[max americana]

Kids nowadays could barely speak and write coherent English in college, so what’s another subject?

[gorush]

Public School is child abuse. Sure, you can find a great teacher here and there, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Public schools epitomize the inevitable result of government control, horrible results at great expense.

[ETL]

Via an e-mail some years ago, with some minor modification by myself...

Teaching Math In 1950:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1960:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1970:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

Teaching Math In 1980:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20 Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math In 2010:
A logger cuts down some beautiful forest trees because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit. How do you feel about this way of making a living?
________________________________

[vladimir998]

I’ve always heard that the teaching of math changed in the 1960s (i.e. with the introduction of New Math). Can any Freeper tell me exactly what changed? How was math taught differently in the 1940s or 50s compared to the 1960s???

[hanamizu]

I taught elementary and jr hi for over 30 years. I taught math for about half that time. The problem, as I see it with math teaching as it is done today, is that math teachers, who usually are good at math and enjoy it, asked each other how they should have been taught. They thought (and probably correctly for themselves) that students should be allowed to discover the beauty and patterns of math on their own. So, in the sixties we had “modern math”. I was told to teach 4th graders base-six mathematics so that the little ones would discover how base 10 works on their own. The forced memorization of the times table as I had learned them was forbidden. The children of the seventies as a result could do much less with math than the generations that preceded them. It is even worse today.

The problem with this approach is the simple fact that the large majority of humans don’t particularly like math and are unlikely to ever enjoy the beauty of it. They will have to know how to use it their lives, of course, but for most of us, math is just a tool to get things done, not a “language” for understanding the universe. I believe science teachers tend to make the same error. Today basic science facts are not taught, but are hopefully discovered by the student. Most don’t discover anything and know very few science facts.

[Jonty30]

As it has been taught, until the era of New Math, it was taught very well.

[yarddog]

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. Math was my best subject.

A combination of age and using calculators for 40 years has ruined my ability.

BTW I was in Wal-Mart the other day and they had a calculator for a dollar! It looked sort of plastic but it had a solar charger built in.

You can’t buy the battery for that.

[Redleg Duke]

When my son was in 3rd grade, he showed me what he was being taught in school for math, and I made him math tables to memorize and learn.

He apparently took them to school to show his friends. His performance improved dramatically, until I received a call at home from his teacher telling me that math tables were not approved as a teaching method. I asked her if she had a child. She said she did, a year ahead of my son. I asked her if she helped her at home. She said she did. I asked her how, and she sheepishly told me, “Math tables”.

I asked her the purpose of the call. She said her principal ordered her to call me. I called the principal and took her to task. We reached an understanding.

The first department President Trump needs to eliminate is the Education Department. The NEA and AFT need to be outlawed.

[IronJack]

Math should be taught by rote. Kids in the first or second grade should have to memorize addition tables up to 100. By third or fourth grade, it should be multiplication tables. By memory. No more of this “memorization is bad” nonsense. Start with the basics and build on them. And quit trying to be so clever about how you teach the basics.

[BenLurkin]

typo second sentence paragraph 8

[tbw2]

Abandon Common Core and use Saxon math.

[Mark]

Humor and old-— 2011 Miss USA -Should math be taught in our schools-— very funny if not seen yet. At Yahoo search page**
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=should+we+teach+math+miss+usa&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I’m not a teacher but as a youngster I tutored young kids in reading.

My cousin is a math teacher in Va. His district has seen a massive influx of immigrant kids most of whom speak English but are remarkably unmotivated students. The stories he tells are just gruesome. Kids in 9th grade who do not know how to use a ruler to measure the size of the paper their test is printed on. (just one example among many) And many many other incidents of really not being able to teach the kids much of anything.

The problem? The kids simply do not care about it. It’s not that they think they may need it or want it or not; it’s that they care only about getting a passing grade on the exam and many simply do not care about that. They are conditioned by the proliferation of “participation trophies” and the like to believe there is no reward for excellence or even pretty-good performance, and that just by showing up, they’ll get “something”. [using old timers voice] When I was a lad, there were people in math who did not care about math, the same as I viewed history. There were those who were not adept at it. But dammit, Jim, there was a minimum prevailing attitude that ‘this stuff should be learned’. I don’t think there is any societal impetus to learn math (or much else) or to do anything but show up and get the participation trophy.

I hated history in school but absolutely obliterated math. I was certainly no better than an average student in history and was probably tough to teach as I was (and am) a wiseass. I never saw much value in history other than the “bound to repeat it” mantra. Maybe given my sensibilities at the time I was hardly teachable.

I view this very simply. People, even young people, generally like to receive some kind of reward for their efforts and conversely, if they get no reward, lose interest.

This Common Core stuff seems to about inculcating kids with some sort of arcane procedure, adherence to which being the teaching goal rather than mastery or competence in the subject matter. I find CC examples really arcane. Math excites when it is shown to be a powerful tool. Kids get interested in math if and when they see they acquire some sort of power for working it. CC utterly foils that.

[trisham]

The public school system should be dismantled.

[RginTN]

I’ve found khan academy a great resource in understanding math. As a youth I found calculus hard to get but now I’m determined to understand it. Learning algebra again now. Makes thinking clearly easier. Maybe thats why liberal educators don’t want young people to learn math...logical thinking will make them question liberal ideas

[gop4lyf]

I teach 4th grade math to 61 kids in a rural district. The kids are split between 3 classes. I used to teach in an urban district for 10 years. From the first day of school, I have my students learning their multiplication facts. When they complain that it is too hard, I tell them that I had to learn them in the third grade. I don’t teach any of the “gimmicks” that I have seen, such as the lattice method for double digit multiplication, I always stick to the traditional algorithms. That way, when they move on to middle and high school, they can understand how the formulas and patterns ought to work together, and not rely on trying to remember some trick that they were taught several years before. What’s amazing is that my students’ grandparents can help them with their homework, but their parents have a difficult time because of all of the quacky methods that were taught to them when they were in school. Very few parents can help their kids with fractions, measurement conversations, or elapsed time.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

The only goal in math education should be to teach kids to get the right answer, the quickest and most efficient way possible. The world doesn’t give a flying flip if they enjoy it or it makes them feel good or if they come up with creative ways to get the wrong answer. All that matters is getting it right.

If I had kids in elementary school today (assuming I can’t afford private school or homeschooling) I would buy a Saxon math program and drill them at home. Teach them basic math facts and make them memorize them.

I worked for a while on the side for one of the tutoring companies, helping kids to improve ACT scores. I saw some intelligent high school kids that couldn’t multiply 6 x 7 or estimate 10% of something without a calculator. If a kid doesn’t know that 6 x 7 = 42 without thinking about it or using a calculator by the time they are in middle school they will never be proficient in math.

[CodeToad]

Math is taught in the most ridiculous ways. The entire curriculum of math needs to be rethought. It shouldn’t take 4 years to teach the entire series of math.