Professor: Fractions Should be Scrapped

Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, is calling for an end to the teaching of fractions to young students. He favors going all decimal. George Andrews, a mathematics professor over at Penn State, says that "all of this is absurd." I agree with Andrews.

DeTurck thinks fractions should be taught later when students are better able to understand them -- perhaps after learning calculus. I say that if a student can't comprehend fractions he or she has no business taking calculus -- or algebra.

How would someone get to a decimal value without understanding fractions? If told to add 1/3 and 1/2, would they know to add 0.3333 to 0.5 and get 0.8333, since they presumably don't know how to get a common denominator and then add the numerators to get 5/6? Would they know that 5/6 is an exact result while 0.8333 is not?

If students can solve for the two possible values of x in this algebraic equation, 3x/4 - 1/x = 1, they should be able to solve this one, 1/3 + 1/2 = x, and get x = 5/6 rather than x = 0.8333. If so, they understand fractions -- but they might not know it. If they don't know it, they might get 0.9999 when asked to add 1/3 and 1/3 and 1/3.

No Dennis, I think we need to keep trying to teach kids to understand and work with fractions. If they have too much trouble with it they should consider going into music, art, athletics or politics.

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