Math in grade school, hs and college.

I used to be good at math until they started putting letters in there. I was afraid to get an answer wrong in math only because it meant I would get a lower grade. If I was allowed to fail but I still tried, maybe I would have taken the time to try and understand it, but I had to start learning the next thing. Glad that's over with.

Usher wrote:

One disturbing aspect of our society is that it's not just "okay", but it can be downright "cool" to admit that you're lousy in math. I don't hear people chuckling about their inability to read. If people were as embarassed by their inability to do math as they were about an inability to read, things would be different.

What he just said.

Calculus wasn't that bad. Euclidean Geometry and Math Analysis are kicking my tail right now. It's the theory and proving stuff that is so hard. BTW, Math Major looking to teach in High School.

Legalizit wrote:

Energy works such that when there are two frequencies the lower of the two will eventually fall into step with the higher. Public schools are purposely doing the opposite, though their intentions are good. It's a shame. The "slow" students are not slow at all. They are in the wrong class. We are each here for a purpose and to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. A homogenized society is boring, but we impose that through our schools. I still find myself desperately wanting to teach, but I can only see that happening at some type of private academy with an alternative approach to education.

That might be true in some schools, but not in most schools where I live. Our state (Iowa) has talented and gifted funding which mandates that there be a TAG offering in all schools. Our school has honors and AP classes that serve the best students very well. I've seen what most private schools do in our area and if anything they are even worse about dumbing-down the curriculum to the middle. They tend to look good because they can shut out the kids of students that make their school look bad.

NYCross wrote:

Usher wrote:

One disturbing aspect of our society is that it's not just "okay", but it can be downright "cool" to admit that you're lousy in math. I don't hear people chuckling about their inability to read. If people were as embarassed by their inability to do math as they were about an inability to read, things would be different.

What he just said.

I'd agree to a point. Whenever I find a cashier who can't figure out how much change to give whenever the cash register gets weird and doesn't tell them, I think they should be embarassed. But that's a real life application, as is most of reading.

The thing about advanced math is that most people see no application for it or much potential application for it to their daily lives. Most folks never expect to be physicists, engineers, math teachers etc. So advanced math seems sort of arcane. Or put another way, most people will see a reason to learn to read, write and properly speak English. Few will see any reason to do the same with Latin.

jman, I hate to tell you, but if you struggle with Euclidian Geometry then you are not going to be a great teacher. If as a math teacher you can't really grasp concepts that people were playing with thousands of years ago then i'd become something else

Mathemagician wrote:

jman, I hate to tell you, but if you struggle with Euclidian Geometry then you are not going to be a great teacher. If as a math teacher you can't really grasp concepts that people were playing with thousands of years ago then i'd become something else

Bullsquat. The only D I've ever received in school in 10th grade Geometry, which was basic Euclidean with all of the proofs and whatnot. Mostly because I wasn't motivated to learn it at the time. I also teach advanced level students with good results, so you don't have to be a straight-A math student to be a good math teacher.

If jman got through Calc (and thought it was a breeze), he has the math background to teach. I would bet that this "Euclidean Geometry" class he's wrestling with is a little more abstract than your HS geometry class. The struggles now will make a better teacher on down the line.

I agree that not everyone needs to learn advanced math like college level topics, but most people who were "lousy" in math started out being lousy in algebra and never got much further conceptually. If you don't have at least a partial grasp on h.s. maths (algebra 2, geometry, trigonometry), your education was deficient.

I personally believe that if you don't have a least a little upper level math (say calculus or linear algebra) that you do have a hole in your education. Sure you can function without it and not notice its absense from day to day, but likewise you can function if you learned to read in school but never enriched it by reading a book.

There's a generally stupid attitude about math, even held by people who are good in it, and that is that not everyone can learn it past algebra, that there are "math people" and "non-math people" (not talking about learning disabilities, just the average student). Granted, this is true on a higher level, but it shouldn't be the attitude about h.s. classes. The student comes in with the idea- well I may just not be a "math person", so if I fail to grasp the material, I shouldn't blame myself and no one else will blame me either, they'll just say 'well he wasn't a math person'. Also, girls are generally made to feel that they are naturally inferior at math then boys and will need it less as adults, so some girls will avoid math classes out of fear of failure. At that level everu student needs to believe that they can learn the material as well as anyone else.

I don't recall a thing about HS Geometry. The teacher was a senile old baseball coach who would tease kids who asked questions.

Organizational Behavior, from one of the nation's first Adult Bachelor's completion programs.

I teach HS math. There's some truth to the idea that talent is important, but by far the most important thing is effort. Way more than in running. In ten years of teaching I've never had a kid whose poor ability alone kept him/her from passing my class. Granted, my basic freshmen probably couldn't ever do non-Euclidean geometry, but no one expects them to either.

A basic problem that I see is that both our language and our measurement systems make math really weird for kids. If we really want to raise our math scores vs the rest of the industrialized world we should switch to the metric system (imagine switching from 12 inches in a foot and 128 ounces in a gallon to 10, 100 or 1000 with everything), but that's not ever going to happen. Never mind that we educate & test a much larger portion of our adolescent population than these other nations.

I always enjoyed math. I was top of my class in high school, and went on to take 3 semesters of calculus in college, even though it wasn't required (hey, I was a history major taking calc!)

