Posted on 10/11/2008 8:23:10 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.
The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math — the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers — they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls — and boys, for that matter — from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
These are likely districts that have the highest number of families with a natural father in the home. They are also the districts in which parents are doing the most "afterschooling" at home.
The kids in these districts are doing well in spite of their government indoctrination camp ( misnamed public "school") certainly not because of it.
When kids do poorly the teachers blame the parents. When the parents are responsible, and do tons of afterschooling, the teachers take the credit.
I think there are more good ones out there than a lot of people realize.
The SAT scores speak loud and clear. Teachers on average are not very bright. Their SAT scores show that, on average, they are incapable of doing advanced math.
So....If there are good teachers in the government indoctrination camps with high GRE and SAT scores then there must be pitifully stupid teachers in the field that are lowering the SAT and GRE average. I pity the poor kids who get the abysmally stupid teacher that is pulling down the average.
. I’ve met many of them over years and benefited from some of them in my life.
Then to counter these bright teachers there are some very stupid ones because on average the SAT and GRE scores of teachers are the lowest on campus.
Ok....So teachers really are stupid. A smart person would declare that this is impossible, refuse to do the job, and look for other work.
My 3 homeschoolers entered college at the age of 13, 12, and 13. All finished Calculus III and all general college courses by the age of 15. ( We used Saxon Math for our homeschool.)
At 14 they were offered jobs as math tutors in the community college math lab. The two younger did this, as well as private tutoring, until they finished their B.S. in math at the age of 18.
They told me the same stories you just wrote about. It was amazing! High school **graduates** in the math lab who were incapable of doing long division.
The Marxists understand that education is **NEVER** religiously, politically, or culturally neutral. It is **IMPOSSIBLE**!!!!
So?....Why hasn't the Supreme Court of the United States declared all government schools in violation of the First Amendment for promoting a government religious worldview?
Also....Why are conservatives and Christians soooooooo incredible stupid for not demanding that government schools be shut down for violating the First Amendment?
( Yes, I am shouting. I am exasperated with my STOOOOOOPID conservative and Christian friends.)
Not every child is college bound. They should know that the opportunity is out there to attend college if they so chose and if they work towards that goal.
In the classroom, I would rather see the higher student bringing up the lower student than the lower student bringing down the higher student.
The activities I use call for mixed level abilities grouping. I won’t do that many times. I generally allow them to pick their own groups. My finding is the students go to their own. I have similar level groupings and the higher skilled come to great conclusions and observations. So too do the lower level kids, but it is at their level. It’s not beyond their comprehension.
Some teachers in my school have already begun teaching to the state standardized test. I can’t bring myself to do that yet. We still have so much “real” learning to accomplish before I have to “teach to the test”.
I don't know, but I would think the first step is not to send your kids to public school.
We, and other parents I know, made considerable sacrifices (while paying taxes to support the PS), to send our kids to (non-elitist) private school, on a blue-collar budget. Many others choose to home school, which is also a sacrifice in today's normative two-income family.
Maybe it's too late now, with the economy in shambles, for non-leftist parents to pull their kids out of these schools, but anyone who assumes their offspring will somehow overcome, on their own, daily indoctrination by social-justice types are only fooling themselves. No matter who's elected POTUS, the movement is on the march through our institutions, with dumb and dumber state and city education heads, as well as philanthropists, hailing innovation for innovation's sake.
If you have to send them to PS, inquire and deprogram nightly. Inspect books (and not just the TOC) for propaganda, and challenge your kids to think independently, constantly.
You have to be among the anointed to understand it. :-)
I took a whole course dedicated to it to maintain my teaching credential. I have seldom been as angry as I was in that course.
Ultimately it comes down to eliminating any drilling, since drilling does not impart “understanding.” This is replaced by learning mathematics principles not by having them taught, but by discovering them by the student’s own ingenuity. The teacher is not a teacher, but a facilitator. Abundant use is made of “manipulatives,” that is little pieces that allow the students to design their own demonstrations of math principles.
The net result is third graders who count on their fingers and never learn multiplication tables, who cannot divide because they can’t multiply, and high school students who reach for their calculator when asked what 300 divided by 10 is. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Instead of complaining, why don’t they encourage their kids to do well in math too? I don’t believe that genetically Indian origin or Chinese origin can do math while European-origin kids can’t
Case in point — Jewish kids are up there with Chinese and Indians in Math ability — or higher :)
You beat me to it! Great point!
There are three types of people in this world....those who can count and those who can't.
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