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Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#221

Post by mathattack »

impendia wrote: post #120
ScottBurson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a mixed bad in K-12 Your typo is very accurate :-) I would say that our problem in K-12 is a self-perpetuating one. The teachers were taught math badly and so never really learned it (and learned to hate it into the bargain). So then they teach it badly. I'm not sure there's any solution except for tuning the students in to Khan Academy and suchlike programs.

>The teachers were taught math badly I'm a college math professor, and I've talked to people who've taught the required "math for elementary ed majors" class. From everything I've heard, it's bleakly depressing. The students (i.e., the future teachers) show little aptitude, curiosity, or work ethic. They just want to be shown algorithms that will always lead them to the correct answer. I haven't taught such a course…

The limit of learning in a classroom is the teacher. If there's a great teacher, the kids can learn a lot. When the teacher lacks capacity (intelligence, leadership & empathy) then the learning is capped.

Outside of people who explicitly want to teach math, the math skills of most K-8 folks I've seen is abysmal.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#222

Post by mathattack »

pessimizer wrote: post #168
mathattack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do a great job with the extreme students. The top 5% of private and public schools in the country produce more than enough folks capable in mathematics. It's the rest of the country that struggles. There are a lot of reasons why the US does well in Universities and poorer up until then relative to the rest of the world: 1 - In much of the world, the school you get into matters more than what you did there. (The lo…

> The top 5% of private and public schools in the country produce more than enough folks capable in mathematics. That's because it's a very easy job. Once you've filtered out 95% of students, the rest would thrive if you threw them in a closet with a book and a flashlight.

the rest would thrive if you threw them in a closet with a book and a flashlight.

I think you just described my kid, who would be happiest if we did that with him.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#223

Post by TorKlingberg »

whack wrote: post #165
jimhefferon wrote: post #147

I teach math. I am impressed that when you read these comments, very few of them show evidence of having read the article. The article is about experience with actual students, with ones who have a real knack for the subject and would learn it despite what any teacher did, and with ones who waver. There proves to be a better way, which the article describes in various ways, including as "sense-making." One of the pro…

> "One of the problems here is that everybody has a pre-formed opinion and does not seem to want to risk having to modify it with the evidence of experience." That's probably the most accurate description of HN comments I've seen. People see a headline related to something they already have pre-existing beliefs about, they read a few paragraphs just to make sure they're on point, and then they jump straight to the co…

This goes especially for bike shed topics where everyone thinks they have it figured out. HN's favorites seem to me nutrition and schooling. Those threads never fail to get 300 comments.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#224

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

geebee wrote: post #193
js2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the article isn't really about math... math is just used to illustrate how poorly we teach in America, and then talks about the reasons why, primarily that we do a really poor job of teaching teachers. Some key quotes: - It wasn’t the first time that Americans had dreamed up a better way to teach math and then failed to implement it. …The trouble always starts when teachers are told to put innovative ideas int…

That's a really good point. Though I do think the article is specifically about math, it generalizes to the point you're making. I thought the article did a particularly good job explaining how the "new math" is very dependent on high quality teaching rather than adhering to a new curriculum. Unfortunately, I think this is where the US has fallen down where it comes to math (and, as you've pointed out, other subjects…

Two things: firstly I think most teaching devolves to a cargo cult, unless the culture explicitly tries to keep this from happening.

Secondly, this quote: "Admittedly, a tenacious commitment to improvement seems to be part of the Japanese national heritage."

I wonder if a missing phrase might be "collective and individual improvement".

Anglo cultures seem to lack this, because they seem to be more about authoritarian displays of power than about striving for collaborative competence.

It's not that individual teachers are necessarily authoritarian - although many school boards seem to be. It's more the political subtext is 'Shut up, listen to my authority, obey, and repeat."

A culture based on "Think, explore, explain, discuss, debate, experiment, and fact-check" works very differently.

When teaching looks more like the first than the second, *it's not really teaching STEM fundamentals" - it's teaching a robotised cargo cult version of STEM that doesn't truly promote STEM principles.

Kids have three options - they can either obey, which will get them good grades but no deep understanding. They can fail - which is a popular choice, because rote learning is harder than learning by deep understanding. Or they can fail and rebel and decide that math is a waste of everyone's time, because who the hell cares, and would you like fries with that?

So math teaching is a symptom of a deeper problem, which is a culture that's more geared towards top-down competitive hierarchical classroom dynamics - with the teacher as top dog - than to promoting non-competitive collaboration and sharing of individual insights, with the teacher as inspiring facilitator.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#225

Post by kaitai »

jomamaxx wrote: post #39
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots. One could argue that for whatever reason, many of the professors, researchers and postdocs at those schools learned math in other countries, but, if these lists are to be believed, the US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world. So two questi…

"Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education?" Because preeminence of top tier institutions (which are kind of global centres anyhow) - has absolutely nothing to do with teaching math to the commons. Here's a hint: +++ Americans don't suck at Math +++ There's a very un-PC but very large elephant in the room that people won't discuss. + European A…

People below are saying their poor Scottish ancestors didn't seem that unusually smart. Immigration restrictions have changed who comes to the US. Pre-migration parental socioeconomic status/educational achievement is one of the best predictors of educational success among children of immigrants. Your trick is simply an observation that Asians immigrating legally to the US come on certain visas which bring a non-representative socioeconomic mix to the US, and their children (who are now Asian-American) do very well. The people who stayed in Asia are not the same as the people who could afford to fight for a US visa.

