Thread: American math students ...

It's now boiled down to "use a calculator or do it a lazy way."

I caught a news blurb on television and meant to share it with you all here. The way that mathematics is being taught in American elementary schools has drastically changed. We were all probably taught the foundations of arithmetic in similar ways, but I saw a method of solving a double-digit multiplication problem I didnt recognize, and wanted to know more. I found this youtube video.

In it, you'll get to see the methods in the text books that school districts are using to teach basic arithmetic. The lady makes a pretty good argument why this is a bad idea.

But mostly, I'm stunned at what the textbooks lead teachers to spend class time on, and how at the end of the video, parents are encouraged to import textbooks used in another country and work through that if their child is struggling. Im concerned. There should be no need to outsource basic math education.

What do you think this all means? Assuaging my worries is also appreciated.

I tutor algebra I students at my high school four days a week and the way they are teaching students now is complete rubbish. A lot of important details are hidden through abstractions (they call them "methods") that don't really teach the students much of anything. The students end up having little to no understanding of how and why things works the way they do because they simply aren't being taught everything they should know.

Of course the new math programs are imposed by the school and the No Child Left Behind act, and all of the math teachers agree that it doesn't really help the students at all.

Originally Posted by laserlight

Yes, go buy Singapore textbooks! We learn sigma notation for summation, abachler didn't!

Yes, this is the unfortunate truth, and I took great interst in math above and beyond what was taught in school. We simply don't have access to the resources. Part of the problem is the mistaken notion that all children are of equal capacity. While I don't think we shoudl abandon those that are not as academicalyl gifted, equally horrible is holding back those that are. We need a comprehensive multi-track educational system with a primary focus on core subjects like math science, art, and music with less focus on things like sports. The problem is that when you start talking about educational reform, people get emotional over it. Parents equate grades with success, not knowledge gained or skilsl acquired. So the kids don;t learn to think critically and grow up and fail to think critically about how ot improve the education of their kids.

Originally Posted by abachler

Yes, this is the unfortunate truth, and I took great interst in math above and beyond what was taught in school. We simply don't have access to the resources. Part of the problem is the mistaken notion that all children are of equal capacity. While I don't think we shoudl abandon those that are not as academicalyl gifted, equally horrible is holding back those that are. We need a comprehensive multi-track educational system with a primary focus on core subjects like math science, art, and music with less focus on things like sports.

Teachers and schools don't have the bandwidth to teach everyone at their own pace. The simple fact is that some people are good in some subjects and not in others. I couldn't grok chemistry if my life depended on it, but I don't think it would fair for the teacher to let the better students suffer by changing teaching methods for me.

So I'll never be a pharmacist or chemical engineer, which is good for society.

Originally Posted by medievalelks

Teachers and schools don't have the bandwidth to teach everyone at their own pace. The simple fact is that some people are good in some subjects and not in others. I couldn't grok chemistry if my life depended on it, but I don't think it would fair for the teacher to let the better students suffer by changing teaching methods for me.

So I'll never be a pharmacist or chemical engineer, which is good for society.

I agree that schools dont have the execute capacity to tailor a class to each student, I'm not talkign abotu individual tutoring, but smaller class sizes, 7-15 students, MAXIMUM. Combine this with a mtultitrack class structure (easy medium hard for lack of better terms) where kids that just want a general knowledge of a subject can take Easy math, and kids that excell at math can take hard math. This way the individual class doesnt have to tailor itself to the students, btu the individual students curriculum can eb tailored to meet theri needs.

Thanks for contributing so much Laserlight. I'm very interested in Sigapore's program now.

It's not that I'm afraid to revamp the mathematics curricula, or that I have anything against Singaporean textbooks. I don't want to pretend that you didn't get the argument she put forth either. There must be better ways of teaching math than rote memorization of multiplication tables and so forth.

The point that I got seems to be that under reform math:

- There is little structure and guidance in order to learn whole concepts or formulae, in the worst cases avoiding these all together.
- Conventional algorithms are written off by proponents of reform math and are consequently avoided.
- Some of the alternative algorithms fall back on multiplication or addition skills that I have little confidence are being developed because of the above, plus calculator dependency. To solve a reform math problem you have to breakdown until you have a long string of subproblems you can solve.

Basically it lives and dies on the powers of factorization, but who knows when they're made aware of this, almost entirely because of how the books are written. I get the distinct feeling that reform math is the same type of shortcut stuff your math teacher would give you in grade school as nuggets of wisdom. I really don't see a reason to model a whole curricula after this, though.

Originally Posted by laserlight

After watching the video again and thinking about my own Singapore brand of mathematics education, I posit that McDermott (McDermitt?) only has one main argument: the students in question lack practice because their syllabus is too concerned with appreciation of mathematics with respect to other fields.

I think her main argument is their argument that methods really aren't necessary since we have calculators. The anecdote of the college students not knowing how to multiply 4 and 6 is entirely believable. I can't tell you the number of times I stand in a grocery line facing a flummoxed young adult cashier who was asked for $20 cash back.

It's even worse when it comes to English and spelling. If you're in the US, do all you can to send your kids to private schools.

It also depends on the school. There are inner city and low funded schools who probably fill up math course time teaching for the reading portion of a standardized test.