PHILADELPHIA — A few years ago, Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, stood at an outdoor podium on campus and proclaimed, "Down with fractions!"

"Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation," DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. "But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are."

The speech started a firestorm, particularly after the university posted it online.

"There were blogs and rants, and there were some critical e-mails," said DeTurck, who is now dean of the college of arts and sciences at Penn. "They'd always boil down to: 'What would we do in cooking and carpentry?' "

DeTurck is stirring the pot again, this time in a book scheduled to be published this year. Not only does he favor the teaching of decimals over fractions to elementary school students, he's also taking on long division, the calculation of square roots and by-hand multiplication of long numbers.

"Mathematicians are always questioning the axioms. Everybody knows that questioning those often results in the most substantial gains in terms of progress," he says.

Questioning the wisdom of teaching fractions to young students doesn't compute with people such as George Andrews, a professor of mathematics at Pennsylvania State University and president-elect of the American Mathematical Society. "All of this is absurd," Andrews said. "No wonder mathematical achievements in the country are so abysmal.

"Arithmetic is the basic skill. If children do not know arithmetic, they can't go on to algebra, which leads to calculus. From there you go on to other things," Andrews said. "It's fine to talk about it, but this is not a good pedagogy."

Others see value in both fractions and decimals. To Janine Remillard, associate professor of education at Penn, the decimal system is "incredibly powerful." And fractions can be a powerful steppingstone to understanding decimals, she says.

"Fractions, if taught well — and that's a huge caveat — can actually help kids understand the value of the size of the pieces," Remillard says.

DeTurck does not want to abolish the teaching of fractions and long division altogether. He believes fractions are important for high-level mathematics and scientific research. But it could be that the study of fractions should be delayed until it can be understood, perhaps after a student learns calculus, he said. Long division has its uses, too, but maybe it doesn't need to be taught as intensely.

Penn State mathematician Andrews says he believes DeTurck's ideas will "unfortunately" gain traction because of the misguided belief that math education can somehow be made easy:

"Math is hard. The idea that somehow we're going to make math just fun is just a dream."

By Maureen Milford, USA TODAY

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I thought this was interesting since I am of the belief that this will lead to some parents concluding that education should be more about specialization instead of knowing advanced levels in every subject.

Let a child specialize in Math, Science, History or whatever. It would only help them more to get a job in a chosen field and they would probably be better prepared for say, Computer Geekiness jobs if they studied more math, or a lawyer who studied history and law for instance.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

very true. I had to take three years of math- including one advanced class. I'm not going into a field that requires advanced math. it was a waste of my time.

I think people are coming around to this idea. The article itself just shows that it is rather possible that Children are wasting time learning stuff that is irrelevant in today's modern workforce.

I couldn't say with 100% confidence, myself. Since I have been out of High School for 6 years and out of College for 4. I don't really recall learning anything in High School Relevant to my current job field, so I could have said to hell with it there, like I did with College.

But meh, time will tell on this one, I suppose.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

But the basic principle should still be taught. I suppose that tape measures will be replaced or updated with a digital read so that you how long or wide something is?

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An American first and always a Conservative.

What do you mean no practical use? If some one needs an exact measurement then fractions can be used as well as decimals. How are you going to cook using a decimal measurement?

When I was in Junior High they taught us to diagram a sentence which at the time I saw no useful purpose but later I learned to taught me proper sentence structure.

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

I never faired well in English. Mostly because the books they made me read were stupid. I did well when I was allowed to read books I liked, but even when I was a 16 year old, I could sense a collectivist slant in the reading materials we were required to read.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

We were required to read Stienbeck, Melvile and Shakespear. Plus I read almost anything I could get my hands on.

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.