Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average • Hacker News Board

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#201

Post by megaman22 » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #141

tootie wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If folks in Quebec can speak French, it should be pretty easy.

Having French as your native language doesn't mean French class is easy, and a sizable part of Québec's population doesn't speak French natively.

A sizable portion of Quebec's population east of Montreal doesn't speak English at all.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#202

Post by omegaham » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #64

growlix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> teaching is viewed as overpaid babysitting I'd vehemently dispute that chartacterization. I've never once in my life run in to anyone who felt that way, with the possible exception of some politicians and union heads.

While you're correct in that teachers in better districts are respected, teachers in the inner city literally are babysitters (although I would argue that they earn every penny of their paychecks; they aren't overpaid). They spend so much time and effort keeping order that they can barely teach the classes. No parental involvement, kids with mental disorders who cannot be disciplined, insanely high class sizes, and an administration that shrugs and says, "Just keep us from getting closed."

Just get 'em to 18 (or earlier - a lot will drop out) and get 'em out the door. Someone else's problem now, probably the state penitentiary.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#203

Post by chm » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

Purely anecdotal and IMO a bit disingenuous. Most McGill students are not from Québec for starters. I could comb through the requirements set by the government concerning secondary education and easily find many supposedly acquired skills that the author either forgot or never learned.

Write the same story about how a lot of anglophone students do not learn to speak/write/read French properly as they simply do not care and you will be overwhelmed by responses in their defense.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#204

Post by omegaham » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

t1m wrote: post #11

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.

Yeah, it's perfectly fine not to have a good grasp of calculus. But basic math? We use it every single day. Someone who is innumerate is at just as much of a disadvantage as someone who is illiterate.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#205

Post by iamshs » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

plehoux wrote: post #131

japhyr wrote: post #3

I 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…

Many comments here are anecdotal. Quebec outperforms other Canadian provinces in most math rankings (Programme for International Student Assessment). Globe and Mail on the subject: > But there’s also good news. Canada’s declining performance in math isn’t equally distributed across the country. When results are broken down by province, there are shocking differences. And at the top of the class is Quebec. > While the…

Oh well:- http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/06/oecd-pisa-t...

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#206

Post by skylan_q » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #76

jordigh wrote: post #36

As a McGill math grad, I must say that it was a running joke in the math department how the Education students didn't really need to know any math (some B. Ed. students shared classes with us during the first year or two). The B. Ed. students freely accepted this joke and were quite self-deprecating about their mathematical skills. Several of them even felt cheated for taking our "advanced" math classes which were, i…

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…

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"?

This is how teachers in Ontario (who avearge around $75k/year) learn how to teach math.

As long as everyone has equal access to education, there isn't a problem here.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#207

Post by omegaham » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:38 PM UTC

acscott wrote: post #34

Recommended reading: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_%28book%29

Just re-read that book a little while ago. It's dated in a couple of its examples, but it's still pretty powerful and easy to read.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#208

Post by Fando » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:38 PM UTC

On Canada's education: I came from Belarus when I was 10 and was put into 5th grade. Until I got to 9th grade, there was no new math taught to me. I didn't know about the unit circle until 10th grade, however, my friends from home learned about it in 7th grade. This is only one example. Maybe Canada's university education is at par, I don't know, but the years leading up to it are mostly wasted, to say the least. Since grade 1 we sat attentively and quietly at desks listening to the teacher, they commanded our respect and their classrooms were always well organized for learning. Compare that with Ontario, when I was placed in 5th grade. We were never encouraged to read out-loud to the class, come to the front of the class to answer questions, solve math problems on the board or to memorize and tell a poem. We did not read classic authors, or poets and learn their works. Our reading speed was not measured, we were not assigned reading, writing or math homework beyond simple "spelling sheets" and "fill in the blank math sheets". We were not taught to keep an organized student planner, or keep an organized notebook. Our homework was not graded, our grades were not tracked and were never revealed to us. We were never told what we needed to improve. We never had to write short, well formatted and grammatically correct paragraphs and short pieces. We never wrote dictations, we never actually wrote anything beyond single worded "fill-in-the-blank" worksheets. Our penmanship was not judged, proper grammar was not encouraged or judged. All these things were taught to us in Belarus from grade 1 to 5. I was shocked to come to Canada and learn that in fifth grade, students had to sit on the floor for parts of the day as the teacher read to them, like kindergarten. Knowing this I often reflect on how much obvious potential is wasted and opportunity missed by Canadian elementary education systems. I visited Belarus when I was in 9th grade, my friends there were writing essays in English and Spanish as weekly homework. Compare that with French language education in Canada, by 9th grade, after 5 years of elementary school French, I could count to a hundred and read a little. I did not know proper grammar or how to write sentences. Anyway, there are many examples in other subjects as well. Each time I reflect on this, I cannot help but feel how pathetic the education is. It's not serious. It then comes as no surprise that there are teachers at conferences who are not able to comprehend weighted averages, as japhyr mentioned. I wish elementary education in Canada were reformed completely.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#209

Post by pdkl95 » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:39 PM UTC

japhyr wrote: post #3

I 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…

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-...

I believe you might find this article very interesting. It is a discussion of how math education has changed over the years, and has strong words about the very problem you mentioned of the teachers being ignorant of math and passing that ignorance on to those they teach.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#210

Post by megaman22 » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 7:39 PM UTC

mgbmtl wrote: post #195

drpgq wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 criteri…

Here are the stats: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-604-x/2014001/t/tbld.2.1-eng... Notice how the lower and maximum salaries are not very different, but how it takes much longer in Québec to get a decent salary. Ex: after 10 years in Québec, you're still at 58,643 $CAD, but in Ontario after 10 years: 75,336 $CAD. My daughter is in primary school. I find it seriously disturbing how underpaid the teachers are.

With the current exchange rate, that is pretty good pay, compared to U.S. teachers. Anecdotally, my mother has 27 years of experience and a masters, and only makes roughly the Quebec figure.