"Why Americans Stink at Math" . . (way OT)

In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers.

There is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. … [In] China, Japan, and Korea, they have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on.

[This allows] Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to 40. American children at that age can count only to 15, and most don’t reach 40 until they’re five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills.

The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: it’s five-tens-nine.

Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: it’s five-tens-nine.
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Pedagogy is an entire field of study itself. In other words, there is nothing "easy" or straighforward about teaching. I've taught sciences and math (statistics/probability mostly) at the high school and college levels. There are many different learning styles, and accomodating all of those styles in a teaching lesson is a big challenge. Some kids are visual/spatial learners, some are verbal, some conceptual, others relative/analagous.

There are many different learning styles, and accomodating all of those styles in a teaching lesson is a big challenge. Some kids are visual/spatial learners, some are verbal, some conceptual, others relative/analagous

Obviously, if we valued teachers we'd put our money where our collective mouths are and pay them a competitive wage, yet there are all sorts of forces aligned against letting "the market" set teacher compensation. This is most obvious in the pseudo-outrage over increasing college and university costs, and the increases in faculty salaries, which are market driven. Why not let it happen? Somehow collective activity is "evil" but limiting the compensation is ok (but we would never do that for corporate CEO's).

If you want the best to be teachers, you're going to have to compete with the private sector to attract those people. If you think giving education to the private sector will improve things without seeing increased costs, and probably unsatisfactory outcomes, you're delusional.

Teachers who really understand the subject and really understand their students learning and social skills can readily prepare the vast majority of kids tfor real life math applications. Two trains travleing towards each other - no one cares.

It's not just math it's the entire teaching paradigm that needs to change. The greatest impediment are the university education departments. There's a national database with about every Masters and PHD thesis on education collected in it for the last 20 years or so called ERIC. The standards on what gets accepted and published would get you laughed out of any other department including the soft ones if submitted.

Pedagogy is an entire field of study itself. In other words, there is nothing "easy" or straighforward about teaching. I've taught sciences and math (statistics/probability mostly) at the high school and college levels. There are many different learning styles, and accomodating all of those styles in a teaching lesson is a big challenge. Some kids are visual/spatial learners, some are verbal, some conceptual, others relative/analagous.

that's a bit colorful, but yes, the general rule is that professional schools generally--ed, med, law, and business--produce scholarship that on average is less rigorous than that in many of the disciplines. there are stacks of exceptions, obviously, but yes, that is the consensus.

A US high school student has a 70% likelihood of being taught English by a teacher with a degree in English but about a 40% chance of studying chemistry with a teacher who was a chemistry major.

Hmm, that's an interesting way to look at it; legal "scholarship" is fair game for criticism I'm sure, but I've never heard anyone really compare it to whatever they hell do in education curriculum (or medicine or business schools for that matter, but education just stands out as an apples-to-oranges comparison). Rightly or wrongly, I can assure that you high-brow law professors would be pretty surprised to hear themselves being lumped in with D.Ed types.

But is there a shortage of teachers, at current salaries? I haven't heard that.

I went and had a look at the common core standard for math, and I’m truly puzzled by the responses to them, or at least to the sample I looked at. I can’t imagine any informed scientist arguing against them. They seem to me to propose basic topics for understanding which are really beyond question. I’d be interested in having a common core critic single out some particular objective (or really, to merit blanket condemnation, a large set of objectives) and explain why they are inappropriate or unnecessary for the level of basic mathematical competence our society might hope for. The entire list is at http://www.corestandards.org/Math/ .

How can we expect to teach a subject as precise, demanding, and frankly challenging as math, to a society that spends its evenings watching reality TV.???

I don't understand why educators think that everyone has to be good at math. Only a small percentage of people need to know anything more than basic arithmetic to do their jobs. Forcing everyone to learn advanced algebra, trigonometry, etc. just turns kids off to education in general.

I have, however, taught law and economics for over 25 years, and always got superior reviews from my students, despite having no formal training in education

Try to help a 5th grader with their math homework these days, and you'll see the evidence. Many of the problems are are odd, and often they are incomprehensible. I don't have any examples on hand, but you can find them on the web. E.g: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/31/a-ridiculous-common-core-test-for-first-graders/ .

