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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

#181

Post by crusso »

jessaustin wrote: post #106
danielweber wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several of them even felt cheated for taking our "advanced" math classes which were, in their opinion, far beyond anything they would ever have to teach in high school or CEGEP. Are you saying that people would go to school to be math teachers and say "teach me the math I need to teach my students"? That's nuts. I can't imagine a Spanish teacher who only knows the Spanish in the textbook. Or a woodshop teacher who on…

I can't imagine a Spanish teacher who only knows the Spanish in the textbook. I don't need to imagine her; she taught me for three years in high school.

Mine was a French "teacher". Fortunately only for one year. She normally smelled of stale beer.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#182

Post by worklogin »

Dove wrote: post #165
csours wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I graduated High School with a 6.022 GPA[1]! Texas is Awesome! 1. Normal max is 4.0, school gave extra credit for Advanced Placement and college concurrent courses.

I was once told of a similar situation in a high school: AP classes were worth 6.0 in your GPA, while regular ones were worth 4.0. The valedictorian wound up being the person who realized this, took as many AP classes as possible, and as few regular classes as possible . It is massively stupid and unfair -- but there is a part of me that sees that as preparation for real life, a great deal of which is run in stupid a…

Why is it unfair? The AP courses are more challenging, and therefore get more weight. Isn't the valedictorian (theoretically) the smartest kid in the school?

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#183

Post by erroneousfunk »

relaytheurgency wrote: post #172

I tried to make this comment a reply to a separate comment but it errored out. I had a funny thing happen to me in college that ruined my one chance at a 4.0 semester. I had just begun my physics major but had some electives to take as well. I was taking the introductory microeconomics course. At the end of the semester I had received a B and I was relatively certain that I had achieved better, so I went to the profe…

Don't get me wrong, I'd also be frustrated. However, if you view the grades as cutoffs rather than rounded percentages, I think the professor's view makes sense. The cutoff for an A- is .90 Therefore, if the score was 0.8994, then you did not make the cutoff, and your percentage grade of 89% would be more appropriate.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#184

Post by danielweber »

growlix wrote: post #137
danielweber wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earnest: how hard are they to fire?

Does making teachers easier to fire draw better candidates into the profession?

Maybe. I'm sure the idea is that "I might be fired, better not get that job" is easy to imagine, as is people running away from the industry at high speed if they could be fired. Somehow most other professionals deal with the ability to be fired just fine.

But there are other forces at work that make less job lock good for workers.

First is coworkers. Education is a team activity, where your coworkers screw-up means more work for you. I've worked at places where management refused to fire people who needed fired, because of friendships or pain aversion. It was not fun fixing all their problems. Fortunately I quit and watched them circle the drain.

The biggest is the ease of entry and exit. If the only job available is one of a selected number where you have to wait for the current person holding it to retire, you have a situation like postdocs trying to get tenure track positions in American academia. On the other hand, if there is a flow of teachers moving around in job market -- including people new to teaching, and people stopping teaching to do something else -- there's plenty of room to find openings. It also makes it easy to move around: if your boss sucks, or your spouse wants to move elsewhere else in the country, you can find openings.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#185

Post by lojack »

sly010 wrote: post #80

Real story: In Hungary students are rated from 1 to 5, where 5 is the best score and 1 is the worst. During the semester you have multiple tests (both verbal and on paper) each giving you a score between 1 and 5. Your final score is the average of these rounded to an integer. These final scores are the only important measure when you apply to study further, nothing else matters. I had a [5,5,5] and had to take a verb…

Had a similar experience when I was in highschool with an answer on a physics test. She insisted that her math was correct, and pretty much the whole class got the answer incorrect. Despite us telling her why she was wrong, she refused to listen.

I took the problem to a technology teacher I had, who was known for being a extremely intelligent-abrasive-and-fair (was a nuclear engineer before changing career paths and genuinely enjoyed teaching). Explained the situation and gave him the problem to independently solve. He said he didn't want to overstep his bounds with the physics teacher, but the next day our scores had curiously changed to reflect the correct math.

