“AMERICAN children have been bad at math for well over a century now. As early as 1895, educational reformers lamented Americans’ ‘meager results’ in the subject. Over the years, critics of math education in this country have cycled through a set of familiar culprits, blaming inadequate teacher training, lackluster student motivation and faulty curricular design. Today’s debates over the Common Core mathematical standards are just the latest iteration of this dispute.” …
This is just sad. Schools argue incessantly about curricula in history, science, literature, etc, because of political agendas. Math is a subject that really has no agenda, but does build upon itself and all it needs to be coordinated as a kids progresses each year.
"AMERICAN children have been bad at math for well over a century now. " - American kids just as good at math as any other kids, American k - 12 does not teach match correctly. Children has nothing to do with it. Recognizing that, some immigrant communities have their own schools to supplement primarily for the lack of math and science education in k - 12. These are also American kids, and they can handle much higher levels than what is tauht to them in k - 12.
…another point is that math is the only subject that develops the analytical thinking. Killing of any analytical thinking is a huge agenda in k - 12, so math is taught incorrectly, using memorization as primary tool, all very wrong, but I understand the reason perfectly! The result is the generation that believes in everything they hear without asking any question, so very convenient!.
Really silly. Where do you come up with this stuff?
I probably agree with you on a great deal of what I think you mean, but when you couch it in ridiculous statements like these it’s easy not to pay attention to what you say.
Ironically, it is the discovery-oriented type of math, such as Chicago Math, that most parents complain bitterly about. They WANT their kids to learn by drill and kill. They WANT them to be “told” the one and only right way to do something.
It is the educators who tend to be pushing for the less “authoritarian” methods.
And BTW, it is highly political. In our local math wars, the Heritage Foundation types were those bitterly opposed to a discovery model.
And more ironically, math education in many nations still incorporates plenty of “drill and kill” and memorization in the lower grade levels. It’s prevalent in the math classes relatives in the ROC(Taiwan) and Mainland China went through along with friends who attended K-12 in Singapore, South Korea, Japan, etc.
It’s also reflected in the supplemental math prep courses offered in many Asian-American communities to Asian-Americans who had little/no exposure to the K-12 experience of their parents or in some cases their older siblings in their family’s country of origin.
Incidentally, an older friend and former supervisor who is an engineering graduate noted the deteriorating standard of public education between the time he attended K-12 in the 1960’s till the mid-'70s and what his much younger sister experienced in the late ''70s and 1980’s in math and other areas*. He felt the “New Math” curricula in the 1980’s should only be taught after students demonstrated a solid understanding of the basics which he felt should incorporate drill & kill with some supplementary explanation by the teacher appropriate to the age/grade level of the student.
He also had issue with the fact his sister had no civics classes that he had or that her exposure to geographic knowledge was far less than he was exposed to back when he was attending school at the same grade levels.
I wonder what the answers are, and I use the plural on purpose. I had a fairly easy time learning basic arithmetic, but when it came to algebra I was lost (geometry was less of a problem). I can usually work out supposedly difficult logic puzzles quickly, and scored fairly well on the analytical portion of the GRE. Even at age 51 the algebra taught to seventh graders gives me headaches. Both our sons have done well in algebra, although the younger had trouble with geometry. The older is taking linear algebra and multivariable calculus as a HS senior. I suspect there are no simple answers here.
Common Core…my Facebook feed has posts all the time about how weird or hard or different or dumb it is, especially when the process to work out a problem is more involved then “just add it the way we did and carry the tens” or whatever. Many parents are seriously resistant to any new teaching method, it seems.
I would characterize it as a social and familial problem rather than political problem. Parents (and some teachers) resist new and unfamiliar approaches. Our public school system had Chicago/Everyday Math in place for my elder. I was suspicious at first, but let the teachers have their way. After a couple of years, I thought the program was brilliant; I wish I had been taught math conceptually. It’s similar to Singapore math. When my younger started kindergarten, it was gone and replaced by the same old, non-critical thinking, lots of memory and routine. I was told too many parents complained that they couldn’'t do the homework.
It’s okay for subjects to be hard. It stretches the mind. Mine certainly grew doing Chicago Math.
I think the problem is that too many people view math as some kind of dichotomy. Kids need to understand what they are doing, but they also need a certain level of fluency that comes only with drill and kill. How many people would dare to suggest that a Spanish teacher say each phrase or conjugation only once and never again because of course the kids just need to understand the concept and they don’t actually need to know the phrases, know them immediately, and be able to use them without thinking about it. Language requires substantial practice and memorization and so does basic math. Kids getting into algebra without fluency in arithmetic are headed for trouble.
Allowing kids to drill and kill without conceptual understandking leads to difficulty with the “word problem”. Kids get the idea that all math is only about mindlessly solving equations according to some formulaic procedure that requires no actual thought or understanding. When confronted with something they need to think about or asked to write down equations for some “word problem” they fail because they have no idea what those equations really mean. They are not related to any actual life situations, just some symbols written on paper for which they have learned a cookbook recipe to manipulate into the desired answer format. And thus we have the backlash of page-long essays forcing students to explain the most obvious things.
It really shouldn’t be that hard to use a balanced approach, where teachers go over the concept involved and then work on mastering the things which must be memorized and practicing the manipulations which must be done quickly and with 100% accuracy for success in higher level math.
This problem will never be solved. Everyone expects one method to be effective with 100% of the kids. It never will be. We have decide which method will be the most effective with the greatest number of children. We would then have to have alternate methods for those who the primary method doesn’t help.
My daughter as a high school senior is taking math I never took in college, Calc 3 and DE. When we go to the store and look at items on sale, she ask me what the final price will be since I can do the calculations in my head.
Most people believe the math education is poor. How often have we gone gotten the wrong change at the counter. If the cash register is down, most young people aren’t sure how they would even calculate a purchase that involved multiple items. We aren’t even discussing higher math.