Question 1 on the first-grade test is based on the New York Common Core Standard, 1.OA4 Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. Question 12 tests standard 1.OA6, which requires students to use the relationship between addition and subtraction to solve problems. Question 8 assesses Standard 1.OA 7 which requires students to determine whether addition or subtraction sentences are true or false.

...most knowledgeable folks i know see the difficulty of attracting teaching competent teaching talent as the major problem, rather than the old standards.

i'm sypmathetic to the op, who seems to have put in the years in the trenches, watching unfunded mandates come down from above while spending more and more time on spreadsheets.

i'm open to persuasion.

From the NEA website

Myths and Facts about Educator Pay

klk, the Common Core math test that my high school piloted had an impressive math assessment that I proctored with an admin.. Not only was it all online, it had writing portions for justifying answers. Additionally, there was a group task involving designing a playground using correct measurement, proportion, etc.. Common Core includes a real world and cooperative project angle beyond its online test.

I'm sympathetic too. I taught high-school math right after college and before grad school, and I enjoyed it, but I don't think I'd last a semester in today's atmosphere. And I think more and more students are starting to figure that out, as the hostility toward teachers (some of it on display here), the erosion of the perks that partially offset the low pay and lack of respect, and the imposition of high-stakes testing with inadequate input from the folks on the front lines and extreme consequences for personnel and institutions all make the job look less and less attractive.

I'm biased toward biological systems, but I'll bet the physicists feel the same.

How rotten is your product, if you can't give it away for free?

Even value added creates measurement issues, particularly if the student is not proficient in English. Nonetheless, for all the measurement issues, it surprises me to hear opponents of "high stakes testing" contend that other options are better, without telling us how they measure outcomes.

Many parents and teachers are seeing common core as just some newfangled way of teaching developed by academics who have no clue who teaching really occurs in the field.

So were you able to help your daughter's friends with their math homework?

If you were the only one who could help, did the daily process of learning math for these children now involve regular trips to the college professor's house to get help on their elementary school problems?

Here's how common core is actually working in practice: Kids come home with their homework, do what they can, ask mom and dad for help, mom and dad don't understand either, mom and dad start calling parents of other students to collaborate (or even call the teacher if they can), eventually they might find someone who gets whatever unusual approach the particular question is using.

All the while the kid sits at the table staring at the paper wondering how they will ever learn math if the parents can't do it either.

How rotten is your product, if you can't give it away for free?

you certainly have the ability to think about problems in quite different ways, binary arithmetic operations, as you point out... and you most likely look at division very differently than what is taught... does that mean that the way it is taught is incorrect for a 10-year-old?

since 1989 the average graduation rate has been 61%

This has me scratching my head.

Engineers have a "dysfunctional model for doing math?"

Engineering, by definition, is the application of math toward a beneficial purpose.

If engineers aren't doing functional math ... then who is?

just a thought, but, is it so bad that parents will have to learn math to help the kids in school?

I suspect that the general attitude will be more like, "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."

So, three bad teachers out of 45, and the majority of that remaining 42 were very good to excellent, truly dedicated teachers.

Which is better, a car with 100 parts and three not working (and not really fixable), or a car with 3 parts and one not working (and not really fixable)? Considering a perfectly working car is not a real-world possibility, which of these options do you choose?

Same goes for epipens. What if I don't administer meds correctly? Can I be sued?

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_25767936/common-core-math-sample-problems

This was the EXACT same premise that got American industry in such trouble, and pushed the Japanese to the front.

not what I think... the premise was that "American industry" was some how exceptional, and that it was superior because it was American.

Thinking back to math class (I SUCKED at math in elementary school, wiped the floor with the remedial stuff in high school, and now hold a B.S. in maths), it was most definitely the context of the classroom that did it for me, but not in the sense of the lesson being "boring" because the kids who were good at math clearly LOVED math. I think math is the kind of thing where different people are "ready" to learn different things about math at different times. As a result, most kids have the experience at some point of being presented with math they are not "ready" to learn yet, so they don't get it, and they are told it is a problem with them, that they just "don't get it". This just makes their brains turn off when it's math time. At least that is how it was for me.

I now find myself in a math intensive career.
I'm amazed by math! I'm learning.

I realize now that I didn't suck at math, I sucked at school.

I seem to recall you went to a very elite high school, Rich. Am I remembering correctly?

