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The New York Times reports:
As school reformers nationwide push to expand publicly funded prekindergarten and enact more stringent standards, more students are being exposed at ever younger ages to formal math and phonics lessons [...]. That has worried some education experts and frightened those parents who believe that children of that age should be playing with blocks, not sitting still as a teacher explains a shape's geometric characteristics.
But now a new national study suggests that preschools that do not mix enough fiber into their curriculum may be doing their young charges a disservice.
The study found that by the end of kindergarten, children who had attended one year of "academic-oriented preschool" outperformed peers who had attended less academic-focused preschools by, on average, the equivalent of two and a half months of learning in literacy and math.
"Simply dressing up like a firefighter or building an exquisite Lego edifice may not be enough," said Bruce Fuller, the lead author of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. "If you can combine creative play with rich language, formal conversations and math concepts, that's more likely to yield the cognitive gains we observed."
U.S. News published a related piece recently arguing for more attention to preschool curricula and specific content, in addition to other measures of preschool programs. In contrast, a story in the Atlantic last year pointed out new "academic" approaches to preschool may actually be doing more harm than good. And any immediate gains (as cited in the new study) frequently turn out to be temporary. One oft-cited alternative is Finland's approach, which delays formal schooling until age 7, after a year of relatively unstructured government-mandated kindergarten.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:27PM (4 children)
Finland's approach is as far as I know more or less the Scandinavian approach. You can put your offspring into daycare from around the age of 1, they stay there to about 6-7 when they are transferred to basic elementary school (which lasts for 9 years), followed by another 3 years (upper secondary school, in theory this isn't mandatory but in reality it is -- if you don't go you are screwed and can never attend a higher form of education) which is followed by college or university (3+ years).
Mostly daycare or pre-school is just to teach kids to socialize and play -- also to make their parents have to go to actual taxpaying jobs instead of staying at home with their offspring. They learn basic things but there are no classes or anything, things that normally then get repeated again in a more formal setting once they start elementary school such as the alphabet and numbers.
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Someone here mentioned the importance of calculus and how we should teach that to 10 year old. Fuck that. Calculus is a relic from a pre-computing age. Just put all the effort into algebra, as noted you can solve calculus problems by just adding little slivers or boxes -- which in turn is where algebra is superior. Having taken enough math at university to last a life time I can tell that most students are okay with Algebra -- but the failure rate in classical calculus is disturbingly high.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:45PM
Sometimes (many times?) failure rates in courses like Calc II are intentional to "thin the herd" heading into majors that require higher maths. Unfortunately, the way these weed-out courses are executed often has little correlation to actual ability in the topic. Sure, people who are less mathematically inclined will drop at higher rates, but my Calc II experience was a giant pile of memorization work - very similar to some pre-med courses.
I don't think it "hurts" anyone to learn that integrals can be performed analytically instead of always doing them via summation methods. I've actually used analytic methods at least three, maybe four times since I graduated (in 1989).
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:09PM (2 children)
Doesn't seem to working with Fourier analysis (frequency components in input), control theory (la place), optimization problems, dynamic processes etc. So while there might be too much math. It's still needed to get a grip on some foundation. Implementing say a ADSL modem is hard without some of the math mentioned.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:51PM (1 child)
It's not a matter of there being no use for calculus, there is. But as the starter thread said -- we are not going to teach calculus to 10 year old kids. If they are to be taught math lets at least spend the time and effort on something that will or might be useful for the most of them -- and if we have to pick that would be algebra. There is just very little use for them to know about Fourier analysis/series/transform, Taylor-Maclaurin series etc. That said if you do manage to master all aspects and knowledge of Fourier transform then you'll probably be employed forever.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:12AM
10 year old kids are taught plain four +, -, *, / math operators etc and no algebra nor calculus? But there has to be an option to get the foundation on the path to calculus.
Regarding Fourier transform, I think it takes more for eternal employment.