Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
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Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
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Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#2Underneath this is the simple fact that educational standards in Quebec are disgracefully bad. A frightening proportion of kids never graduate high school either, and making it into McGill is near the upper reaches of achievement for those that do.
This is going to provoke a lot of kneejerk "but it's worse in [x]". No, in the developed world it's probably not. There are lots of dynamics unique to the Quebec situation which allow this to perpetuate.
Edit to add a useful reference: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/dismal-dropout-rates-...
"Last year alone, only 40.6 per cent of the boys followed in the 2007 cohort at the French-language Commission scolaire de Montréal graduated in five years."
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#3I teach high school, and a colleague of mine went to an education conference a couple weeks ago. She was sitting at a table with three elementary school teachers. They were talking about how to gauge student progress when the students had taken a 100-question test, and a 50-question test. None of the three teachers realized that you had to scale the test scores before making a comparison between the two tests. These teachers thought you could just look at the number of questions the students got correct, and see if the students "score" went up.
My colleague pointed out that the questions on the 50-point test had twice as much weight as the questions on the 100-point test. One of the three other teachers realized their mistake - the other two just chuckled and said it didn't matter.
This isn't just frighteningly ignorant, it ends up having a devastating impact on many young people. One anecdote: I knew a bright young student who loved learning, but hated school. Why? He took algebra and french in 8th grade; he passed algebra and failed french. When he got to 9th grade he was placed in algebra again, and french 2. The school would not budge from its original placement; I don't know the rationale. He failed algebra because he refused to do any homework, and failed french because he couldn't make any sense of the class. I want smart teachers to take control of education so this s* doesn't happen nearly as often as it does.
Also, I've taught middle and high school math for 20 years now, mostly to students who struggle with math. I don't think I've had many groups of students who could come up with six different answers for a simple average problem.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#4In Finland, graduate schools of Education admit students only from the top 10% of college graduates.[1]
In the US, nearly half of all new teachers come from the bottom third of college graduates.[2]
Evidently, Canada is more like the US than Finland.
Depressing.
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[1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands...
[2] http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#5Before we get too smug, don't let the education majors challenge you to a writing contest :-)
A few years after I finished my BS in Comp Sci, I took both the GRE and the CBEST (California teaching test). The percentile ranking skew between the two populations was interesting.
A 98th percentile ranking in "verbal" in the engineering group only put me at the 50th percentile ranking in writing in the teaching group.
(OTOH, I was at the 99th percentile in math in the teaching group, but I had a reasonably high score at math in the GRE as well)
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#6Could they figure out how to do it in less than 5 minutes if the stakes really mattered? I agree calculating averages is a pretty basic skill that I find has many day-to-day applications. But this also smells like a lighter version of the trick interview question.
Which is to say, I'm sure there are people out there who would smirk at me when they found out I didn't know how to tie a square knot off the top of my head.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#7I teach high school, and a colleague of mine went to an education conference a couple weeks ago. She was sitting at a table with three elementary school teachers. They were talking about how to gauge student progress when the students had taken a 100-question test, and a 50-question test. None of the three teachers realized that you had to scale the test scores before making a comparison between the two tests. These…
This isn't just frighteningly ignorant, it ends up having a devastating impact on many young people. One anecdote: I knew a bright young student who loved learning, but hated school. Why? He took algebra and french in 8th grade; he passed algebra and failed french. When he got to 9th grade he was placed in algebra again, and french 2. The school would not budge from its original placement; I don't know the rationale. He failed algebra because he refused to do any homework, and failed french because he couldn't make any sense of the class. I want smart teachers to take control of education so this s% doesn't happen nearly as often as it does.
Sounds like passing a student with 80% grade, only with 60%. It's like passing a student who didn't master 40% of the content, and compounding it over and over again with each grade level, until eventual nothingness.
That's what it means to pass a student with a B, C, or an F. This is not quite the same thing as mastery of the subject, but it's a good proxy. Even an A student will miss some stuff.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#8I believe these problems extend beyond Canada and into the U.S. I know several of my peers who have started, or are applying to get their masters in Education/teaching to become teachers. I have heard them willing admit that they are very poor in Math like it is something to brag about. I've seen them struggle to compete basic arithmetic, and yet somehow they believe this is totally ok and that they are qualified to teach. Math needs to be elevated and respected, and it is going to take a restructuring of the curriculum in order for it to happen.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#9For those of us who are not from Canada, can someone explain what McGill is? I feel like I'm missing a lot of context.
edit: apparently it's a very prestigious university. I was assuming that it was a remedial high school program. Holy crap.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#10Underneath this is the simple fact that educational standards in Quebec are disgracefully bad. A frightening proportion of kids never graduate high school either, and making it into McGill is near the upper reaches of achievement for those that do. This is going to provoke a lot of kneejerk "but it's worse in [x]". No, in the developed world it's probably not. There are lots of dynamics unique to the Quebec situation…
That. Growing up in Quebec, I can honestly say that my mathematical education was really, really bad.
I remember spending a whole year where we had no math teacher, so instead we had one of the french language teacher teach the class. We did mostly math related crosswords.
All the kids were failing the class, so they simply made us all pass. Great job, school.
I still have a lot of issues because of this. Hard to learn advanced concepts when your basics were screwed up.
That being said, one of the beautiful reason that not many Quebecers don't make it to university is the fact that the CEGEP can throw you into the work force for a low price and a short amount of time. I wouldn't want this part to change. High school however? The whole program is a mess.