I had a reputation, in my household, of trying to lecture on the subject of problems rather than "just doing it" from both Debbie and our daughter.

I guess it should not surprise us that climbers -- who tend to push things to or beyond the point where they challenge us -- would do the same with academics.

Yes, but my point is that the interest in and pursuit of difficulty seems to be a fundamental human trait, not at all restricted to climbers but observable in a vast range of human activities. . . . If you buy this, then one of the jobs of education is to help to build that sense of possibility in the face of difficulty.

Because of the requirement that a problem or operation be solved (or carried out) in many different ways, which is certainly desirable in a theoretical sense, methods that are absolutely insane (inefficient and incomprehensible, even to mathematically confident parents) are employed that confuse everyone. I was told by my daughter's 4th grade math teacher, who was not confident in her own mathematics, that traditional methods for addition and division did not yield true understanding of those operations. The Common Core methods might strive for understanding, but the true result is that some of the methods used in elementary school confuse everybody, including the teacher! As a high school math teacher, I am often hindered in my attempts to teach concept, by students' inability to accurately calculate. Math operations are tools for engaging in math. Turning them into concepts that have to be looked at in multiple ways by all students in the class simply has the effect of more mistakes being made in the class. Ironically when that would happen, my daughter's teacher would simply take the class to a computer lab for a session of mind-numbing drill-and-kill.

Much of what is said here assumes all students are capable of developing or enhancing skills in critical thinking.

How many of the posters here have had children go through the educational system? Have watched as thinking skills materialize and mature?

How many of the posters here have had children go through the educational system? Have watched as thinking skills materialize and mature? Questions, questions, questions.

Jammer, I would like to know more about why you say we don't strive for a non-elitist education system. What more might we do??

rgold, I really would be interested in your answer to this question: Besides rhetoric and idealism, what leads you to believe we actually strive for a non-elitist education system?

Your example of an objective test to determine career paths as opposed to the current system of having ones parents "legacy" largely determine which doors are open is then by my definition less "elitist".

When I speak of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them—the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants and test-prep courses; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brand-name graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the B.A.; and the parents and communities, largely upper-middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.

As a financial-aid kid whose life-prospects were significantly bolstered by attending an elite school, this subject is very personal for me, too. I come from a family of construction workers and laundry-owners in Brooklyn, the descendants of Italian and Chinese immigrants, respectively. My father is a laborer and my mother a human resources worker; they’ve both changed jobs across the years, owing to the recession and family circumstances. We don’t occupy an enviable financial situation by any means, and I’d hate to think our unsteady progress from working- to middle-class somehow makes me, as Deresiewicz puts it, “an entitled little sh#t.” He may have sleepwalked into college, but it's wrong to assume we all did.

wow, anecdotes flying left and right in Tacoville

Truth can't be far off at all

I suppose one could say the high school where I teach is "elite".

Why do we need to learn all this math anyway?

All these so called math guys who think they're smart are actually stooopid.

All these so called math guys who think they're smart are actually stooopid. Blah blah ... all they know is one dimensional

In particular, employers outside (and, I suspect, even inside to a certain extent) academia find educational credentials meaningless. A high school or college diploma carries with it no reasonable expectation of any particular knowledge or skill.

Frustrated employers started demanding some evidence that graduates demonstrate certain minimum skills and knowledge. Those same employers concluded that neither grades nor graduation gave the desired assurance. The standardized tests and curricula were a ham-handed attempt to convey the desired assurance.

I find it particularly interesting that many professions with demanding postgraduate educational requirments still administer tests outside of those administered in school. Lawyers must deal with bar exams, physicians with board certifications, etc. Why don't I hear law or medical faculty decrying the influence of those tests?

When teachers organize to promote better teaching, rather than to oppose burdensome or insulting requirements, we can hope for real progress. Until then, I'm not holding my breath for better American performance in math, or in education generally.

I took math up to Vector Calculus. I rarely even use algebra. I use recursion every now and then in programming. Why do we need to learn all this math anyway? If I need to use it, I look it up on the internet. College isn't even necessary these days. Skip the debt, learn what you need to know on the job or taking online classes. I'm way ahead of my friends who went all in for the phd. They are still living in grass huts and complaining about privilege.

only the medical world continues to use calculus in something like its original sense.