Reply to Interesting Article about Math in the World Today.

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[quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote]That's the worry, but I can't point to examples of it with my kids, the ES teachers were usually good with the concepts they were presenting. I did see faulty materials, and teachers who'd written their own problems that were poorly worded. Modeling math thinking requires concise language, and everyday English can be ambiguous. E.g., the statement "John shares a 20-inch licorice rope with each of five friends." Is this heading for a division problem or a multiplication problem? It's not clear if there's one rope or five. My DC definitely saw statements like this in ES, and even if the confusion was pointed out, the teacher tended to only hear the sentence as originally intended. Hopefully the editing in the new curriculum is better. If you can't get past issues like this, it's pretty hard to present proofs in ES.[/quote]

I agree with this. 2.0 was particularly bad because it was home grown with zero quality control. At least an openly available curriculum would have some level of proof reading and editing.

A deeper problem with education in the US is that it does not follow child development guidelines and embrace more self guided learning. For some reason the US pushes reading earlier to no benefit and holds kids back on basic math concepts. Montessori kindergartens will have kids doing multiplication and division because developmentally they can easily grasp the concepts of grouping and separating sets. This is a great time to introduce those conceptual skills. In elementary school using games to ensure fluency and ensuring kids know their math facts is still important. You can't do more complicated math later on if you need to draw a picture or write a paragraph to do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The same is true of foreign languages. Students are far more successful acquiring a foreign language in preschool and early elementary than middle school which is the worst time to introduce this subject.

Lack of rigor is another problem especially in MCPS. There is huge pressure to create data that every students has met the standard and is moving forward appropriately when many are not as a result of not coming into the class with the needed skills, a bad curriculum or bad instruction. It doesn't really matter as they are being pushed forward without grasping math as MCPS continues to lower the standards. This doesn't help the students that can perform either. Their parents feel proud that their kid is getting an A in a class with an impressive label but if you place that same kid in a real Algebra or Geometry class they will get a rude awakening. [/quote]

Agreed. Another observation that seems more true to me now than years back, is that kids seem less interested/engaged in learning for learning sake. I often see even the advanced kids only wanting to learn something to get that grade, or pass but lacking genuine interest. I suspect technology (particularly touch screens) have played a role in this, not only because they're spending more time on them at home from a very young age, but also because schools are now using them at an alarmingly frequent rate. It's rare to find kids who can truly concentrate without distraction for a longer period of time. If they cannot focus well, they will not be able to solve more difficult problems (the ones requiring thought and some amount of creativity to crack).

The learning process in our schools has also changed over the years. The sheer teacher time spent on testing is terrible and really reduces the meaning of teaching. In particular I think this is really harmful in the elementary school years since that's the time when kids are still very curious and will actually ask many questions, as to how things work, why they work like that, what if something else happens, etc. So I think it's harder to teach math effectively in elementary school, which makes it even more critical that teachers at that level are experienced and be able to logically explain how/why things work the way they do, as well as keep a kid's interest and curiosity alive. If a kid has not been inspired, and has also not been able to understand the basics to the point where they can somewhat explain how/why they work, they will likely get lost in middle school and see mathematics as a meaningless, repetitive set of calculations to be memorized which is really the worst outcome to have.[/quote]

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