hopelessly live in mathematics despair, within their presently inescapable mathematical pits.

Tulsa's thousands of math-suppressed adults sorely need city-wide access to a new kind of program for alternative adult-education in basic-literacy mathematics ... one that is custom-designed specifically for mathematically rescuing and salvaging math-illiterate, math-fearing, math-hopeless adults who seriously want better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities. The new program must be free ... must attract its intended users ... must be in harmony with their lifestyles, interests, and experiences ... and must rapidly improve their mathematical self-images, self-esteem, hopes, and aspirations. Since no other American city has such a program, Tulsa's is destined to catalyze an American educational movement, and to set the pace for it.

Any effective program for salvaging large numbers of Tulsa's math-suppressed adults can likewise serve Tulsa's other math-needy adults ... and their children and families ... and their communities and schools. Experts know that the most important factor in children's scholastic achievement in mathematics is the mathematical literacy of their parents, family, and community. There is no more effective way for any organization to "partner with the school" than to catalyze its parents' achievement of basic literacy in mathematics.

The MALEI Mathematical Learning Clinic was created in 1978, partly to scientifically research the causes, cures, and preventions of students' difficulties with the American core-curriculum in mathematics. The findings rapidly unfolded, but the Clinic could serve only very meager numbers of math-needy youth and adults. Late in 2010, recent changes in federal priorities made it realistic for the Clinic to envision how clinical mathematics instruction could be "outreached" to benefit an entire metropolitan service area. The MatheLite Project's first year was devoted to preliminary organization and to developing demonstrations (below) of the MatheLite Vision. The rest of this web page is devoted to sharing that Vision with its readers.

Mathematics As Common Sense:
Intensive clinical casework clearly discloses: (1) that Americans' difficulties with mathematics trace back students' inabilities to grasp the common-sensibility of lower-school mathematics; and (2) that their difficulties are due not to students' "mathematical limitations" and not to the math, itself, being "difficult" to learn ... but to major flaws in the design of the American core-curriculum in mathematics; and (3) that, for most students, those curriculum flaws make it impossible to fully learn school-level mathematics (K-calculus) as personal common sense ... thus forcing students to rely, instead, on a kind of "parrot training" in which only a small minority can continually succeed; and (4) when math-floundering youth and adults are guided to re-learn school mathematics naturally, as personal common sense, their self-appraisals, potentials, and lives are greatly enhanced.

Adults' math fears are holdovers from their childhood encounters with the rocky American math curriculum ... and their childhood inabilities to digest that curriculum into personal common sense ... and the curricular pressures for continual progress ... and the threats of being "inadequate" to meet that challenge ... and the difficulty of keeping up by only parroting. Adults' math illiteracy is likewise due mostly to the unnatural non-common-sensibility of the American lower-school curriculum.

The MatheLite Project does not aim to "reform" the American mathematics curriculum that is used by Tulsa-area schools. But as an adult-education program ... which also educates adults to be effective math-coaches ... the Project and its products may be used by area schools and colleges as a supplementary resource for making lower-school mathematics more common-sensible to students, parents, teachers, administrators, educational governors, and legislators.

Much of basic-literacy math is not even taught in American schools ... ... credit cards, automobiles, measurements, budgets, taxes, and more. Instead, America relies on the fact that anyone who learned all of lower-school mathematics as personal common sense can easily translate that knowledge into most daily-life situations. The flaw in that hope is that only a small minority of American adults ever learned lower-school mathematics as common sense.

Because the textbook-based American curriculum for lower school mathematics makes so little common sense to the students, themselves, their only hope is for some "math coach" to fill in the gaps. But most of today's parents, teachers, and tutors were reared through the same non-sensible kind of curriculum that today's students now face. American students flounder in algebra or beyond because they have not yet grasped the mathematical sensibility of lower school math.

Clinical research also has discerned how to make basic-literacy mathematics fully common-sensible to almost any functional adult who wishes for it. They need to learn it as a humanly natural way of thinking. Tulsa's Mathe-Lite Project will make many such benefits freely accessible throughout the Tulsa area. In time, the Project will rescue and salvage whatever math-fearing, math-illiterate, math-needy adults truly want to be rescued. It will empower adults to easily and effectively math coach children and others ... so that they likewise learn basic-literacy math as personal common sense. The project will so serve math-shy parents who are anxious about their children's treks through curricular mathematics ... and likewise serve teachers and schools who want to make lower-school mathematics common-sensible to their students. It will raise the average educational level of the Tulsa area, enhance its educational stature, and benefit its social and economic environment.

Relief for the math-suppressed:
During their time of math-suppression, until perhaps their mathematical metamorphoses, math-needy adults will not willingly take "math courses." Rather, they must be reached in their own homes or other hangouts ... through media that are familiar, affordable, and readily accessible to them. They want no more of the mathematics curriculum used by American schools and colleges ... not even if via computers or the internet. They must be attracted by leisurely and comfortable experiences that they regard as being entertaining, gratifying, informative, worthwhile, and inspiring.

The most obvious medium is a library of entertaining video presentations ... recorded on DVDs that are given out, free of charge, throughout the Tulsa area. The challenge, of course, is for those videos to attract math-suppressed adults, and to effectively engage them in learning whatever they need to know. For sure, such videos cannot look anything like what is seen in today's curricular math courses. But the broadcast television industry already demonstrates many non-curricular formats that might be adapted for use by the Project.

For countless generations, a minority of parents have very effectively given that "collateral learning" scenario a reverse twist. In the latter mode, the coaching parent cleverly selects a family-life activity with the intent for the child to learn the math that is laced through the chosen activity. Now, the math is the primary target ... and the chosen family-activity might actually be just a vehicle for causing the learning of the math. That process is exactly the reverse of "applying" math that one already knows. Instead, the learner literally extracts the laced math from the real-life doings.

