Kate Taylor over at The New York Times is reporting on the backlash from the recent poor showing of New York students on the Algebra Regents examination. Passing this examination is required for students to graduate from high school in New York.
From the article (semi-paywalled: Search for article title in the your favorite search engine and click on the result to bypass):
In 2013, concerned that high school graduates were not prepared for college, the State Board of Regents revamped the exams students must pass to graduate, starting with the English and Algebra I tests. The board decided that, where previously students needed a score of only 65 on a 100-point scale to pass, in coming years they would have to score at a “college- and career-ready” level, which this year was deemed to be a 79 in English, and a 74 in Algebra.
The result: On the 2015 Algebra I exam, which was supposed to align with the new Common Core curriculum, the percentage of students passing fell to 63 percent, down nine points from the old exam last year. And less than a quarter of students scored at the college-ready level. In New York City, which has a concentration of poor and minority students, only 52 percent of students passed the 2015 exam, down from 65 percent the previous year on the old exam. Just 16 percent reached the “college-ready” level.
[Continued after the break.]
[...] Algebra is a stumbling block not only for high school students, but also for students in community colleges, many of whom founder in algebra-based remedial courses. Public colleges hoping to increase their graduation rates have been asking whether algebra should be the default math course. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, working with Dr. Treisman, has created courses in statistics and quantitative reasoning that are meant to be both more engaging and more practical for many students than college-level algebra. Close to 50 community colleges now offer the courses.
In “The Math Myth: And Other Stem Delusions,” to be published by the New Press in March, Andrew Hacker, an emeritus professor of political science at Queens College, argues that it is wrongheaded to force all students to study algebra.
But Dr. Treisman said that allowing students to graduate from high school without taking algebra “would dramatically reduce their options.” And he said there was value in making students pass an algebra exam to graduate, as well.
Should algebra be required for graduation from high school? Should extra resources be devoted to ensuring that students learn these concepts and methods? What's the value in doing so?
I say that learning algebra provides improved numeracy, enhances abstract thinking and opens the door to critical thinking skills. What say you, Soylentils?
As usual, Heinlein had it right, IMHO:
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
Related Stories
The good news is that any student's negative perception of math can dramatically change, Boaler [professor of mathematics education at Stanford Graduate School of Education] said. In her recent summer math camp for seventh- and eighth-grade students, which can be seen in this video, students learned to enjoy math and they improved their achievement dramatically through open, creative math lessons.
Boaler works with Stanford psychology Professor Carol Dweck to deliver growth mindset interventions to teachers and students. A "growth mindset" is built around the idea that most basic abilities can be developed and expanded upon through dedication and hard work. By contrast, with a "fixed mindset," people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits.
"When we open up mathematics and teach broad, visual, creative math, then we teach math as a learning subject instead of as a performance subject," Boaler said.
Boaler offers resources on how to develop growth mindsets for math learners. Her new Stanford center, youcubed, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides free mindset math lessons that were used in over 100,000 schools last fall. The website has attracted millions of visitors in the last month alone. She also has online courses for teachers and parents and for students to help them teach and learn math.
When schools teach young people growth mindset mathematics, Boaler said, the outcome is that the subject becomes deeper and filled with more connections, so students enjoy it more and achieve at higher levels.
A new approach to teaching math is most welcome.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:43PM
Never mind algebra/math. Is high school diploma necessary? Why? What does it mean to gave high school diploma?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:19PM
Its the same as a bachelors, vocationally its proof you can show up on time most of the time and complete a long complicated project, tolerate and navigate bureaucracy.
There is some socioeconomic stuff, like you can't say "no race XYZ need apply" but you can say "needs HS diploma" even if its not true, then combine that with massive racial disparities in graduation rates, basically the same game is played at bachelors degree level.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:33PM
What does it mean to gave high school diploma?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:27PM
Couldn't see a simple typo due to g key being next to h key? You morons must be one of them recent college graduates now that everyone's college-edumacated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:55AM
They need to do way instain mother>
i am truley sorry for your lots
(Score: 5, Touché) by physicsmajor on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:01PM
What the actual fuck. This is absolutely the wrong way to go. We need more math, not less. In the British system every last person who graduates from high school knows what we call calculus - differentials, integrals, logarithms, and exponential functions. Look up the core A-level math curriculum for yourself.
By definition, in order to do the above, you have to know algebra. Oddly, they don't seem to have an epidemic of high school dropouts due to an impossible math curriculum. We should adopt that wholesale; our system has completely failed.
A heck of a lot of the major problems in American and worldwide society come down to a complete lack of understanding of exponential functions, and these are rooted in calculus. Endless growth is physically impossible; inflation at current levels robs the working public of 50% of their earning power over their lifetimes; increases in healthcare costs above inflation will run away. These are just a few examples. It's all exponential, easily understandable. The public doesn't grok it. Thank our math education.
