Take away the calculators. They are programmed from a very young age to reach for the device reflexively. Later in life it’s the phone, cash register, whatever.
Learning creative math never leads you to the right solution.
Living alone has benefits.
Could be the feminization of society in general or possibly a bit of people who shouldn’t be in college are in college. The STEM types were visible in highschool and even elementary and they didn’t struggle with things that attracted them.
I bet they can quickly spout out a list of 50+ “genders” though.
STEM these days is not what it used to be. It is kind of like pretending that playing with Legos will make you an engineer.
One of my kids is an astronautical engineer. We homeschooled him so when he was a senior in high school he took a few community college classes to get acclimated to institutional education.
He bombed the math entrance exam. He’d kind of forgotten the basic math because he’d been doing advanced math.
A friend has a masters in some sort of very obscure mathematics. When she began homeschooling her kids she realized she couldn’t do math with numbers. All her knowledge was formulas and symbols.
Math is one of those subjects that takes a varied amount of time depending on the student. Students need to learn at their own pace.
When slower students are pushed too fast, they give up. And when faster students have to slow down for the entire class, they get bored and stop learning.
Khan Academy lets students learn at their own pace.
As an aside, just because a student is slower doesn't mean that he or she is less mathematically inclined. Some students look at the deeper meaning of each topic covered and that makes them slower. Other students are only faster because they merely memorize what they are taught without understanding the "why" of an operation.
If figure it this way (if my memory from middle school serves me well):
1/3 equals 2/6
1/2 equals 3/6
2/6 plus 3/6
equals 5/6
Class will be more of a group discussion,
Its math and you tell them its done THIS way...not a group discussion.
I had to think on it for a minute then remembered “the lowest common denominator.”
People who are rusty (and that's all or most of us) can start at the very beginning to get back in the swing of things. That's what I did and was amazed at how many little rules about math I either forgot or never learned (and I considered majoring in math in college).
If you start at the very beginning, you'll zoom ahead as it all comes back to you.
Khan Academy is a mixture of very short videos and exercises (usually 4 questions to test your understanding).
Sal Khan makes math fun and easy to understand.
The first thing when adding fractions is to find the common denominator.
Fractional math used to be taught in elementary school.
Most “college” students don’t know what a common denominator is. That’s the problem right there.
I feel a racist slant coming on...
If any of these STEM programs were 80% Asian and 20% Jewish, they would not be part of this discussion.
In the course of my long and unillustrious life, practically every successful math student got there in spite of their school classes, and that includes private schools.
“After a year of remote algebra...”
One year of remote algebra does not explain why kids don’t understand basic arithmetic.
The education bureaucracy is trying to use the Wuhan lockdowns as cover for what they have inflicted on public schools for several decades.
Next, they will need more money to fix the problem.
Here’s an idea - stop giving passing grades to failing students. If they haven’t learned enough to get a high school diploma, don’t give them one. Plain and simple.
And yes, adding fractions is elementary, or at least pre-algebra.
“group discussion” means that the few smart ones will have to carry the idiots across the finish line. Then everyone gets a trophy. Just like group projects at work.
We use math in all kinds of ways. For instance:
A - B = C
A = problem
B = government intervention
C = new problem
wy69
Why did George Mason admit him to a CS major if he struggled with advanced algebra?
Math is racist anyway, so it doesn’t matter.