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Teaching Math, Singapore Style
new york times ^ | 9/18/06

Posted on 09/18/2006 5:18:06 PM PDT by mathprof

The countries that outperform the United States in math and science education have some things in common. They set national priorities for what public school children should learn and when. They also spend a lot of energy ensuring that every school has a high-quality curriculum that is harnessed to clearly articulated national goals. This country, by contrast, has a wildly uneven system of standards and tests that varies from place to place. We are also notoriously susceptible to educational fads.

One of the most infamous fads took root in the late 1980’s, when many schools moved away from traditional mathematics instruction, which required drills and problem solving. The new system, sometimes derided as “fuzzy math,’’ allowed children to wander through problems in a random way without ever learning basic multiplication or division. As a result, mastery of high-level math and science was unlikely. The new math curriculum was a mile wide and an inch deep, as the saying goes, touching on dozens of topics each year.

Many people trace this unfortunate development to a 1989 report by an influential group, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. School districts read its recommendations as a call to reject rote learning. Last week the council reversed itself, laying out new recommendations that will focus on a few basic skills at each grade level.

Under the new (old) plan, students will once again move through the basics — addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and so on — building the skills that are meant to prepare them for algebra by seventh grade. This new approach is being seen as an attempt to emulate countries like Singapore, which ranks at the top internationally in math.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: education; mathematics
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Like broken clock, the nyt can be right from time to time.
1 posted on 09/18/2006 5:18:06 PM PDT by mathprof
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To: mathprof
We are also notoriously susceptible to educational fads.

From Chapter one of the NEA playbook. Keep changing the rules on how teachers are supposed to teach so that creating a meaninful measure of their performance can be put off indefinitely.

2 posted on 09/18/2006 5:21:16 PM PDT by Vermonter
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To: mathprof

Yeah, but they are dead WRONG when they blame local control. The worst-performing schools have rapster-gangster kids who are wild and uninterested in learning, and standards and all that jazz dont help much. And as far as the good schools go, the more un-tethered they are to average-mediocre schools, the better.


3 posted on 09/18/2006 5:21:57 PM PDT by guitarist
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To: mathprof
This summer I met a teacher who was telling us how she has several grades; third, fourth and fifth in her classroom and how she was attending a seminar later next month to study methods to teach multiple grade levels in the classroom.

So I asked the obvious question, "You must teach in a very small school huh?"

"Oh no!" was the answer, "Our school has over 375 students."

"Really? Is this the open classroom method?" I asked.

Oh no! The open classroom wasn't organized, this is much better."

"Sort of like the one room school house?" I asked.

"Uh um no, it's really much different than either of those, you see, ... bla ... bla ... bla ..."

My eyes glazed over.

Somewhere there must be a website that has cataloged all the crackpot ideas "educators" have come up with over the years. They are in the process of trying every arrangement of students, curriculum and classrooms there is and spouting propaganda of why the one they are trying at the moment is the best thing since sliced bread.
4 posted on 09/18/2006 5:28:13 PM PDT by StACase
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To: mathprof

Of the top 20 industrialized nations, the US is last when it comes to math. (I believe the Russians are first). I've been through years of public school math classes and now wonder we're doing so badly. First, in America, many kids don't do their homework when they go home, the put in the iPod, turn on the TV, and veg out. In other countries they get to work and learn the material. Second, we fall for all these cheap, liberal-started educational fads, like dumbing down textbooks and filling them with pictures, presenting weird problems that have no practical uses (I had a problem like this back in freshman geometry and once in third grade math..long story though), and we spend the first few days playing these stupid "get to know you" games and our homework is to write an essay about yourself. Meanwhile the Russkies are learning calculus and differential equations.


5 posted on 09/18/2006 5:36:26 PM PDT by G8 Diplomat
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To: mathprof
They may understand that there is a problem, but they will never figure out how to fix it b/c that would involve freedom and a free market system with competition....it would also involve personal (family) responsibility and would require the dumping of bureaucracies and unions. Instead the NY Times will jump through linguistic hoops that sound all wonderful with words like access and opportunity, but in reality would accomplish nothing.
6 posted on 09/18/2006 5:37:17 PM PDT by socialismisinsidious ( The socialist income tax system turns US citizens into beggars or quitters!)
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To: G8 Diplomat

Some good that done the Russkies! Their number one export is slutty tarts for American suckers.


7 posted on 09/18/2006 5:38:18 PM PDT by Clemenza (Dave? Dave?)
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To: mathprof
and now wonder we're doing so badly

*meant to write no wonder... I might also add that many of the teachers don't know the material themselves, and that our math scores reached an all-time low under the Clinton administration.
8 posted on 09/18/2006 5:38:52 PM PDT by G8 Diplomat
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To: DaveLoneRanger

Singapore Math ping


9 posted on 09/18/2006 5:40:27 PM PDT by cyborg (No I don't miss the single life at all.)
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To: mathprof

Even five years or so we detrmine the education is broken. Then we turn to those who developed the last five year plan and ask them to develop another.

Then we patiently wait another five years to be told that education is broken.

Sorry kids. I wish the Department of Education had been dismantled five years ago, but then who am I.


