A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
theatlantic.com
A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
1–10 of 97 posts
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#2TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math education sucks and you might want to look into extracurricular options -- there are lots out there.
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#3TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math educatio…
Now that I think about it, public education is great training for a future of working in open-offices. You learn to accept that you have to wake up at an arbitrary time, spend eight hours getting very little productive done, whilst being bombarded with noise, interruptions, and politics, then if you want to make any real progress, you have to do it afterwards on your own time, outside the school/work day.
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#4I've taught a summer program in number theory for high school students for the past several years. Each summer, my classrooms fill with high school students that are intrigued by the idea of math and extremely capable. That is nice and inspiring, and generally more rewarding than when I teach calculus classes to university students during the school year.
But my program is prohibitively expensive, and I'm acutely aware of the fact that when my students return to their high schools, they will almost certainly return to lackluster curricula. There are exceptions, of course. My summer program is filled with a far-above-average percentage of students attending private high schools.
The fact remains that students who attend the summer program are introduced to interesting math with no guided way to continue their exploration. Sometimes, students with supportive schools end up scheduling a self-study with some supervision from a high school teacher or counselor; I've been asked to help set up and guide self-studies, and I know at least a few of them have been successful. In my experience, this has been the best outcome for my students continuing exploration of advanced math. I'm not sure what this says about math and American high school education.
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#5I am continually surprised by how many emails I get from teenage students thanking me for writing my math blog.
On top of that, I try to occasionally make it out to high schools to give guest lectures. I posted an example experience from one of these online [1] and I am usually looking for other opportunities to do this sort of thing. I think that if every math graduate student who is a reasonably good teacher took a day or two out of every year to visit a high school math class, we would see much more interest in math. Many of us (myself included) were not particularly interested in math in high school and didn't discover the cool stuff until college. So we were once the audience we'd be appealing to.
[1]: http://jeremykun.com/2011/06/26/teaching-mathematics-graph-t...
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#6Reminds me of the math program that Jason Roberts is providing to a group of younger students in Pasadena. If you've never heard the TechZing podcast I'd recommend it: http://techzinglive.com/
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#7TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math educatio…
The difference between "good schools" and "bad schools" is much more about the kids that go there than anything about the school itself. You're seeing this starkly in D.C. where gentrification in certain neighborhoods is shifting the student demographics from 90% low-income to 20% low-income over just 4-5 years. Test scores are shooting up, but it's not like they fired all the teachers and hired new staff at twice the salary.
American schools are fine. Our problems are social. For example, the U.S. has the second-highest rate of single-parent families along with one of the highest gaps in PISA scores between single-parent and two-parent households: http://educationnext.org/international-look-single-parent-fa....
The U.S. also has a larger fraction of children in the lowest income distribution than comparable countries: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testin.... Accounting for that eliminates a lot of the supposed gap in U.S. student performance:
> If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries.
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#8The fundamental problem of education in public schools and its ineffectiveness is not being addressed.
It's great that many of these extracurricular clubs and institutes exist to impart advanced education to interested students. But it does not solve the underlying problem.
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#9"The No Child Left Behind Act, which shaped education for nearly 15 years, further contributed to the neglect of these programs. Ignoring kids who may have had aptitude or interest in accelerated learning, it demanded that states turn their attention to getting struggling learners to perform adequately..."
teaching to population averages will prove disastrous to our long-term growth. thank goodness we have private institutions to pick up the slack where massive bureaucratic oversight often (so often) gets it wrong.
Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math
#10"The No Child Left Behind Act, which shaped education for nearly 15 years, further contributed to the neglect of these programs. Ignoring kids who may have had aptitude or interest in accelerated learning, it demanded that states turn their attention to getting struggling learners to perform adequately..." teaching to population averages will prove disastrous to our long-term growth. thank goodness we have private in…
I'm glad private institutions exist too. But remember you can only get the education you can afford. Since brilliance is not necessarily related to parents' income, private education is a poor substitute for efficient, timely public education.