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Posted on 10/30/2025 8:23:09 AM PDT by DallasBiff
American students are experiencing a math crisis marked by a decline in scores that began over a decade ago and rapidly accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report shows
Almost 4 in 10 eighth-graders scored below basic in math on the Nation’s Report Card, leading to the lowest scores since the test began in the early 2000s. The gap between high- and low-performing students is higher than ever. Students who saw strong gains in math since the early 2000s — girls, low-income students, Black and Latino students, students with disabilities, and English learners — have seen their stunning progress erased.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
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Those who can do math quickly (or at all!) will excel in their chosen occupation. Without math one will struggle in most facets of life.
You should see what the kids are doing now. It’s worse.
“And how many minutes does that give me?” 🙄
👍🏻👍🏻
I’m old enough to have been just starting HS when Texas Instruments came out with the SR-10 calculator (red LED display, did square roots, exponential notation). I recall paying $104 for it, and I was one of only 3-4 students in freshman Chemistry who had a calculator. Others used slide rules. The cost of it at the time stopped others from getting one, and it was really an unfair advantage, allowing me to get through all of the extra credit problems, which no one using manual methods could get through. The price of calculators fell fast enough that by the next semester, the entire class had them, and the advantage disappeared.
Here’s the agenda at play: an immigration loving liberal newspaper is scaring us that we cannot replace those on h-1b. There is always an agenda. The premise is BS.
Without a doubt.
> You folks have placed a lot of blame on calculators. That seems to be unwarranted… <
With all due respect GingisK, I am kind of an expert in this matter. I’ve taught math and science classes with and without calculators. I’ve seen the inadvertent damage calculators have done.
Math without calculators is more than just memorization. It teaches estimation and other skills. You’ve got to stop and think. And then follow the steps. Math with calculators too often becomes a “black box” kind of thing.
Sort of like turning a car on without knowing anything about how the engine works. Something of value is lost that way.
Don’t get me wrong, GingisK. Calculators certainly have their place. They are fast and accurate. And they are a great aid to folks who have memorization problems, as you noted.
One of the things we did in math class is to learn how to estimate answers without actually doing the calculations. That’s actually a very important skill to have.
A student gets an "ah-ha moment" when he suddenly grasps the concept of software variables and then "types". The real trick was triggering that moment. The next trick was to get them to understand variables and their relationship to physical memory.
There really is a psychology to math and software.
The Arduino workbench does not help students. It impedes the learning process.
One addition to my post #68, please.
I want to make it clear that I am not against using calculators in higher math and science courses, or in real life.
But basic math classes should be taught (mainly) without calculators.
The calculator seems to be a mechanism that degrades incentive to learn the principles. The young student confuses principles with the mechanics of cranking out answers. Basic arithmetic of the binary operators does need to be taught before some conceptual fundamentals are appropriate. So, yes, students do need those basics without a calculator. They should not be expected to work with numbers with a large numbers of digits or long columns of numbers without pencil and paper. They can certainly be encouraged to do so, but not with the high expectations given to the pencil and paper workplace.
Teachers need to figure out ways to separate the principles from the mechanics, taking away the tendency of the calculator to make students lazy. Remember, this is coming from a successful electronics/software engineer who was being routinely discarded by the teachers.
I think we'd get along famously! ;-D
Dang those exponents!
That skill is what prevents someone from making wildly wrong calculations and not noticing. That way when you make the calculation and it's in the ball park you know it's most likely right, very handy for quickly answering multiple choice questions.
> Teachers need to figure out ways to separate the principles from the mechanics, taking away the tendency of the calculator to make students lazy. <
Well said.
Quick story: Many years ago I tutored a very bright girl in chemistry. She was an A- student who wanted to be an A+ student.Well, okay.
She could zip through mol problems with no problems (a mol is a unit of measurement in chemistry). I was impressed with her ability.
But then I asked her: Just what is a mol? She had no idea.
She could come up with the right answers. But there was no understanding.
It’s like you said. Principles first. Then mechanics.
The education system was working fine up to the 50s & 60s. Then these boneheaded people with an Ed.D. wanted to implement some of their crazy theories into the education system. I was going to college in the mid 70s when open classrooms were the latest fad. The theory was by having classes in biology, sociology, history, math etc in close proximity, the student would pick up on the other subjects. Well, the students couldn’t hear their own teachers. And sometimes teachers would get into a shouting match with one another. The next year portable partitions went up and there were less classes in the open classroom. A few years later, they put up walls and made them into traditional class rooms.
I was put into the same when 11 years old in 6th grade. I lost my way completely. I was graded F on every assignment, and scores 92 and higher on all tests. I solved problems in my head, with no notes on paper. The Teacher want to know of my process on paper. It was too easy, and I hated it. I never really buckled down, making it through geometry easily, through algebra with difficulty, and went to work in the Trades. I can plot construction off of a blueprint, and I can use a sliderule, compass and survey a building site. I still can’t do algebra without tools. WHO CARES?
I also had a great, and ingenious Father.
Idiocracy is a guide book, not a mythical story.
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