My enthusiasm for it was diminished by the overall poor-quality of instructor I had in college. Generally, I was in a lecture with 500 other students, and relied on a teaching assistant just off the boat from China with poor language skills to actually try and make me "understand" the lectures that the professor flew through. Needless to say, it didn't all sink in. After third semester, I thought about taking a couple of other classes (differential equations?) but decided I'd had enough.

It's a fascinating subject, very useful in day-to-day life. Throughout all my schooling, we never used calculators -- at least on exams. Today's youth seem dependent on them.

j squire wrote:

If we really want to raise our math scores vs the rest of the industrialized world we should switch to the metric system (imagine switching from 12 inches in a foot and 128 ounces in a gallon to 10, 100 or 1000 with everything), but that's not ever going to happen. Never mind that we educate & test a much larger portion of our adolescent population than these other nations.

Bam! That would be a gigantic step. Our current math standard in the US is a joke. It is emotional, based on arbitrary things like a kings foot. At it's most efficient, streamline form math is purely masculine. That is exactly what the metric system is....10, 100, 1000; a model of efficiency.

The United States has a bad habit of holding on to things it's comfortable with, i.e. TV's or SUV's or even SUV's with TV's, while all the time they are quite detrimental to the overall progress of the society as a whole. The US will eventually be forced to switch over to the metric system, to think otherwise is an insult both to the metric system itself and to our childrens ability to see and act with a lucid mind.

Wow, I guess I hit a nerve starting this thread.

I was thinking about this driving into work today, dealing with STUPID and DANGEROUS drivers on the road.

"Unthinking?" I asked myself "Uncaring?"

Then I considered this thread and wondered whether any of the people I was dodging for safety's sake were either funtionall troubled or illegals who had never driven vehicles before.

For you math teachers to consider:

Just HOW is math taught today in the US? I mean step by step.

I took a semester at a tech college, bombed PASCAL but amazingly passed pre-calc with a 2.5 one of my greatest academic achievements, and had one instructor tell me (with a straight face):

"people who are good at math have superior neuron connections"

I kid you not.

Just HOW are we supposed to train kids in math and more importantly adults who either have to complete some basic course to finish even a community college degree or a GED? (I was impressed by whomever it was here who spoke about someone they know who makes $150K...cripes... with a math BA.)

I recall in grade school the very same B*TCH I made reference to in the early post would have us do exercises in class aloud. She would give me my exercise {in advance!} as she went around the room student by student. I always choked. It was unbelieveably frustrating and a source of (no pride here) tears and anger. She was scornful and in no way helpful or encouraging.

I know my hatred and fear of math stemmed from that sort of experience. On the other hand history and lit classes were a breeze, almost always B+ or A's, exluding one JHS class where we 'diagrammed sentences' another of the most USELESS thing I experienced in school at any level.

Two quick websites to answer this question:

mathematicallysane.com

The "new" way of teaching math which stresses understanding over computation . . . but that's really not new.

mathematicallycorrect.com

which takes a reactionary view that there is only one right answer to any problem. Total bullshit as far as applications are concerned.

There's a lot of effort at school reform right now and math is only one of many areas, which can stir up some strong feelings from a lot of people. I won't tell you which way I'm leaning but I'll tell you that I went to inner-city majority-minority "unreformed" schools and came out a national merit scholar. Se if you're educated enough to figure it out.

How do we train them? First you have to build a solid foundation. Stillness. Through stillness anything is possible. Most of the children's minds are not at all still/quiet. What that means is the teacher is competing with an inner voice, which is a major distraction. Once the mind is still, one can be an observer, and when looked at from afar math is simplistic in nature. So the question to ask might be, "How the F do we shut off the internal voice?"

Agree on some points and disagree on others. I was initially a math major in college. Changed to chemistry half way through but ended with a math minor. HS and college i never studied math outside class. I did the least number of problems assigned by the prof, often just copying out of the answer books. However, i can count on one hand the number of times i received less than 95% on a test. Thing is, with full effort i would be lucky with a b average as an english or history major. Although SAT's don't mean much, they do show some trends: mine 420 verbal 790 math. Some people really are just good at math, and others aren't. good luck

As I said earlier, the big problem is that our culture does not foster patience in learning (it has to come right away or it is too "hard"), or allow for learning by making mistakes (mistakes are "bad"). With math, making/correcting mistakes and repetition are absolutely essential. It's almost identical to running in many respects. What works for running? Getting at it every day, building a foundation, doing some reps. It's the same for math! Once and a while you lay it on the line and race (or test). Sometimes you do well, sometimes you lay an egg. Same with math!

Math, in many ways, is the athletics of academia. We should teach it accordingly. All this BS they are doing in math today really isn't helping that much. You still need a good foundation and tons of repitions. The old school ways of using flash cards to drill basic arithmetic, combined with lots of real world problems to force us to apply the basics can still work. But mostly we need teachers who behave more like coaches, pushing students to be their best, helping them succees after failure. My humble opinion.

NYCross wrote:

I personally believe that if you don't have a least a little upper level math (say calculus or linear algebra) that you do have a hole in your education. Sure you can function without it and not notice its absense from day to day, but likewise you can function if you learned to read in school but never enriched it by reading a book.

I agree completely. My college (a relatively good one) allowed students to substitute foreign language for math as part of the liberal arts core--total bullshit! College graduates should have at least 12 credits of non-remedial math. That means the basic calculus, algebra (if you didn't get enough in high school), and at least one probability/statistics course. You don't need the calculus-based prob/stats, either.

I majored in math, and an a financial analyst. My career has been great, and I'm very glad I didn't change majors when it got tough.