The "immigrant advantage" fades in three generations, at which point achievement by children reflects the US average. This is the influence, if you like, of American "ethnicity", which is often quite anti-intellectual.

The intro here is an interesting read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3442927/

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#226

Post by kaitai »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #83
johncolanduoni wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> European Americans actually do better than Europeans - on average. + Asian Americans to better than Asians - on average. + Latino Americans do better than Central/South American Latinos + African Americans do better than Africans. I've always heard this explained as a sort of "selection bias". Since immigration to the US (particularly for university education) is often seen as desirable, the people who manage to pu…

> I've always heard this explained as a sort of "selection bias". Since immigration to the US (particularly for university education) is often seen as desirable, the people who manage to pull it off tend to be above the mean. I think this is an explanation that could only be come up with by the descendants of those who have emigrated. Thinking here in Scotland, the people who emigrated were not necessarily the most a…

We no longer think of people whose ancestors showed up in the 19th century as immigrants, unless we're trying to make a point about indigenous peoples' rights. In 2005, 22% of immigrants to the US came in on an employment-related visa; the only larger category was family reunification. Immigration patterns "back then" are very different than they are now.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#227

Post by ausjke »

ausjke wrote: post #139

The new SAT etc now puts more weighs on reading comprehension and make math less important, which further weakens the willingness to study math, so the Asians(who are traditionally better at math) will not dominate the SAT high scores. As a country this will only make math education much worse, it should be another way around, otherwise, you can not compete in the STEM field, which is crucial for future.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/sea...

Chinese Tsinghua Univ beats MIT to take the top seat at USNews for engineering. I think this is the second time in a row.

As far as I know, Chinese universities took the best students without considerations of gender at all. They do have AA for races but it is minimal.

USA is moving towards to AA-for-school-and-workplace, I hope this will make more people happier with high self-esteem, in the meantime you lose your competitiveness quickly.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#228

Post by teh_klev »

lotyrin wrote: post #216
js2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the article isn't really about math... math is just used to illustrate how poorly we teach in America, and then talks about the reasons why, primarily that we do a really poor job of teaching teachers. Some key quotes: - It wasn’t the first time that Americans had dreamed up a better way to teach math and then failed to implement it. …The trouble always starts when teachers are told to put innovative ideas int…

I know this is off topic, but I wonder why we use Japanese like this. jugyo = lesson, kenkyu = research. If we absolutely must make it into a proper noun, some kind of brand to sell, how about just "Lesson Research" instead of Jugyokenkyu? But really, it seems it would be better to just say it plain: "Japan's educators research their lesson plans through a process where..." "Without performing research around their l…

In the same way we don't say "signboard" or "billboard" but say "Kanban"? Or for the same reason we say "jujitsu" but not "gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding art or technique".(see also Judo: "gentle way").

I'll take a stab at this though. The use of "jugyokenkyu" most likely expresses not just a "lesson plan", but also a philosophy and system that a literal translation to "lesson plan" can't express.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#229

Post by lotyrin »

teh_klev wrote: post #228
lotyrin wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is off topic, but I wonder why we use Japanese like this. jugyo = lesson, kenkyu = research. If we absolutely must make it into a proper noun, some kind of brand to sell, how about just "Lesson Research" instead of Jugyokenkyu? But really, it seems it would be better to just say it plain: "Japan's educators research their lesson plans through a process where..." "Without performing research around their l…

In the same way we don't say "signboard" or "billboard" but say "Kanban"? Or for the same reason we say "jujitsu" but not "gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding art or technique".(see also Judo: "gentle way"). I'll take a stab at this though. The use of "jugyokenkyu" most likely expresses not just a "lesson plan", but also a philosophy and system that a literal translation to "lesson plan" can't expres…

Definitely. But if the Japanese usage is as a proper noun, you can translate it and still use it as such. We do this with native words all the time - lower-case agile vs capital Agile, for instance. The question isn't whether or not we should proper-noun-ify things as much as whether or not we are served by doing so with a foreign word -- the meaning of which isn't immediately clear to an uninitiated audience.

Re: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

#230

Post by nav123 »

nemo44x wrote: post #47

Math is hard work. I was bad at math. I went to college a couple years after I graduated high school where I made little effort to challenge myself. But after figuring things out, at 20 I decided I wanted to do computer science as I enjoyed some of the programming skills I picked up (C++ of all things!). I was very unprepared for the math part of it and it was hard. I tested into a remedial math level and when I look…

How did you do it?
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