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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

#51

Post by mehrzad »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #28
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…

> I knew a bright young student who loved learning, but hated school. Of course. Any bright student realizes that school has nothing to do with learning, and furthermore often interferes with it. If schools existed to provide food instead of education, they'd start by lining up all the kids at the beginning of the week and doling out a single crumb to each. And if those crumbs happened to be rat turds instead of crum…

>bright student realizes that school has nothing to do with learning

Depends on the high school and teacher. My high school (and primary schools) had really great teachers and they motivated me to learn things I otherwise would not have. Young people often need a push to learn things that they don't immediately see as useful. Schooling does interfere with learning, but when the stakes are high (getting into a top college) we might as well make the most of it if the privileges are afforded to us.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#52

Post by woud420 »

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…

That is pretty sad.

Having gone through the Quebec education system and now reflecting over it, I can relate to that student. It seems to me (of course I'm biased but...) that french and history were always seen as more way more important than math classes and that is very unfortunate.

I was very lucky to be able to skim through french and math for most of high school. I didn't have an interest in french grammar and thought I was just horrible at math so I just skimmed through it and assumed it was normal. It wasn't until my first year of CEGEP where I had a very good math teacher and a great group of friends help me catch up and discover the beauty and usefulness of math. I would've never thought in high school that I would end up becoming an electrical engineer.

I'm sure I'm not the only one from Quebec with a similar story and from your experience, it doesn't seem like things are going in the right way.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#53

Post by sp332 »

japhyr wrote: post #22
kiba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I had a conversation with a math teacher from another school not too long ago. Both of our schools require a minimum of two credits of math to graduate. My school allows students to spread this credit out developing a deeper understanding of basic math, and beginning algebra. His school requires everyone to receive a passing grade in the equivalent of Algebra 2. The lowest passing score at my school is a B-; at his s…

Sounds like your school is suffering from grade inflation. The average grade used to be a C. (At my college, it still was.) If you tell the teachers that a C is a failing grade, they will not give a C grade to a student who's doing an OK job in their eyes.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#54

Post by hdevalence »

3pt14159 wrote: post #33

McGill is not a great university, but it isn't poor either. It doesn't have the pride that Waterloo (our MIT) or Toronto (our... Columbia? Dartmouth? We don't have a Harvard or Yale) has, but it's solidly mid-tier. And this does not surprise me one bit. I've met engineers failing out during first year at Waterloo that didn't know the second law of thermodynamics ("why don't we put wind turbines on top of electric car…

Somewhat unrelated, but if you had to pick an American school that Toronto would be 'our version of', Harvard is probably a better bet than Columbia:

> from 2000 to 2004 U of T professors produced more publications in the fields indexed by Thomson Scientific than faculty at any other public research university worldwide... the University of Toronto stands second only to Harvard in publications among all private and public universities.

(The numbers are a bit out of date, but Toronto's relative place among Canadian universities is probably unchanged).

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#55

Post by foobarqux »

rayiner wrote: post #24

I think this is the biggest problem: > Some of their answers, like 16 and 18, were lower than any value in our sample. > Some of their answers, like 120, were higher than any value in our sample. It suggests that people not only don't know how to compute the average, they don't have a solid grasp of what the concept even means.

Not necessarily. The respondents may have just applied a mechanical procedure and did not do any kind of sanity check.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#56

Post by akgerber »

aianus wrote: post #14
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...

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?

A Finnish teacher at midcareer appears to make pretty much the average wage in Finland: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/teachers-salaries_tea... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_a...

That said, 'Finland's teachers have high status, professional support, and good pay'[0], teaching 4 hours a day for 190 days a year. One can also presumably make that wage pretty much anywhere in the country, where the wage will go further than private wages that are likely mostly available in higher-cost areas.

So basically, it's a job with an average wage, but high respect and good working conditions.

[0] http://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8063785/finland-schools-educati...

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#57

Post by strictnein »

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...

For [1]: [2] disputes [1]. It states in [2] that it's the top 20% of _high school_ students on page 17. A very different stat. And [1] doesn't say college graduates, it just says graduates.

For [2] It's strange when I see these stats. Where I live in the US, 60-80% of high school teachers (depending on school) have advanced degrees (masters or higher). And that's also a weird stat to cite. What percentage of teachers with 5 years experience graduated in the bottom third? That would be a more important stat.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#58

Post by ashark »

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...

(not disagreeing, just documenting)

The benefits of being a teacher in the US:

- Summers off (mainly a big deal because other professions have very little paid leave, not like the 4-7 weeks + holidays common in Europe)

- Very friendly to taking time off to start a family (thanks in large part to unionization. See previous item for why this is a big deal in the US)

- Health insurance usually good (Only matters because our healthcare system is so broken, see previous two items)

- Decent to good retirement, assuming politicians don't find a way to raid it.

- Consistent job market—most cities have about the same teacher/population ratio. i.e. you don't have to move to a certain place to find a job.

- You get to help kids learn (sort of, see last item below)

A lot of the appeal comes down to gaining European-like worker protections and services (effectively, though from the employer in this case), which is sort of funny. Something rarely considered when promoting mandatory vacation to all workers, universal healthcare, and protections for maternity/paternity leave: these would have a huge (negative) effect on the numbers of people going in to teaching, absent some substantial increases in pay or other perks. Not that that should discourage anyone from promoting those things.

The down side:

- Little respect/demonized by politicians. Relatedly, many benefits above under constant threat.

- Worse pay than a talented person, especially in STEM, could make elsewhere.

- Constant stupid pointless methodology churn that approaches the level experienced in programming, but to less purpose and possibly generating even greater stress.

- Maybe 75% of your work is basically secretarial, and a fair bit of that isn't directly helpful in the classroom (much of it's not helpful at all, to anyone—yay bureaucracy!) which can be discouraging if you went in to the profession because you wanted to teach.

Source: watched my wife go through an elementary ed. major and several years in the classroom, friends with lots of teachers.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#59

Post by woud420 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #33

McGill is not a great university, but it isn't poor either. It doesn't have the pride that Waterloo (our MIT) or Toronto (our... Columbia? Dartmouth? We don't have a Harvard or Yale) has, but it's solidly mid-tier. And this does not surprise me one bit. I've met engineers failing out during first year at Waterloo that didn't know the second law of thermodynamics ("why don't we put wind turbines on top of electric car…

McGill is a great university for a lot of the more "classical" fields.

However, you're right, McGill is far from being the top engineering university in Quebec.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#60

Post by 100timesthis »

jordigh wrote: post #45
3pt14159 wrote: post #33

McGill is not a great university, but it isn't poor either. It doesn't have the pride that Waterloo (our MIT) or Toronto (our... Columbia? Dartmouth? We don't have a Harvard or Yale) has, but it's solidly mid-tier. And this does not surprise me one bit. I've met engineers failing out during first year at Waterloo that didn't know the second law of thermodynamics ("why don't we put wind turbines on top of electric car…

> McGill is not a great university It still ranks pretty high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGill_University#Rankings_and... and they still sell those "Harvard: The McGill of America" sweatshirts every year. https://glasgowuniversityabroad0910.wordpress.com/2009/10/16... That B. Ed. students are coming so unprepared from McGill is quite sad. Its liberal arts programme is also much bigger than Waterloo's, but compar…

>"Harvard: The McGill of America"

mmm and they didn't realize that McGill is in America too? May be the parent post has a point...

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