Some people have too much pride to admit fault, especially to those they view as inferior.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#186

Post by drpgq »

cs702 wrote: post #4

In 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...

It is more complex than that. Teaching generally pays way better in Canada compared to the average salary than in the US (especially when pension benefits are included).

I have more experience with Ontario rather than Quebec. I would say in Ontario the teacher colleges are rather selective in who get to go, since the pay is so high, there's a lot of applicants. However math ability generally isn't part of the criteria.

Ontario right now has a massive glut of unemployed graduates from education faculties. I have always wondered why they didn't use math ability in picking new spots for teachers (right now it seems to be done by the whims of the principals).

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#187

Post by drpgq »

balls187 wrote: post #77
cs702 wrote: post #4

In 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...

There are a lot more cultural issues at play that effect the education performance of the US compared to Finland. The US has a far more heterogeneous population than Finland, so directly comparing them doesn't mean a lot. It would be more appropriate to compare Finland to Quebec, given the two have similar racial demographic breakdowns.

There's a lot of immigrants in Quebec.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#188

Post by chm »

jeremiep wrote: post #103
herge wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you went to the right school. It was made very clear to my classes from sec 3 onwards that taking "higher level math" (436, 536) would open a lot more doors in CÉGEP and university. On the same topic, I firmly believe that CÉGEP offers the best general education in the world for 17 to 19 year olds.

How can you say best education in the world? Have you studied all over the world to have a point of comparison? I've been to three different cegeps and they all had their share of clueless teachers.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the model, not the particular implementation.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#189

Post by randomnumber53 »

Dove wrote: post #165
csours wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I graduated High School with a 6.022 GPA[1]! Texas is Awesome! 1. Normal max is 4.0, school gave extra credit for Advanced Placement and college concurrent courses.

I was once told of a similar situation in a high school: AP classes were worth 6.0 in your GPA, while regular ones were worth 4.0. The valedictorian wound up being the person who realized this, took as many AP classes as possible, and as few regular classes as possible . It is massively stupid and unfair -- but there is a part of me that sees that as preparation for real life, a great deal of which is run in stupid a…

I am a high school senior taking two college math courses, but to discourage this practice (which costs the school money) the school counts my grade as a 4.0 max in my GPA (AP classes are 5.0, regular are 4.0).

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#190

Post by lotharbot »

100timesthis wrote: post #168
lotharbot wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three [0] "America"s -- North, South, and United States of. Clarification is only required when context is inadequate to distinguish between them. Similarly, "star" can refer to a shape, a celestial body, or a talented/lead performer or athlete. You wouldn't interrupt a conversation about sports to say "stars aren't just guys like LeBron James; Aldebaran is also a star." That would be asinine and obnoxious.…

that's not context, that's because USA is the biggest power in the Americas, so powerful that it overshadows all the other regions/countries, and that's why some people living in the Americas feel belittled by that. I know you were not replying to my post directly, but to clarify my position: I'm european, I don't particularly care about the distinction, I just found that it was a very depressing message to put on a…

Please don't mistake confidently arguing for patronizing.

"The USA is the biggest power" is a form of context. "The speaker is from [country X]" is a form of context (Churchill, definitely not from the USA, once famously said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.") There was adequate context for the original t-shirt to make it clear what "America" was referring to.

Which makes the "not just the US" argument come across as similar to if you argued that "LeBron isn't the only star, Aldebaran is also a star". Virtually everybody knows there are multiple meanings of the word "America"; we don't need to be told that every time we use it to refer to the US. The appropriate standard for word usage is "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions" [Noah Webster], that is, popular usage. And in popular usage, "America" can be used to refer to the US, or to the landmass as a whole; arguing against that is like arguing that we should stop calling famous actors "stars" because they're not luminous spheres of plasma. It's incorrect, and also annoying.

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