<p>mini, I agree with you on the overrating of it. But perhaps I agree more on the overrating of the SAT quantitative as an indication of analytical ability, particularly as it applies to college material.</p>
<p>mini,</p>
<p>Could not agree with you more! I was worried that my son’s math SAT scores would hurt him and take away from the fact that he was clearly an excellent candidate for the Humanities. He plans to major in Classical Civiliations/Latin and then go to law school. Why should his SAT math scores matter at all? But, all’s well that ends well.</p>
<p>“even at many of the elite schools, fewer than 30% of students are science majors”</p>
<p>But I wonder if this number would be higher if people weren’t scared away by negative experiences with math. I mean, if you have a group of 100 bright 9-year-olds, it’s usually easier to get them all thrilled about a science demonstration than a history demonstration. Science is just cooler. But somewhere along the way, they get the message that the math is too hard and it’s all just too much work. That could partly be because humanities teachers let the kids coast, but I think it’s also that we’ve decided as a culture that math is Very Hard and only for Very Smart People, while things like literature and history are for everyone. I’m not sure how to turn that around, but I am certain that we’re needlessly turning kids away from science.</p>
<p>In a country that, above all else, has a shortage of low-grade service workers and Wal-Mart clerks, why would you want to turn it around? There are a plenty of math and computer science geeks in Bangalore, and aeronautical engineers in China.</p>
<p>Epiphany, how can I be way off base if three different college math dept heads all told me the same thing? And while some people may think college students don’t need higher math, well some colleges require you to either pass or place out of college algebra at a minimum to get your diploma, and the kids in our district were flunking the univ’s placement test and being forced to take this over again - even if they were majoring in English!</p>
<p>But I do agree with you that the problem was/is far more complicated than just the use of calculators. An overall watered down curriculum was developed along the way too, and I found that very frustrating as well. I suppose since I come from a family of accountants and engineers, we all tend to think that math in high school is pretty impt. I know not everyone approaches it from the same viewpoint.</p>
<p>Well, but presumably the 70% of kids from elite schools you referred to, who are majoring in something other than science, aren’t going to end up as Wal-mart clerks just because they majored in history. They’ll probably end up in middle management while the more interesting, challenging, and lucrative science jobs go overseas.</p>
<p>I’d rather import Wal-mart clerks from China and grow our own software engineers.</p>
<p>Read your own earlier post again. It claims that those who don’t agree with your position (or for that matter, whatever college profs say) “don’t have children in K-12” is the part that’s way off-base. If you don’t want to be flamed, btw, please don’t be a flame thrower.</p>
<p>I know that colleges of all kinds require college-level math after matriculation. I disagree that this should be a universal requirement, but I do see the value in various kinds of advanced analytical learning & application, & I think students should be open to the college’s offerings in that regard. There should be more flexibility, i.m.o., on the part of colleges about the determination of that requirement.</p>
<p>At the risk of drawing excessive criticism, not everyone is meant to be math whizzes, with or without calculators: we need clerks, and waitpersons, hairdressers, mechanics, CNA’s and many other careers which do not require either higher math or even a college education. “Back in the day” before watered down curriculums and inflated grades there were those who were considered “college material” and those who should “learn a trade.” I suspect there are more than a few college kids today who would be far happier “learning a trade” than struggling through college…kids who are really only going because their parents see the grades and expect college success. I have a nephew who graduated from a very expensive private school with a degree in Fine Arts…he’s been a house painter for more than 10 years now…and he loves everything about his job. What does he say about the college degree: he thinks it’s a funny way to introduce himself. Would he do it again…no. He’d rather have had the money and traveled with it for 4 years. So many of my kids’ peers graduated high school with extremely high grades (one recent class at the local very-non-elite public school had more than 30% of the class on the top honor roll–meaning graduating with a cumulative “A” average…that doesn’t reflect much of a bell curve, now does it. Lake Wobegone is here, and there, and everywhere. Every child’s above average.)</p>
<p>By the time American students get to use calculators, a lot of damage has been done already. Liping Ma’s book, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (1999) shows that many American 3rd and 4th grade teachers do not know enough arithmetics to explain how to do multi-digit subtraction, division or simple fractions, so resort to cookbook explanations and lots of repetition. I’ve seen the deer in the headlights look on some of my S’s teachers when he came up with a different solution than the one they’d read in their textbook.<br>
