But they know who Lady Gaga and Fiddy Cent are.
Is public education often teaching them that John’s middle class hard work = their income?
Good. grief.
But on second thought, students today are probably confused because the “greater than” and “less than” symbols are introduced at the same time as the equal sign in the pathetic math textbooks used in our elementary schools. This wasn’t done 50 years ago when students had no trouble grasping the “equal to” concept. College students today can’t pass the eighth grade math proficiency tests of the 1940s.
Thou art truly shltting me.
[shakes head...wanders off]
I’m having trouble mentally digesting this. What do they mean, don’t understand the equal sign? What alternatives, what misunderstandings about it, can you possibly have??
Public schools are not only an outdated 19th century paradigm, but they seem to do more harm than good. On many levels.
And, reading this article, I just discovered a new one.
They’re still teaching kids the “greater than” and “less than” sign?!! That’s outrageous! It promotes racism, bigotry, xenophobia . . . .
How can one not understand an equal sign?That just makes no sense to me.Are Americans really that stupid now?
“Students’ Understanding of the Equal Sign Not Equal, Professor Says”
No kidding Prof. I predict that students who can’t use the word “and” in a sentence will score poorly on english composition exams.
How we get to this sorry state? Blame the teachers unions who took the American education system from being highly rated in the 1950-60’s to the dysfunctional system we currently have.
We have to understand the cultural, emotional, and contextual differences in the perception of the equal sign, which in the case of many groups means “approximately”, “not exactly”, “maybe” or “whatever.”
Everyone gets an “A”, and feels good about themselves and math.
Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
Tailisha, use the = sign in an equation.
All animals are = except black pigs and they are more equal
A job well done by American public schools. Let’s give them another $26 million.
You know it’s bad when, almost every time you go to a C-store or a fast food restaurant, you get a befuddled look when you hand the cashier 4 dollar bills, a quarter, and two pennies in payment for a $4.17 bill. The cashier seldom understands why you handed them the extra two pennies because he cannot perform elementary school arithmetic. The few exceptions I’ve encountered recently have been South Asian cashiers.
Gee, do you suppose that correct understanding of the equal sign could be a proxy for higher intelligence, and it is that intelligence that actually explains greater academic success?
What set me off was when she gave me an analysis which provided an answer to three significant digits, because "that's what the model said" and it was a precise answer. I thereupon demonstrated to her that, in fact, the model results were WRONG.
"But look on the bright side...you may have given me a wrong answer, but it was a precise wrong answer."
(deep sigh)
Did you happen to see this? Since you have school age children, please tell me this isn’t so.