Welcome to the MALEI Institute's
mathsense.org
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The (MACS) Project for Teaching and Learning
Mathematics As Common Sense

Orientation to the MACS Project

Tulsa's (M.A.C.S.) Project for Teaching and Learning Mathematics As Common Sense was created in 1997, through special commission from the Tulsa-based, not-for-profit American Institute for the Improvement of MAthematics LEarning and Instruction (a.k.a. the MALEI Mathematics Institute). The Project was charged with (1) exploring means for determining, with scientific certainty, how to make school-level mathematics fully commonsensible to any normal human being, and (2) finding viable avenues through which the Institute could most effectively pursue the MALEI Mission: Through mathematics, to provide scientific leadership for the progressive improvement of instructional and learning practices, with emphasis on the personal educational health of the individual.

[MALEI was originally chartered in Hawaii, where its primary function was conduct of the publicly accessible MALEI Mathematical Learning Clinic. The "MACS Project" label came from an inmate at a youth correctional facility being served by the Clinic ... where he declared, "I get it! This is common-sense math!" That remark captured the essence of what the MALEI Clinic is all about ... and what later became the MACS Project. ]

In effect, the MACS Project was created to function as a consulting service both for drafting the Institute's long-range strategic plan, and for initiating some of its key activities ... which subsequently would be adopted by the Institute. Through that contract, the Institute inherits credits for positive productivity, without also carrying the onus for any MACS Project maladies. Exploratory ventures entail mistakes. As a consulting service, the Project has absorbed many mistakes which will never tarnish the Institute's future trail record. Acting Director of the MACS Project is Clyde Greeno, a clinical professor on loan from the MALEI Institute.

Since the MACS Project's inception, its basic function has been to conduct the MALEI Mathematical Learning Clinic ... as a local instructional service, and for scientific research and development. The instructional service is primarily for youth and adults afflicted by the syndrome of Mathematics-Learning Distress (MLD: anxiety, fear, depression, phobia, etc.). The MALEI Clinic is one of the nation's few clinics that specializes in the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of MLD.

During its first few years, after 1977, the MALEI Clinic determined that the primary cause of MLD is that American core-curricular mathematics makes too little mathematical sense ... for it to be commonsensible to the students, themselves. So, the Clinic's major research thrust early focused on how humans most naturally learn those mathematical topics ... and why curricular mathematics so badly fails to be common-sensible to students ... and how the core-curriculum could be changed to make it fully common-sensible to students. Under the MACS Project, that research thrust has been expanded to include more theoretical investigations ... and the development of demonstration educational programs.

It took more than a decade for the MACS Project to discern a viable way for MALEI to effectively pursue its Rainbow. In 2010, after extensive explorations within the structure of the nation's established network of curricular mathematics education, MACS concluded that MALEI's chosen role of scientific leadership must be performed outside the educational establishment ... so as to let educators respond, when they are ready. With that conclusion came a vision of how MALEI could directly pursue its concerns for personal mathematical health.

Many millions of Americans are in very poor mathematical health because American curricular mathematics programs have not served them well. The 1975 book, Overcoming Math Anxiety immediately became a best seller ... indicating that poor mathematical health already was pervasive. Subsequent related publications are abundant, but the national picture has only worsened ... due to growing pressures on the schools. Poor personal mathematical health is most prominent and important among out-of-school adults who try to avoid math courses. There is a grave need for an equal-opportunity, alternative kind of community education program that will enable math-fearing, math-illiterate adults to easily acquire the mathematics that they need for accessing better educational and vocational opportunities.

In 2011, MACS took the initial steps toward activating The Tulsa-OK Mathematical Literacy Project. That Project ... for brevity, The Mathe-Lite Project ... is to function through its Tulsa-area Community Advisory Council of collaborating organizations and leaders of local communities. The goal is to make it possible for all Tulsans to easily achieve basic-literacy mathematics as personal common sense ... at no financial cost to the learners. Doing so calls for the Community Council to provide a very new and radically different program of community education in mathematics. As one of the collaborating organizations. MALEI is to design a community education program that is scientifically certain to be maximally effective with those Tulsans who have the poorest mathematical health. Of course, the Tulsa model later can be replicated by any American metropolis.

Each year, the Clinic can serve only a few patients ... and the persons who most need clinical help are the ones who can least afford to pay for it. Tulsa's needs for the benefits of clinical instruction to be made available, city-wide, free of costs to the users, calls for the MALEI Clinic to generate an outreach program. But rather than requiring the learners to travel to an instructional facility, the needed outreach program must function directly within the homes of math-needy adults and families. The most viable means is to provide free DVD recordings of custom-designed Mathe-Lite movies. Those movies are being developed through clinical R&D by the MALEI Clinic. Casework with educationally disadvantaged adults, enables the MatheLite Project's Mathematical Fitness Clinic to develop movies that are scientifically certain to do the job needed of them.