Math-suppressed adults are not fortunate enough to have had that kind of mathematical parenting ... having been given nothing for them to emulate with their own children. But they can learn those "mathematical parenting" skills from the videos.

It is a very effective way to reduce math fears, while increasing mathematical literacy. No need for the parent to "teach" the math ... it is laced through the activity. The parent literally functions as a math-coach ... just by coaching the child in how to perform that particular activity. Videos can show parents how to do that ... but there is no such video library.

YOU CAN HELP

Salvaging Tulsa's math-suppressed youth and adults requires substantial investments of time, money, and other supportive resources. The Tulsa-OK Mathematical Literacy Project must operate through its own sources of funding. Production and circulation of effective video MatheLite Activity Guides is an elaborate and costly process. In order to continue operating and to move forward in developing the videos, the Project needs $65,000 for the first quarter of 2012. Please send your financial help. All active "Patron" donors receive all pre-view drafts of the MatheLite videos, long before the final versions are circulated to the public.

YOU CAN HELP

Auto-instructive activities:
Throughout modern industries, DVDs are commonly used as "training films". Quite notably, the use of "how-to" videos to coach some, so that they can "how-to" coach others, is well proven to be effective within corporations who rely on very large numbers of menial workers. So, most math-suppressed adults already are familiar with that mode of using videos. It means that the same mode can be effectively used for coaching adults in how to coach others to perform family-life activities that are laced with basic-literacy math. Of course, such videos must attract and well serve math-suppressed adults. That requirement takes some highly specialized research and development work.

In that regard, clinical research has discerned that math-lagging youth and adults normally respond very well to the "reverse twist" ... of being led to learn math-laced, real-world activities, for purposes of learning the math that is laced through them. Those activities are clinically prescribed, according to what math-points the learner needs to acquire. It is a very effective way of circumventing math-fears, while building the mathematical mathematical knowledge and powers.

Of special importance to the Project, some such reality-activities even are auto-instructive of the mathematics that is laced through them. Although math coaching usually requires that the math-coach own and share mathematical information, some activities cause the intended learning to happen, automatically ... simply by doing the family activity in the way prescribed by the video. Video guides for performing such auto-instructive activities are the most promising media for alleviating mathematical illiteracy and overcoming fears of math.

Video drafting:
The MatheLite Project's community education program is a DVD video library of Activity Guides for use in homes and other educational settings. Each activity is laced with specific "points" within the arena of basic-literacy math ... and each is auto-instructive of its own math points. Each activity is easily and naturally learned ... and the learner can easily coach others to learn it. By watching the video, the viewers naturally project themselves into the video. They can learn that activity's math-points just by watching the video. Even stronger learning happens when they actually do that kind of activity. Even stronger learning happens when they coach others in how do do activities of that kind.

DVDs are inexpensive enough for the Project to give away at no charge. But the MatheLite videos must be of professional video and theatric quality ... else the intended viewers will not watch them. Professional videography can be very expensive ... especially when the theatrics, too, are of professional quality. Circulation of professional looking DVDs that fail to have the intended appeal and instructional effects would wastefully undermine the Project.

Each MatheLite video must already be known to be adequate, before being professionally produced. The Activity, itself, must be developed through the Project's research and development system. After that, a story board, screenplay, and script must be composed for staging of the movie. For draft video of that Activity Guide, the staging, acting, camera work, and video-editing may be of amateur quality ... as with the two demonstration videos seen on this web page. The job of the movie professionals is to re-film the same video story for public use.

For such R&D purposes, the Project conducts a Mathematical Fitness Clinic that provides free instructional services for a very few math-suppressed adults ... who agree to cooperate with R&D effort. The first level of clinical R&D is to select and hone the MatheLite Activities ... using the clinical casework to assure that those Activities will do as intended for math-suppressed adults. The second level is to generate the draft videos ... partly by testing them through the clinical instructional program.

The next step is to test-pilot the draft videos in the Project's Adult-And-Child Math Workshops. Those workshops are about how adults can math-coach children. The math-suppressed adults watch the draft videos and then lead their own children through such activities. The observers watch how the coaching is done. It shows how well the videos conveyed the math-points to the coaches ... and also how well the videos armed the coaches for their coaching. If need be, the videos are modified and re-tested in other workshops.

Only after the video MatheLite Activity Guides have been satisfactorily tested in the workshops are they ready for professional re-filming, for publication on DVDs and the web, and for area-wide circulation. Meanwhile, the final amateur versions are made available for use by collaborating organizations, Patrons and major supporters of the Project, and substantial volunteers ... including members of the Project's Community Advisory Council.

This video to your right is an abbreviated excerpt from a rough draft of a MatheLite Activity Guide. With gratitude to MatheLite volunteers, and apologies to all TV cooking programs, this family activity is about making snacks. Laced through this MatheLite activity is the quantitative meaning of fractions, and the process of counting in fractions. Clinical research discloses that the common-sensibility of fraction additions/ subtractions/ comparisons comes from counting aloud in fractions. But the American lower-school curriculum does not even teach about counting in fractions.

Almost any math-suppressed adult can learn to do what this child does ... well enough to coach other persons in how to make something like her "tortilla bisection snacks" ... and to talk-out the process. This being an auto-instructive activity, the coaches and their coachees learn much about the common-sensibility of fractions. That knowledge readily transports to the fractioning and fraction-counting of many other tasty (and not so tasty) kinds of things. The educational benefits can be quite profound.

   [Play the 10 min. demo video Activity Guide about fractioning → → ]