Kumon math drills and drills and substitutes repetition for explanation. It may work for some kids and definitely not for others.</p>
<p>I’ve seen that deer in the headlights look on a math teacher’s face too…and it’s scary for all kinds of reasons. </p>
<p>Some of the problem we saw was that the calculators were starting to make their way down into the elementary schools, with increasing use in middle school, and on into the high school. </p>
<p>If the college math professors aren’t the right people to be assessing the mathematical competence of high school graduates entering college, then who is?</p>
<p>mercymom:</p>
<p>College profs are able to assess competence; but they may not be able to identify the reason behind incompetence. Take away calculators, and the deer in the headlights look would remain on math teachers’ faces. And not just high school math teachers… That’s the point of Liping Ma’s book, which is about 3rd and 4th grade teachers. My S, in 5th grade, knew more math than his teacher and did not yet possess a calculator.</p>
<p>There are comments that humanities major don’t need math, yet the ancient Greeks considered math as an important part of education. The doorway of Plato’s Academy was supposed to say: Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here.</p>
<p>More literally: "Let no one without geometry . . . " Yes. Both in ancient Greece and in the Western Middle Ages, knowledge of mathematics was simply part of a good liberal education. </p>
<p>I haven’t seen much comment in this thread, by the way, that east Asian families seem largely to overcome the barriers to math achievement on the part of girls. I think if girls are acculturate to think that they can learn math through effort, they put in the effort and get to be pretty good at math.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with the fact that Kumon didn’t help much…Kumon and all of it’s variations in Korea, China and Japan, helped me very much. I started taking Kumon in 1st grade, and I breezed through any calculations…I struggled through probability and word problems (poor english). </p>
<p>When I told my friends in Korea that we had calculators over here, they laughed hysterically – advanced calculators are unnecessary over there. I showed a Ti-83 to a friend who came over once, and he was so shocked at the things it could do. But nevertheless, he could do most of it by hand anyway. </p>
<p>Effects of calculator overuse are very common nowadays – kids, and even non math whizzes, should be able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division very fast in their heads, not write it out…</p>
<p>I know a student in a Trig honors class that needed to use the “convert to fraction” button on the Ti-83 because she didn’t know what 0.666666667 was. That is just unbelievable. Thank god that my school teaches the cons of a Ti-83 and really emphasizes that we should only use it when necessary. Calculators definitely are not needed until Algebra, and even then, it is unnecessary.</p>
<p>even non math whizzes, should be able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division very fast in their heads, not write it out…</p>
<p>Why is that?</p>
<p>It was interesting to read reviews about Chinese methodology. I use the same system automatically because this is the way I was taught at school (with algebra starting in 5th grade 
). I had no idea that 52-15 = 42-5=37 is something American teachers cannot figure out. </p>
<p>I don’t think the problem of American math education is in use of calculators. I personally believe that the reason for many problems is testing. Every time when I open a Texas math textbook from Pre-Algebra to Algebra II I know I’ll find there a lot of problems not related to the subject printed on the cover at all. But I know I’ll find there a lot of problems directly related to TAKS (local test), most of this stuff will be something about understanding of graphs, finding out median, range etc. Year after year, in Pre-Algebra, in Algebra I, in Geometry, in Algebra II all the same graphs, medians, ranges… In any math textbook prior Pre-Algebra I’ll find the same arithmetic problems and graphs depending on how much if it is in this grade math TAKS.</p>
<p>Well, in elementary school it doesn’t look too ridiculous yet, but starting with middle school it does.</p>
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<p>Because 52-15=42-5=37 doesn’t need to be written on paper. It takes 1 or 2 seconds in your head.</p>
<p>I am NOT a math whiz, have never been, would never be.</p>
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<p>But, you see, you can get that equation by thinking about alternative ways to do the subtraction, not by endless drill exercises. Too much homework is really the same exercise with just the numbers changed and no attempt is made to show students the connections between 52-15 and 42-5.</p>
<p>Here’s a local news story about our state’s regular season math league champion: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.startribune.com/1592/story/998431.html[/url]”>http://www.startribune.com/1592/story/998431.html</a> </p>
<p>I see his college admission results have been all right so far. He’s a really nice guy, as the newspaper reports.</p>
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<p>Math was actually taught pretty well in my kids’ elementary school. They got into the notion of “friendly” numbers and would probably have suggested 52-25=57-20=37. My kids are actually much better at mental math than I am because they automatically do this stuff in their heads.</p>