The MALEI Clinic is evolving as a working demonstration of how professorial clinical mathematics instruction attends personal mathematical health at far higher levels of professional expertise than can be provided through commonplace educational services. The MALEI model then can be replicated, nationwide, by any university having a duly qualified mathematics clinician. However, the high costs of providing one-on-one clinical mathematics instruction dictate either very high tuition for the patients, or operating the clinic through supportive funding. Apart from strictly humanitarian funding for personal services, the case for financial support of mathematical learning clinics rests largely on how their scientific clinical research and development can generate widespread benefits. The R&D potentials of such clinics predestine that they will be conducted primarily by universities.

During the years of MACS Project explorations, the MALEI Clinic's research has generated much reliable knowledge pertaining to personal educational health in mathematics ... especially in the areas of scientific mathematics instructology, mathematical foundations of curricular mathematics, and MLD. Some of those results have been published and presented at national conferences of professional associations. However, financial limitations have precluded widespread dissemination of MALEI's advances.

Perhaps the most immediately significant findings are in the area of personal mathematical comprehension. The basic cause of MLD is that the American core-curriculum in mathematics is subtly wrought with mathematical weaknesses ... that severely reduce students' abilities to digest curricular presentations into personal common sense. Much of the MALEI Clinic's mathematical research has been in how to clean up the mathematical foundations of school mathematics (e.g. http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~okar-maa/news/okarproceedings/OKAR-2005/clgreeno-part1.html). It now is predestined that, eventually, the subjects of arithmetic and algebra will be beneficially combined for more commonsensible curricular instruction, K-12.

MACS has been less successful in the "networking" arena of scientific leadership. So far, the Project's efforts to mobilize the likely sectors of national professional associations, to the cause of personal mathematical health, have not yet been very fruitful. Likewise for attracting interest of schools and colleges. Although most educational communities are aware of America's pervasive dilemma in mathematics education, most cannot perceive the potentials for science-based progress ... until seeing working demonstrations that, and of how, science can pave the way for genuine educational progress.

So, MACS has more recently focused on developing innovative mathematics-instructional programs that effectively demonstrate the benefits of implementing findings from scientific clinical research. Schools and colleges are justifiably reluctant to allow any major disturbance to their ongoing programs ... until they are sure that such changes will be visibly for the better. The Project has explored prospects for conducting supplementary programs ... that provide students with extra-curricular support for their curricular efforts. That route was abandoned because the demands of curricular courses are too unhealthy for MACS programs to be effectively interfaced with traditional scholastic programs.

Ventures into "alternative education in mathematics" for youth were more promising ... when not being geared to concurrent curricular courses. A viable model of that kind is a "math lab" course for building student's mathematical-learning powers ... through guiding them to do mathematical research on school-math topics that they had not yet studied. MACS was able to do that effectively with some home-schooled students. However, such an academic mathematical arts program appeals only to that minority who seek genuine education in genuine mathematics. Most school and college students are primarily concerned, instead, with surviving curricular courses and exiting from mathematics curricula, as soon as possible. So, such a "mathematics academy" program cannot have the demonstration power needed for catalyzing a substantial scientific movement.

An effective "teacher education" program was previewed as a series of Parent-And-Child Math Workshops ... for parents as math coaches of their own children. That one worked so well that it is to become a major component of the Mathematical Literacy Project ... except that the (AAC) Adult-And-Child Workshops now allow for teachers to bring students. After the MatheLite Movies are drafted through the Mathematical Fitness Clinic, they are to be test-piloted though the AAC workshops. The aim is to enable even math-fearing, math-illiterate adults to grasp the commonsensibility of basic-literacy mathematics ... well enough they can effectively math coach whatever children they serve. There could be no stronger way of helping educationally disadvantaged children to succeed with school mathematics.

The MACS Project is only one mechanism for accelerating a scientific movement toward the widespread improvement of personal educational health in mathematics. But all who wish to contribute to that cause are welcome to do so through the Project. Please consider contributing to the success of the Tulsa-OK Mathematical Literacy Project, by offering your services, financial support, or other possessions. [See that Project's Help! Help! pages.]

The fact that its Clinic and demonstration instructional programs are conducted strictly within the Tulsa area by no means isolates the Project or reduces its importance or significance for the rest of the nation. There is much room for any individual or organization that shares MALEI's concerns to share also in the proceedings of the MACS Project. Of course, geographic constraints dictate that not all can assist in all ways that Tulsa-area residents can.

For the foreseeable future, resources permitting, the MACS Project will be focusing primarily on: (1) accelerating progress of the MatheLite Project, (2) disseminating already achieved scientific advances; (3) strengthening the MALEI Clinic as a prototype for health-oriented, scientific clinical service, research, and development; and (4) collaborating with other organizations, toward the progressive improvement of educational practices.

On the periphery, MACS will continue to offer: MLD-therapy for Tulsans who can afford it (because there is no other such local service); its mathematics academy program for mathematically inclined students; and its Adult-And-Child Workshops (not necessarily for test-piloting the movies). However, MACS will not invest into actually marketing such services ... unless some grants are specifically for such programs.

The Institute's path of activation now is clear. What remains is to begin realizing that strategic plan, by accelerating the gathering of needed resources. With that, the MACS Project's consulting services commission from the Institute will be fulfilled. Contingent on financial settlement, the MACS Project then will be fully absorbed as a MALEI activity.