21–30 of 40 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps an apprenticeship-system might be worth a try? Let them work together with adults---that might put some sense into them.
I've long believed the master-apprentice system to be the most effective type of teaching system. Unfortunately, it doesn't scale.
Physical education is the new math. Students don't like to be trapped in stuffy classrooms. They want to be outside and run around in the fresh air and sunshine. Over the semester, not only have my students improved markedly in physical fitness, but they've learned critical problem solving skills. We're playing football. They've developed increasingly sophisticated plays, analyzed defenses and developed counter-strat…
Maths is maths, and will always be a powerful tool. But the author is saying that most people need to learn problem-solving and logic more than they need to learn maths; for most people maths is useful only in that it teaches problem-solving and logical thinking. Thus, replace it with programming.
In my opinion, I think a far better idea would be to replace the 'computer studies' classes with programming. Most of these classes teach how to use Excel and Word, and if they do programming it's only a limited variety using Visual Basic. Modernise, guys!
I had a rather bruising experience last fall "teaching" precalculus to a lecture of 180 students. Although I'd try to engage the students and explain how the stuff is useful, the students would have none of it. I got scathing reviews about how I was teaching stuff that wouldn't be useful until calculus 2 (which is, of course, a feature and not a bug). We're fundamentally talking about 18-year-olds with bad attitudes…
I suspect that your students had already learned that they weren't going to use the covered material, even within subsequent math classes -- by being taught the same material year after year.
I had a rather bruising experience last fall "teaching" precalculus to a lecture of 180 students. Although I'd try to engage the students and explain how the stuff is useful, the students would have none of it. I got scathing reviews about how I was teaching stuff that wouldn't be useful until calculus 2 (which is, of course, a feature and not a bug). We're fundamentally talking about 18-year-olds with bad attitudes…
I think your employers set you up for failure. Nearly all educational institutions make math seem like something only weirdos could enjoy, for their later employment as tools of industry. I say that as someone who was once so motivated to learn math, I lied to a highschool precalculus teacher in order to take proof-oriented calculus at a university. (Though she thought she forebade me, I gained prerequisites in a sum…
And you want to blame that on the course itself? This is exactly the problem with education--kids feel like its the teachers responsibility to force them to get something out of it. It is your responsibility, no one else's.
Furthermore, I took analysis in college and I gained a great deal from it. It made me a much more precise thinker, mathematically and otherwise. Your lack of growth from the course is no ones fault but your own.
Edit: thinking about the issue a little bit more I realize that its not as clear cut as its "your fault". There is a big problem with how math is taught, especially at the younger grades. My issue with your blaming the course and the teacher for your lack of growth is that once you're at the college level you shouldn't need the teacher to do a song and dance to keep your attention. You're supposedly there for one reason only, to further your own education. Thus the responsibility is on you to get as much as you can out of every course. If the content of the course didn't match your expectations then the problem lies elsewhere, not in the material or how it was taught.
I say teach math (up to algebra and basic trig and calculus) and programming in every high school. Dropping out is so much easier than dropping in at a later age.
I had a rather bruising experience last fall "teaching" precalculus to a lecture of 180 students. Although I'd try to engage the students and explain how the stuff is useful, the students would have none of it. I got scathing reviews about how I was teaching stuff that wouldn't be useful until calculus 2 (which is, of course, a feature and not a bug). We're fundamentally talking about 18-year-olds with bad attitudes…
I think your employers set you up for failure. Nearly all educational institutions make math seem like something only weirdos could enjoy, for their later employment as tools of industry. I say that as someone who was once so motivated to learn math, I lied to a highschool precalculus teacher in order to take proof-oriented calculus at a university. (Though she thought she forebade me, I gained prerequisites in a sum…
I suppose it's a matter of perspective, but then again the "math" that junior high and high schools usually teach isn't really math. Rather, it is a brief explanation of boring topics, taught in a boring way to emphasize rote memorization. I'd prefer to see teachers focus on the joy of exploring a concept so that you understand it actively versus passively, and (yes) rigorous logic as well.
We'd have a better citizenry overall if people thought like mathematicians, whether or not they "use" the material.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's see... in tuition, the students paid collectively over $300,000. Between me and the two TAs who were grading and doing discussion sessions under me, about $60,000 was spent on teaching for the class (the $60,000 figure includes the graduate student tuition waivers and our health benefits).
Is that $300K their collective annual tuition or the amount paid for the credit hours for the course?
Physical education is the new math. Students don't like to be trapped in stuffy classrooms. They want to be outside and run around in the fresh air and sunshine. Over the semester, not only have my students improved markedly in physical fitness, but they've learned critical problem solving skills. We're playing football. They've developed increasingly sophisticated plays, analyzed defenses and developed counter-strat…
The Curry–Howard isomorphism[1] would beg to differ. I think programming is much closer to math than this comment gives it credit for. In some sense, programming is even stricter than math. When doing math, you just have to satisfy your instructor or your reader. When programming, your program must run on a real computer -- there's no room for hand waving or imprecise arguments.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry–Howard_correspondence
I always found math to be problematic because it builds on itself, yet math classes vary so much by school and teacher. I ran into difficulty in a graduate level course simply because I had never once been shown algebra with inequalities. Also, you don't get instant, positive feedback, and immediate indication of whether your solution is correct as you do when programming.