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US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

bbc.co.uk

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Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#61

Post by anigbrowl »

wil421 wrote: post #55
anigbrowl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not helpful for any kids whose parents are bad at math. You're condemning them to a lifetime of ignorance because of their parents' deficiencies.

Tutors, I used them in college once I left my parents house. You can find free tutors on most college campuses for challenging subjects, Math Chemistry etc. If you are still in high school you can find many online resources to help, Youtube Kahn Academy etc... Just because you are bad at something doesn't mean you cant find someone to help your kid whether its a relative, neighbor, tutor or old teacher.

Any parent can give encouragement and demand their kid work hard, but a parent without knowledge has no way of assessing whether a tutor or other pedagogical assistant is any good. Try thinking about this in the context of something that you're not good at.

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#62

Post by hactually »

graeme wrote: post #49
zaphar wrote: post #38

Only slightly related to the article actually but when did the pluralized term math s become a thing. I feel like it had to be recent but I've been noticing it everywhere lately.

It's a british thing.

It's not a British thing, it's a standard English thing. I understand it's a difficult language but sometimes we contract words rather than lopping parts off.

It's interesting that you guys chose to keep Physics, did Physic sound too weird? :D

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#63

Post by esbranson »

skywhopper wrote: post #25

I don't dispute the general findings of the study summarized by the article, but who's choosing the images that go along? The article opens with a mention of the "deep South" and is accompanied by a photo of a rusted bus in a field? The middle picture with the caption "There is a complacency about mainstream US education standards" shows an anonymous residential street. And the final picture captioned "Massachusetts…

I think your comment is a case of rational irrationality.

The theory of rational irrationality holds that people often choose—rationally—to adopt irrational beliefs because the costs of rational beliefs exceed their benefits. In this case, the cost of admitting (including to yourself) that the article's surmise makes a valid point is greater than you are willing to accept. (Likely related to the denial that the article discusses.) So you are being irrational, attempting to impeach the article by drawing ludicrous conclusions from its incidental and irrelevant choice of picture aids.

Simply: you are being absurd.

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#64

Post by cafard »

Pxtl wrote: post #17
noobermin wrote: post #2

I think the thing that distresses me the most is that any attempt that has been made to alleviate the situation (like the common core) has been stamped "big government" by people who seem to _not_ understand the urgency of this situation. I'm out of ideas. What do we do? EDIT: added a not. Wow did that change what I meant to say.

Part of the problem is that a subset of the right wing wants privatization. In order to encourage privatization, you actually want the public sector to be as bad as possible so there's greater outcry for subsidized privately-run alternatives.

A fair-sized proportion of the right wing (loosely defined to include libertarians also) favors privatization. It is fair to say that some of them want to believe that the public sector is as bad as possible. It is unlikely that any are deliberately making it worse.

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#65

Post by Jtsummers »

yonran wrote: post #23
kevinpet wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common core invents new arithmetic techniques that no one knows. It's the worst idiocy of reinventing the world.

Is that anywhere in the standard itself, or are you criticizing a particular textbook?

It sounds like the complaints my colleagues keep levelling against common core. And to a one, every example they found came from textbooks or blog posts, not the standard.

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#66

Post by GeneralMayhem »

While I am fully aware that the American public education system is far from excellent, I am always skeptical of reports that laud China, Korea, and Japan as paragons of math and science instruction. What exactly is being measured here? Arithmetic and the ability to solve word problems of a few known formats is not mathematics. I do not want my future children to be calculators, I want them to be thinkers. There is creativity and beauty in math, and what worries me is not that it does not exist in the current implementation, but that it does not exist in the ideal implementation.

Of course, I'm also one of those people who doesn't particularly care whether a college education prepares me for a job, because that's really not the point.

See also: Lockhart's Lament (pdf at http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsL...)

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#67

Post by aurelian »

mikegioia wrote: post #56
nickff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any direct evidence of this? I ask because it is well known that math ability is correlated with educational achievement, and level of education is known to be correlated with income. Putting these two together, I would suppose that math ability is correlated with income.

I'm not saying that greater math ability doesn't correlate to greater wealth. That could very well be true (and it probably is). What I meant was that the public school system is funded by tax dollars. Wealthier neighborhoods contribute more tax money and have better public schools. I obviously don't have any direct evidence, but I would sat there's almost no correlation to wealthy neighborhoods and their residents b…

Direct evidence against your belief:

http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2...

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#68

Post by vonmoltke »

anigbrowl wrote: post #45
kevinpet wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common core invents new arithmetic techniques that no one knows. It's the worst idiocy of reinventing the world.

Citation needed. As far as I can see common core defines standards of ability, rather than teaching methods. There are a bunch of awful, dreadful textbooks that claim 'common core compatibility' but which ignorant people conflate with being part of a common core syllabus, as if they are approved/endorsed by the same people who drafted the Common Core standards, whereas in reality textbook approval seems to be a an ex…

> I wish there were a single federalized syllabus, because it's not like Math works one way in Connecticut or Rhode Island and another in Texas or Arkansas.

So we can replace 50 extremely politicized and corrupt processes with one massive, impenetrable, extremely politicized, and corrupt process?

Otherwise, I agree. The problems are with implementation, not the standards themselves.

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#69

Post by Jtsummers »

SixSigma wrote: post #27
marknutter wrote: post #12

UK 'in denial' over pluralization of the word 'math'.

It's not a plural, it's a contraction of mathematics. Curiously I think Americas still say they study physics.

Apparently physics comes from the Greek φυσικός (phusikos) [1] so it's not an abbreviation at all. Compare to math and maths which are abbreviations of mathematics which comes from the Greek μαθηματικός (mathematikos) [2]. We do still say mathematics in the US, the difference is just in the abbreviation.

(I copy/pasted the Greek versions, so hopefully they're correct. They look correct to my inexperienced eye.)

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/physics

[2] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mathematics

Re: US 'in denial' over poor maths standards

#70

Post by esbranson »

jstalin wrote: post #8
noobermin wrote: post #2

I think the thing that distresses me the most is that any attempt that has been made to alleviate the situation (like the common core) has been stamped "big government" by people who seem to _not_ understand the urgency of this situation. I'm out of ideas. What do we do? EDIT: added a not. Wow did that change what I meant to say.

One size fits all is surely the answer.

This standard isn't one size, its a system of measuring sizes. The size or sizes chosen to fit the particular purpose is an implementation detail. Your argument is like calling all shoe sizes "one size" because there is a standardized, limited range of choices.
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