Comments on: Math teaching without the math

By: GingerB

GingerB — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:07:22 +0000

x = 8/7 ?

By: John Drake

John Drake — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:30:36 +0000

Schools of Education, following postmodern dictum, do not believe in empirical evidence, Two Tone.

Now stop oppressing me with your evil Enlightenment ideals.

By: Brian Rude

Brian Rude — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:09:47 +0000

Stotsky’s article is good. A few years ago I wrote up some of my thoughts on the 2000 Standards published by the NCTM. In particular the standards do not address the importance of practice in learning any subject. Indeed there is much in the standards that can easily be interpreted as disparaging practice. Here are links. http://www.brianrude.com/disagr.htm, and http://www.brianrude.com/disdis.htm

By: Deirdre Mundy

Deirdre Mundy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:14:45 +0000

Anon– another thing to remember–arithmatic skills fade into sloppiness if people don’t practice them.

Some of the worst arithmaticians I know are MATHEMETICIANS. Why? Because they never have to deal with any numbers bigger than n, n+1, n-1, 2n and n/2….. Math and Computation are two different skill sets.

That (IMO) is one of the problems with Chicago Math — Paul Sally wanted a program to teach kids to think like Mathematicians… but what MOST people want out of Elem. School math is to learn basic computational skills…..

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:49:20 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

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By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:22:18 +0000

Anon,

If you gave a 10 question test to 55 takers, you have a total of 550 questions. If 234 questions were answered correctly, the average would have been 42.5%. If 235 questions were answered correctly, the average would have been 42.7%.

How could the average be 42.6 percent?

By: Two Tone

Two Tone — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:49:21 +0000

A common thread between this dumbing down of mathematics education and the earlier movement from phonics to “whole language” reading programs is that Schools of Education advocated these programs, which are “trendy, though empirically unsupported.”

I bugs the hell out of me the “educators” are willing to adopt these unproven programs. The cost is a generation or two of students who receive inferior education and a society with diminished intellectual capacity and diminished economic productivity.

The benefits? First, I suppose the educators who originate these programs get their 15 minutes of fame at the time the programs are adopted. By the time the mistake is recognized and corrected, the originators have long since moved on to another area of research or have retired completely, and thus avoid any negative spotlight that may be shone upon the fiasco. Second, we prevent a generation of dull and/or lazy students from having their precious self-esteem bruised because they never have to confront their failure to learn a higher level of mathematics.

By: Ben F

Ben F — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:14:56 +0000

Anon, it’s true that the current crop of educators seems to be weak at what they’re supposed to teach (my history colleagues know little about history). And I fear that the NEXT generation of teachers will know even less. We’re in a negative spiral now. However, civilizations can lift themselves up by the bootstraps. My colleagues are not dumb, just poorly educated. If they WILL to be smarter, they can start to reverse the tide of dumbing-down by learning more and raising the bar for their students. The problem I see is that teachers, and many Americans, lack the WILL to be intellectual. School, for so many Americans, is about social work and socializing; making kids feel good, talking about their problems, etc.

By: anon

anon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:30:57 +0000

I just administered a 10 problem arithmetic quiz to 55 Ed school majors that consisted of borrowing, long multiplication and long division, the four computational processes with fractions, multiplication and division of decimals, and percent of a whole number. The students could not use a calculator and had unlimited time to complete the quiz. All of the students had taken Algebra I and II and Geometry in high school and at least one college level math course. Many of the students had taken 3-4 math courses in college. Only two of the students had failed the college’s math placement test and had been required to take a so-called remedial math course.

The average score of the 55 students was 42.6% Four students scored 0% and no student scored 100%. Then, I administered the quiz to our two department assistants, both of who are 50 years old and have been out of high school for some time. One scored 100% and the other scored 90%.

The evidence has been clear for some time that U.S. students are generally abysmal failures in not only mathematics but also basic arithmetic computation. They are being taught by teachers who themselves are generally taken from the bottom of the math barrel. Enough said.

By: barry garelick

barry garelick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:01:13 +0000

I’d love to see schools focus on things that we hope would make student’s lives more fulfilled, regardless of their future calling.

School is about opening doors, not slamming them shut. If schools choose not to prepare students for math beyond algebra 1, then the choice of going into the STEM fields is out of the question. Making students’ lives more fulfilling should not come at the expense of choices that the edu-collective decides to make.