Reply to Harvard is not alone. UC students Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Harvard is not alone. UC students Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]the poor curriculum in etc lower grades is actually so sad and infuriating b/c for first gen or ESOL kids- math is the one subject that they should be able to shine- it is logic.  The reason so many Asian kids chose stem is b.c their parents were able to give them confidence in math b.c that is the one subject where they could help their kids and teach skills but the "new math" is so convoluted and relies on building understanding of mathematical concepts through words instead of building number sense.

I think the problem is that they have been aiming teaching math to kids who are good with words instead of teaching math to kids who might be bad at words and good with numbers.  Elementary math and algebra is logic - anyone can do it, even illiterate people so the first gen/no English shouldn't matter. we are stationed in a German speaking country right now and my kid is learning German but she does math hw everyday in 1st grade (takes maybe 5 minutes) and it is teaching her to intuitively understand numbers and she has zero problem getting the concepts despite struggling in everything else. I'm hoping that she picks up enough of the language that when we go back home she can do immersion and that the math curriculum in the German school is like here and not the american system.  I just dont understand what is happening with elementary education- we managed to learn so much with much fewer bells and whistles. I was in MOCO publics in the 80s and 90s and maybe we only did precalculus in school but we all passed calculus in college when we got there! and then I thankfully never took another math class again![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics