Posted on 07/29/2012 6:05:38 AM PDT by reaganaut1
A TYPICAL American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t.
My question extends beyond algebra and applies more broadly to the usual mathematics sequence, from geometry through calculus. State regents and legislators — and much of the public — take it as self-evident that every young person should be made to master polynomial functions and parametric equations.
There are many defenses of algebra and the virtue of learning it. Most of them sound reasonable on first hearing; many of them I once accepted. But the more I examine them, the clearer it seems that they are largely or wholly wrong — unsupported by research or evidence, or based on wishful logic. (I’m not talking about quantitative skills, critical for informed citizenship and personal finance, but a very different ballgame.)
This debate matters. Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent. In the interest of maintaining rigor, we’re actually depleting our pool of brainpower. I say this as a writer and social scientist whose work relies heavily on the use of numbers. My aim is not to spare students from a difficult subject, but to call attention to the real problems we are causing by misdirecting precious resources.
The toll mathematics takes begins early. To our nation’s shame, one in four ninth graders fail to finish high school. In South Carolina, 34 percent fell away in 2008-9, according to national data released last year; for Nevada, it was 45 percent. Most of the educators I’ve talked with cite algebra as the major academic reason.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
All the fast-food registers do the math for them.
Until the power is lost for two days because of a storm.
this has happened to me, several times,and the high school grad at the cash register had no idea how much change to give me. I usually have to re-educate them on how to count to 100.
Paul became interested in mathematics when he was about 14 (outside of the school math class, he points out) and read voraciously, becoming especially interested in analytic number theory. He dropped out of college after one semester to devote himself to math, supporting himself by working as a computer programmer and as an elementary school teacher. Eventually he started working with Ernst Strauss at UCLA, and the two published a few papers together. Strauss introduced him to Paul Erdos, and they somehow arranged it so that he became a graduate student there. He ended up getting a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1990, and went on to be a fellow at MSRI and an assistant professor at Brown. He also taught at UC Santa Cruz. His main research interests were, and are, automorphic forms and Diophantine geometry.
After several years teaching university mathematics, Paul eventually tired of it and decided he wanted to get back to teaching children. He secured a position at Saint Ann's School, where he says "I have happily been subversively teaching mathematics (the real thing) since 2000."
He teaches all grade levels at Saint Ann's (K-12), and says he is especially interested in bringing a mathematician's point of view to very young children. "I want them to understand that there is a playground in their minds and that that is where mathematics happens. So far I have met with tremendous enthusiasm among the parents and kids, less so among the mid-level administrators," he wrote in an email to me. Now where have I heard that kind of thing before? But enough of my words. Read Paul's dynamite essay. It's a 25-page PDF file.
I LOVED diagramming sentences!
well I live in a state with high taxes for property
“My HS auto mech was pretty good and you could start only in 10th grade. I maxed all three years. I use some of it nowadays still.”
Me too, I would have done it right through college, if they offered the classes. As it was, I took a certification test for being a mechanic when in college, and passed that. Just for fun.
Some people solve for x. I solve for y.
I once dated a high school math teacher (She had a Math Ed degree!) who never had Calculus. I remember thinking to myself how can she have a “Math degree” and not have had Calculus! That was before I found out that there are shall we say “degrees of of degrees”!
when I was in college decades ago tutoring new students in remedial algebra, I never found a kid who couldn’t eventually grasp the concepts.
I think half the problem is that teachers act like algebra is so abstract it’s like magic. In truth, you will be much better off in most of your endeavors if you learn how to view the world in different ways, one of which is the way that algebra works.
I think in my school district you can get a general high school degree without advanced algebra, you need the math for the advanced degree.
Someone else mentioned figuring out word problems. I am in a math-related field, and have many credits of higher math classes under my belt. I was never that good at the word problems. My brain tends to be too literal. But figuring out how to work through them was a skill I can apply to many different things I do, so I think it was useful.
For any of you freepers who know what I mean when I say “beamspace”, let me say that I could never fully grasp THAT concept either, which didn’t stop me from getting halfway through a masters of signal processing (all I wanted — I just needed to speak the language, I never wanted to do the work).
I didn’t get it either but I could figure that out and there wouldn’t be any Xes or parentheses.
“well I live in a state with high taxes for property”
I hear you, I’m in Texas - we have maybe the highest rates in the country (although people in some other states pay more due to their property values).
But we don’t have an income tax, so I just lump all the taxes together and consider it the cost of living in the state.
I'm surprised no one has made this reference: Little Rascals/Our Gang
its really really unfortunate that creating kids isn’t as hard as raising them !
Awesome. What a great article. I bet kids learn under this man because he KNOWS how to teach!!! Those kids... all grades should get down on their knees and be thankful because they have someone in such an important subject who CARES...genuinely cares about them without all the “fluff” that it out there today. Besides... St. Ann’s was the name of the 8 year elementary school we attended as well. :) Thank you!!!!
Awesome. What a great article. I bet kids learn under this man because he KNOWS how to teach!!! Those kids... all grades should get down on their knees and be thankful because they have someone in such an important subject who CARES...genuinely cares about them without all the “fluff” that it out there today. Besides... St. Ann’s was the name of the 8 year elementary school we attended as well. :) Thank you!!!!
I am of the opinion that there needs to be two math vectors. An engineering oriented track with the Algebra requirement and a business oriented track that focuses on structuring word problems, ratios, spreadsheets, accounting principles, maintaining a check register, calculating loans and interest, i.e general math topics.
Those that want to pursue an engineering degree can do so and those that want more business oriented path can also follow that program as well.
This is just the academic version of “everybody gets a trophy”.
The curricula for engineering and real science disciplines require demonstration of college-level literacy. Is it really too much to expect that all bachelor degrees require at least high-school-level proficiency in mathematics?
If present trends continue, it won’t be long until it’s possible to get a PhD without understanding elementary mathematics like algebra. This is probably already true in some of the more dubious fields of study.
I needed both algebra and calculus to complete my MBA. It’s impossible to design an efficient assembly line, for example, without calculus. Statistics and probability require both algebra and calc as well.
“Why do most of these students need math at all? All the fast-food registers do the math for them.”
I usually find that if my bill is $17.61 and I give the cashier $20.61, I usually get back my 61 cents in change and then get back an additional $2.39.
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