Jennie should learn math

[Sam3]

Using a visual or word syntax with math is closer to the way humans process math in real life.

This New York Times article explains the issues with teaching math pretty well: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazi....html?_r=0

NYTimes wrote:
The unschooled may have been more capable of complex math than people who were specifically taught it, but in the context of school, they were stymied by math they already knew. Studies of children in Brazil, who helped support their families by roaming the streets selling roasted peanuts and coconuts, showed that the children routinely solved complex problems in their heads to calculate a bill or make change. When cognitive scientists presented the children with the very same problem, however, this time with pen and paper, they stumbled. A 12-year-old boy who accurately computed the price of four coconuts at 35 cruzeiros each was later given the problem on paper. Incorrectly using the multiplication method he was taught in school, he came up with the wrong answer. Similarly, when Scribner gave her dairy workers tests using the language of math class, their scores averaged around 64 percent. The cognitive-science research suggested a startling cause of Americans’ innumeracy: school.

Please read the article. It describes why Americans are failing at math, and why Common Core actually is a well-designed program that is not implemented well, due to teachers themselves not being trained properly on the methodology behind it and how to best teach it.