This is not surprising. My grade 4 kid's teacher told me that our kid "just might not be good at math, and that's OK". This is a shocking attitude, but one I find commonly held: that basic math is some kind of optional, specialized skill.
Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
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Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#12For 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.
An university.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#13Could 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 hea…
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Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#14In 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. -- [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands... [2] http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...
How does that work? If you're so educated and skilled, can't you make loads more money in industry than teaching snot-nosed teenagers to solve linear equations? Or does making lots of money not matter as much in Finnish culture?
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#15I TA'd a capstone neuroscience seminar at McGill for multiple years, and you'd be amazed at how much difficulty many of the students had at expressing themselves in writing. And I'm talking about those who spoke English as a first language. These are final year university students who got into a very competitive program.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#16Why is this #1 on the homepage?
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#17For 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.
It's the #1 ranked university in Canada.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#18In 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. -- [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands... [2] http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...
How does that work? If you're so educated and skilled, can't you make loads more money in industry than teaching snot-nosed teenagers to solve linear equations? Or does making lots of money not matter as much in Finnish culture?
Finland both pays and respects its teachers. This is not so much the case in the US, where teaching is viewed as overpaid babysitting.
Also, prestige/symbolic capital is a powerful motivator. It seems to me that in the US, wealth is a major contributor to prestige, so they're often not dissociated in professional attainment.
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#19For 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.
It is one of the top-ranked universities in Canada (roughly equivalent to an Ivy League university in the US, or Oxbridge in the UK).
Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
#20For 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.
The flagship public university in Quebec. If not the most prestigious university in Canada, certainly close to it.