When I TA'd physics courses in college, I was always astounded at how much more difficult the non-calc based ones were. Because they denied themselves access to the math designed to accurately describe reality, I had to constantly research what sort of backward approximations they had to use to obtain the wrong answer the wrong way, with more work.
Far from removing algebra(!), everyone should be learning calculus.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:14PM
If you all know calc, what do you use for a filter class, or does the UK not do the filter thing?
On this side of the pond we let everyone in, then 50% of the class drops some phase of calc, but once you get past calc the rest of the classes are pretty easy. So the concept of the filter class.
OChem is used for pre-meds as a filter which pisses off the people trying to actually go into chemistry not just get into med school (I guess pre-med doesn't take calc?) I would imagine in a like way that real mathematicians get pissed off at all the engineers and CS guys taking up valuable oxygen in "their" major's calc class.
WRT the financial stuff, people are very good at not understanding anything that interferes with their paycheck.
I took non-calc physics while still in high school and calc physics at uni and I agree, non-calc seemed to mostly be an exercise in memorizing magic formulas.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:00PM
non-calc seemed to mostly be an exercise in memorizing magic formulas.
Even something like trig is just that. Once I got to calc 2 I realized 'wait a second all those freeking formulas I do NOT have to memorize them anymore'. I can derive them so long as I can describe the line. I was *so* mad. I spent literally 15 years memorizing formulas. In one semester I could forget them all.
It is sort of like the first few weeks of calc. They teach you this bizarre way of doing it. Then you *never* use it again.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:11PM
Call me cynical, but to me that reads as "We know 50% of first years can't actually make it through a first year class, but they'll drop out and we get to keep at least some if not all of their tuition". Aided and abetted by student loan programs, of course.
I happen to be on this side of the pond, where a second-term "weeding out" class for engineering had a 75% failure rate on the first attempt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:51PM
I'm in one of the newfangled tech-oriented degree programs. They popped up about 10 years ago when businesses realized CS doesn't give the business and standards background necessary for admin and systems engineering work fresh out of college.
Our version of weeding out is not a particular class but a set of classes. The core four networking classes kill most people's desire to continue but the main hurdle is the diversity of classes that must be taken simultaneously.
Stats, accounting, project management, and upper-level writing in one semester has upwards of 90% of people switching to either business or CS depending on what portion they are good at.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Dr Ippy on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:09PM
"In the British system every last person who graduates from high school knows what we call calculus - differentials, integrals, logarithms, and exponential functions. Look up the core A-level math curriculum for yourself."
Not actually true. In the UK it's quite possible to do no maths at all after about age 16. This is because we specialise into arts or sciences at an earlier age than in the US.
Those who wish to study STEM subjects at university have to take A-level maths, but everyone else can totally avoid it. And they do!
Understanding of basic maths is no better in the UK than in the US. In fact to most people, maths = simple arithmetic. This is what journalists seem to believe too, as they came up through the arts side. Even so-called Science Editors seem innumerate.
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(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:43PM
What the actual fuck. This is absolutely the wrong way to go. We need more math, not less.
Agreed, but maybe requiring one certain subset of Math is the wrongheaded part. It's well known that people learn differently. I personally struggled with algebra a bit. Then I took geometry and it all became crystal clear. I think that's because I'm a very visual person.
So maybe requiring Logic OR Algebra OR Geometry would be the smart move (make them equally challenging, of course)...
(Score: 2, Informative) by theluggage on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:54PM
In the British system every last person who graduates from high school knows what we call calculus - differentials, integrals, logarithms, and exponential functions. Look up the core A-level math curriculum for yourself.
Not true - the nearest English* equivalent of "High School Graduation" is the GCSE exam taken at age 16 at what used to be the end of compulsory schooling, and although maths is a compulsory subject there's no calculus there. A-levels are taken at 18 in selected subjects, historically mainly just by students heading to university - they're somewhat broader now, but still only a minority of the population takes A-level Maths. The end of compulsory education is now 18, but the last couple of years are fairly flexible about what constitutes "education" and A-levels aren't compulsory.
The last time there was calculus at age 16 was on the old 'O' level paper, which was only taken by the top 40%-ish of students (maybe less).
*The Education system in Scotland is significantly different. There's calculus on the Scottish "higher" papers but apparently [bbc.co.uk] students can only do it if the question explicitly says "differentiate this and hence find the turning points".
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:49PM
We need more math, not less.
Quantity is irrelevant. What we need is to actually teach math, not just have people mindlessly memorize equations, patterns, and proofs. One-size-fits-all education isn't helping with that, either. However, fixing this mess would (supposedly) be more costly, so rote memorization will continue for some time now. It's just so much easier and cheaper to have awful multiple choice tests that test for little other than whether the test taker memorized some bit of information than it is to actually educate people.
