Posted on 02/11/2010 5:22:00 AM PST by reaganaut1
I was homeschooled and my daughter will be too. Nobody is going to teach her that math is too hard for girls, or just in general. We’ll work on algebraic concepts while she’s still mastering multiplication and division, just as an introduction and to show her how it fits in the real world.
Supposed you were selling life insurance and a client asked you to compare a whole life policy to "buy term and invest the difference". One would make a spreadsheet to compare the two scenarios, and that spreadsheet would effectively be using algebra. Lots of businesspeople need to use algebra, although they may not be conscious that they are doing so.
“Why are math skills viewed as optional but reading and writing are not?”
Aha! A false premise. I never said that math skills were optional. In fact I specified the ones I thought were required for most people for most tasks.
And the reason that reading and writing are not optional is that we couldn’t have this conversation if we couldn’t use them to communicate. I don’t think you could reduce this conversation to a mathematical formula.
Also, percentages are algebra. "What percent of 50 is 16" is your classic basic algebra statement.
A lot of money is wasted on higher education today. Based on my own experience as a college grad, most young people do not devote the time and energy commensurate with the high cost of a college education. Their interests lie elsewhere at that stage of their lives. If they did a couple of years in the work force, while they were sorting out their social lives, and learned the ways of the world, a practical curiosity might evolve. They would discover something that they would really like to know more about. That’s the time to enter college. Most of these curiosities will probably not involve a knowledge of algebra. I remember asking a math professor uncle who was explaining some formula, “Why would I ever have to know that?”. He told me I would need it to make a tin can. Making tin cans was not part of my life plan. No more algebra for me. After graduating and working for a while, I developed more of a curiosity politically and vaguely remembered a college history professor teaching about the Middle East. I wished that I had paid more attention. I’m sure many of us have had similar experiences and would be much more likely to enjoy a class today, for the sake of knowledge on a subject of interest, than when we were 18.
The school you went to taught fractions in the second grade? My school didn't start teaching fractions until the sixth. What school did you go to?
Point 1. Our highly trained education professionals have adopted curricula that make it virtually impossible for children who are not truly gifted to learn advanced math. Most children today have no grasp of basic arithmetic math facts because most of our highly trained education professionals don’t know them and have been taught in schools of education that math facts are not important (we have calculators after all). Government schools, their curricula, and the mentally challenged employees that infest them are by far the biggest barrier to math literacy in this country. This is just one of the 413 reasons no child should be left behind in government schools.
Point 2: What courses are called by our highly trained education professionals and what the courses actually are are very different things. Course “labelling” is a marketing exercise. Those who have looked into the matter have found that what is called “algebra” for the sake of maintaining parents’ self-esteem and support for the government school money pit is actually more like 6th grade arithmetic. No school district would dare to use Saxon math in an alleged “algebra for all” jihad because Saxon’s 2 algebra books offer, well, real algebra. The left hand side of the bell curve clearly can’t manage most of the material, and certainly not in 8th and 9th grades. A 14 year-old with an IQ of 100 may have many gifts and be a valuable, wonderful human being, but it is not reasonable to think that he or she will be able to work problems involving polar coordinates and vectors at that age, assuming that there are enough comptent teachers to provide the necessary instruction (the small cadre of competent high school math teachers are now rolling on the floor laughing at the thought of their esteemed colleagues attempting to teach that material). Moreover, our highly trained education professionals are to a large extent adult denizens of the left hand side of the bell curve, don’t like math, never learned math, can’t do math, and therefore can’t teach math.
At some point parents will have to confront the reality of what the government schools really are. This is just one of the problems.
I'm going to ride this pony a little more. Why should we all become more proficient in math? How many people have lost their homes, gone bankrupt, or gotten into credit card debt simply because they can't do math? When you can't calcuate if you can afford a home, you are in trouble. When you are considering an 'exotic' mortgage and you don't have any idea what the highest the note can become or if you will be able to pay it, you are in trouble. When you can't figure out why your credit card balance keeps going up when you are paying more than the minimum, you are in trouble. Someone is not teaching our kids decent, basic math.
I always hated the rule “Don’t end your sentences with a preposition.”
“Well,” I thought, “What’s a preposition for?”
At what ages did you fail them? I had a tough time with algebra as a high school freshman. I attributed that to starting high school when I was thirteen. Thirty years later I went back to college and picked up an algebra prep guide because I was taking an intermediate algebra course. I was amazed at how easy basic algebra was. The same problems that gave me fits as a thirteen year old seemed easy as a fortyone year old. Age and maturity seem to make a big difference.
Our kids started doing word math problems in the second grade. I told them that they were basically already doing algebra. You are setting up equations to solve unknowns. That’s algebra in a nutshell.
A book I recommend for your kids is “Head First Algebra.” The book uses humor (albeit a bit on the corny side at times), but my kids enjoy reading it.
It would be great for everyone to learn Algebra. But not everyone will learn it at the same pace or at the same time. And, frankly, not everyone will learn it, no matter how much teaching and exposure they receive.
“Algebra for All” is, I think, mainly a back door way of eliminating ability grouping in secondary schools. The evidence from this study suggests that more students will probably learn algebra, if they are grouped by ability and allowed to proceed at their own pace.
-2
You didn’t convert the seconds to minutes.
The education majors in my 400-level lit courses, as well as my grad program, couldn't even "do" English.
I seem to recall that the education majors at UGA, my alma mater, had the lowest average SAT scores of any major.
And that's the secret! I was terrible in math in elementary years. Due to a dumb teacher that told us not to bring rulers protractors etc. the 8Th grade final had to be curved due to her blunder. Some of us, though were asked to take a general math course before Algebra. The class was taught by the high school's machine shop teacher. Best thing that could happen to us. He taught using practical applications. I went on to Algebra scoring high in the NYS regents (1963).
Freshman, sophmore, and junior years. But like I say, I was a MAJOR behavior problem. I might be able to do it now, but I have no need. Music is my profession now, and it contains a deep amount of math in its own right. Major 3rds, minor thirds. Intervals. Sharp 11s. 2-5-1 chord changes, not to mention 8th notes, 16th notes, 9/8 time signatures, etc.
“2nd to 4th” is what I said. Memorize the multiplication facts in the second grade, fractions in the 4th. In homeschool, I have a second grader doing fractions, but he’s bats. He also studies Greek.
As a kid, I was glued to learning-oriented TV, books, the dictionary, my chemistry set, and encyclopedias...but I hated school (it was tedious and boring).
It wasn't the teachers' faults so much as it was the fault of the system.
The absence of competition in government-managed systems eliminates the creative destruction inherent in free enterprise systems (which is required for optimum performance).
In business, competition provides an overwhelming influence...constant competitive pressure on each to perform at its utmost. Excel, or go broke!
As an aside, businesses in the free market also suffer some of the problems of government-managed systems when they become large enough to become bureaucratic.
Unfortunately, as businesses grow larger, the application of this competitive pressure is breaks down (the pressure becomes diffused). That is why the auto industry had such problems. The size of companies permitted their the managements to become insular and self protective.
I think this is one of the reasons small companies provide most of the employment in a free market economy.
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.