Monday, September 8, 2008

Just another cultural difference?

Obviously there are going to be a few things that are different in a land half way across the world form your home. Today I discovered one of those differences as I was teaching math. I personally see it as a huge deal, but you judge for yourself.

In The US students are taught about the order of operations in math by using the acronym PEMDAS.

Parenthesis
Exponents
Multiplication
Division
Addition
Subtraction

Now today I discovered that there is a difference between our way of memorizing the order of operations and that of Kenya's. They use BOMDAS.

Brackets
Off
Multiplication
Division
Addition
Subtraction

Now Brackets is parenthesis and Off is exponents, which seems easy, but as a student who struggled with math all through school, this discovery is terrifying. If we let this get out the effects will devastate the students of the US already struggling with the hardest subject in school (and no that isn't Subjective). So I am here to propose a very harsh punishment for anyone who lets this information leak any farther into our schools. A petition to be drafted soon.

3 comments:

Mom said...

You are too cute!!!! It sure does not sound like you struggle with math. Miss you

Love,
Mom xoxoxoxo

dianasaur said...

je déteste des mathématiques. although, bomdas sounds way cooler than pemdas. pemdas sounds like an oil company. bomdas is like da bomb das... a tiens! je suis pressé. au revoir!

Mama Oasis said...

Chris...

You crack me up! I must be too old to remember that...or else it was an acronym that happened after my time!

In any case...thank you for being so faithful to the kids at Oasis. It amazes me that they are learning this stuff. I remember when we could barely get the big kids to do double digit addition.

Love you and miss you....
Lydia