Posted on 10/18/2006 8:10:52 AM PDT by ShadowDancer
Report: Happy Students Do Worse In Math
POSTED: 9:26 am EDT October 18, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Kids who are turned off by math often say they don't enjoy it, they aren't good at it and they see little point in it. Who knew that could be a formula for success?
The nations with the best scores have the least happy, least confident math students, says a study by the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy.
Countries reporting higher levels of enjoyment and confidence among math students don't do as well in the subject, the study suggests. The results for the United States hover around the middle of the pack, both in terms of enjoyment and in test scores.
In essence, happiness is overrated, says study author Tom Loveless.
"We might want to focus on the math that kids are learning and just be a little less obsessed with the fact that they have to enjoy every minute of it," said Loveless, who directs the Brown center and serves on a presidential advisory panel on math.
"The implication is not 'Let's go make kids unhappy,"' he said. "It's 'Let's give kids better signals as to how they're performing, relative to the rest of the world."'
Other countries do better than the United States because they seem to expect more from students, he said. That could also explain why high performers in other nations express less confidence and enjoyment in math. They consider their peer group to be star achievers.
Even efforts to make math relevant may be irrelevant, says the study, released Wednesday.
Nations that try to teach math in terms of daily life have the lowest test scores.
All this is not easy to compute. Math teachers typically don't avoid enjoyment, confidence and relevance in their math lessons. They strive for those things.
Speaking on behalf of those teachers, one educator took exception to the study's conclusions.
"If I'm a math student and I don't perceive myself as confident, you think I'm going to major in it? The answer is no," said Francis "Skip" Fennell, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and another member of the federal math panel.
"Is enjoyment important? You bet it is. Is confidence important? You bet it is," Fennell said. "If we don't have those variables, we can't compete."
Yet Loveless says pleasing kids has comes at the expense of mastering skills.
His findings come from the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a test of fourth-graders and eighth-graders across the globe. Along with answering math questions, students were asked whether they enjoyed math and whether they usually did well in it.
The eighth-grade results reflected a common pattern: The 10 nations whose students enjoyed math the most all scored below average. The bottom 10 nations on the enjoyment scale all excelled.
Japan, Hong Kong and the Netherlands were among those with high scores and lower enjoyment or confidence among students.
Within a given nation, the high-confidence kids did better than their peers. But that changed when students were compared with a different peer group. Even the least confident students in Singapore outscored the most confident Americans.
Loveless is not suggesting it makes sense to undermine kids' confidence or make math revolting. But he says the U.S. should rethink "the happiness factor," as he puts it.
Math textbooks in the United States, for example, tend to have colorful photos, charts and stories to please kids, he noted. In other nations, the texts strictly have math.
Fennell said engaging, relevant lessons are important. But he agreed with Loveless that every lesson should be about teaching math, not simply providing a fun class activity.
This really pisses me off...and by the way, the square root of 13 is 3.60551
I remember asking my daughter after she flunked her math test, "Are you happy now?"
I now know the answer.
Nice choice of words.
LOL
That's the problem.....school is all about how they FEEL.....NOT what they learn.....sheesh. Get over it. Do your math.....NOW!
If you give a black kid an intelligence test and ask him how he did on it, he's going to tell you he did the best any human being has done in all history.
And what's going on there is you're quizzing him about how much he esteems himself, which is very, very much.
See this!
Self Esteem doesn't work?
Math was by best subject in school, and my least favorite. Damn boring, IMHO. History/Government was much more interesting to me.
Math is a means to an end. It is ultimately just a tool for solving real world problems.
A person can be totally good at the mechanical aspects of solving math problems, but totally suck at applying those skills in real-world problems. Book smarts don't equal street smarts.
Why'dya think?
x + z = me
Set a bunch of 12th graders doing basic addition and subtraction, and praising them when they get some of the answers right, and you'll turn them into happy, confident ignoramuses. Push them into advanced algebra and calculus, and they'll complain loudly, but some of it will stick.
No, but in the case of math, they're a necessary prerequisite.
Exactly. And this kind of thinking is most common among Asian kids. Who as it happens are the best performers in math.
It has nothing to do with how math is taught.
Hmm... most of the depressed and generally disgruntled kids I went to school with did well in Math, maybe that's because we just wanted to get the hell out of Highschool and away from the social drama that took place everyday...
In other words, depriving kids of their mp3 players, PS2, and their cell phones will get them better math scores?
You must be an engineer. :)
Mathematics is the "Machine in the Ghost". As I get older, I approach the subject with a sense of awe, how it pervades everything from music to religion to art. How, even in the chaos of the universe, there is order - even at the sub-atomic level.
Yes, it's a tool, in the same way the Bible is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.