10 posted on 09/18/2006 5:40:34 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (Victory will never be achieved while defining Conservatism downward, and forsaking it's heritage.)
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To: mathprof

I'm a math major in university right now, and I can tell you that students schooled in "new math" in their earlier years suffer for it later on. It always shocks me how many engineering and science majors I run across who have trouble with basic multiplication and algebra.

Part of the problem, I think, is that elementary-school teachers simply don't get math. If they don't understand arithmetic themselves, good luck getting them to effectively teach it to their kids. Thus the education-industrial complex is always coming up with newer ways of avoiding the subject.

In sixth grade, I had a teacher so innumerate that he had to invite my mom--who held no teaching certification--to come in and teach math to the class. I don't think things have gotten much better since then, either.


11 posted on 09/18/2006 5:42:19 PM PDT by toru watanabe
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To: DoughtyOne
I wish the Department of Education had been dismantled five years ago

So do I
12 posted on 09/18/2006 5:42:56 PM PDT by G8 Diplomat
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To: G8 Diplomat
Both from experience with my kids and recent articles I've read, teachers purposely have bizzare ways of grading HW and tests. They give more credit for wrong answers with verbose confusing and explanations, than for correct answers explained by few or no words.

People who are good at math can do things quickly and efficiently in their heads and don't need to try to use many words to explain their correct answers to brain-dead teachers. To penalize, rather than reward, such talent is bizarre.
13 posted on 09/18/2006 5:46:15 PM PDT by mathprof
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To: G8 Diplomat

This is one thing for which I don't think it's fair to blame Clinton. Math education has been going down the tubes for decades, and teachers during Clinton's years were products of the shoddy education and pedagogy to come long before them.


14 posted on 09/18/2006 5:46:34 PM PDT by toru watanabe
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To: mathprof

What is amazing is that the "Educators" are always talking about metrics and performance and future tests to measure past events and on and on and on.

The results over the past 40 years should be the bench mark.

The results suck. Let us compare these results with the performance of the prior 40 years and note the differences.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic were taught. Not cucumbers or johnny loves jimmy and sally love jessica. Just basic learning skills.

And, kids of several ages were often grouped together. Why? Because the country was more rural and often the school only had 1 room! Did the kids learn? Yes. How well? Examine a 9th grade test from 1940 and ask a 12th grader today to take and pass it! Not possible!

Our tax dollars at work!


15 posted on 09/18/2006 5:47:05 PM PDT by Prost1 (Fair and Unbiased as always!)
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To: mathprof
I was a history teacher before I moved to China to teach English. Let me make everything clear. These countries that say they do better at math or any other subject then the U.S. are wrong. Its statistical manipulation. China does much better on standardized test then American students, according to China. Let me tell you how it works though.

When they go from grade school to middle school they must take an exam. If they do not do well enough they do not go to middle school. They are sent to a trade school to learn something else. When they go from middle school to high school they take another exam. If they do not do well enough they don't go to high school they go to a trade school. So by the time the get to high school and take the "math exam" you are only getting a sample of the top 20 percent of children. It is even worse if you go on to the university level. Only the top students get to go to college in China. The opposite is true in the States. Not only do we test every student we also make sure they move up a grade even if they should not. In our statistical sample we not only have the smartest kids but we have the kids in special education, the ones with severe mental conditions, etc. If the U.S. only sampled the top 20 percent of students then we would blow these other countries away.

You also have to realize that a Chinese high school students goes to school at 7 in the morning and most of the time does not get home until 10 at night. In the states we are able to have comparative exam scores and only teach half the time they do in China.

Yes I agree that the U.S. education system is a mess and this is caused mainly by teacher unions. However I would not trade our system for any other system in the world. I have seen these Chinese students. They don't get to play, the study all the time and are even given tons of homework during summer break.

So don't always believe these stats.
16 posted on 09/18/2006 5:51:55 PM PDT by KungFuBrad (American In China)
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To: G8 Diplomat

"Second, we fall for all these cheap, liberal-started educational fads, like dumbing down textbooks and filling them with pictures, presenting weird problems that have no practical uses..."

Exactly. Open up a high school math textbook and you'll find disgustingly little actual math in it. Speaking personally, glossy photos of smiling Peruvian peasants have never helped me factor a polynomial or figure out a proof.


17 posted on 09/18/2006 5:51:56 PM PDT by toru watanabe
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To: mathprof
teachers purposely have bizzare ways of grading HW

Almost all of my teachers grade homework for completion rather than accuracy, meaning you get 10 points just for doing it even though all your answers could be wrong. (They don't want to hurt anyone's "self-esteem" and give them the F they deserve, so everyone gets the same grade...socialism at work.) Anyway, that sparks grade inflation and makes grades look better ad my school system loves to brag about their "high" grades.
18 posted on 09/18/2006 5:51:59 PM PDT by G8 Diplomat
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To: G8 Diplomat
Of the top 20 industrialized nations, the US is last when it comes to math. (I believe the Russians are first).

I think that demonstrates that a country only needs so many mathematicians. America is number one in so many ways, we must be doing something right.

19 posted on 09/18/2006 5:52:32 PM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: toru watanabe

Yeah, if there's a problem in geometry ivolving pyramids, for example, they'll put a picture of the pyramids in Egypt and go off on a tangent in the caption about Egyptian culture.


20 posted on 09/18/2006 5:53:06 PM PDT by G8 Diplomat
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