As for being prepared for college, that should not be the goal. Education should be the goal, which might or might not prepare people for college. We should reject the lie that everyone needs to go to college, because that just dumbs down the environment and kills actual education by flooding colleges and universities with losers who have no real interest in education. It seems that many people want to turn all schools into abysmal trade schools; so much for education.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday December 02 2015, @12:39AM
Calculus is mostly useless outside of niche applications. Teach graph theory instead!
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Post-Nihilist on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:03AM
Your funny, graph is niche, calculus is everywhere, even in grah theory. Look at the PDE approach to graph analisys it is quite powerfull : https://people.csail.mit.edu/jsolomon/assets/qual.pdf [mit.edu]
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:45AM
Graph theory concepts get more mileage in informal reasoning. I find that informal use of calculus gets shelved because most of my practical problems admit linear approximations.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:59AM
I would not argue with you about that, calculs call for a formal approach else I get the details wrong and my approximation diverge wildly from what I would have calculated....
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by melikamp on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:30AM
I don't quite know how things are in UK, but I am looking at the current Russian standard now (which, it says, is the minimal mandatory curriculum), and it includes arithmetic, algebra, geometry (!), and elements of logic, combinatorics, probability, and statistics. Calculus is not named there, but looking around I get a feeling that the elements of calculus must be given along the way. From what I remember of the mid-90s (when I was in school there), most people had to get some exposure to derivatives and integrals. As a logician and a college instructor I am strongly biased, but completely agree with you: US schools desperately need a lot more math, and it needs to be taught better.
I am assuming, these are to be taken instead of college algebra... The horror. Statistics without algebra? Statistics for people who never learned to work properly with algebraic expressions and the function notation, mostly ignorant of the way the Cartesian plane works, and hazy on what it means to solve an equation or an inequality? Why not just teach them voodoo right away? I personally feel challenged (as an instructor) when I get to the normal curve and realize that many of my students do not have a good idea about integration. I would argue that schools must have pre-calc or whatever you want to call the exposure to the basics of continuity, and I would not feel silly arguing that. I feel outright silly when I have to make a case for algebra, since without algebra one cannot read or write any math more complicated than 1+2=3. And without understanding the math powering the statistics, how can one acquire any kind of faith in the statistical results? If a sample with α=β=0.001 says one thing and a talking head inside a TV says the opposite, it's 50:50 one of them is right, no?
And we must teach statistics if we want people to navigate the modern world without being taken advantage of at every corner. If we like democracy, we should probably care quite a bit about the electorate's ability to vote correctly on issues which were solved conclusively via statistical testing. Of course, many of the most important issues are not like that, but some are, and it pains me to see when people cast votes based on some rhetorical argument they've heard, in spite of the mounting statistical evidence to the contrary, often against their own interest.
And we must teach physics, or else people will never fully realize that there are some laws in the world that completely overrule all other laws whenever they come in conflict. And these amazing laws are not given in some ancient text scribbled by a madman; they are not written by a monkey circus also known as the legislative body; they are the laws of physics, and most of them are impossible to understand or apply effectively without math, or even to express adequately without algebra.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaganar on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:01PM
Public colleges hoping to increase their graduation rates have been asking whether algebra should be the default math course.
Graduation rates are only a metric of how good you look in advertising. This is not a reasonable basis for deciding where to set the bar, and demeans college degrees further toward "just a piece of paper I pay money for" which is fraudulent. Education should be about the pursuit of knowledge. This is about the pursuit of money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:17PM
These kids will all be competing for the last few jobs which can't be outsourced to another country or done with machines. Which is mostly retail sales and low level clerks and service jobs.
I hardly see the need for much "education" for that.
Also, colleges aren't nearly as picky as they once were, and it is for good reason. Kids that are fearlessly accumulating mountains of student loans don't care if they have to burn a year or more in remedials and the colleges just make more money the longer they have you there.
However, if we accidentally realize that education is the means for making a better citizen and that better citizens are the groundwork for decent society. Well, yes, then maybe they should be held to higher standards.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:28PM
Having taken both geometry and algebra on the way to diffeqs and linear algebra, high school algebra is useless outside STEM fields but I can imagine joe 6 pack actually using skills from geometry, maybe combined with a lame applied trig unit as a kicker.
Yeah yeah I'm sure its going to be eliminated and replaced with study halls or SJW struggle sessions or basket weaving, but a guy can dream.
Its interesting to think about the total sum of human potential wasted, sometimes. Imagine the improvement in the world if everyone said F it and stopped taking violin lessons and going to lacrosse practice and doing advanced math so that 99% of you can be disappointed at not getting into yale and just go to the state school where all you need is an ACT or SAT score in the top 3/4 or so to get auto admission. After you're 19 its even more ridiculous, with tuition reimbursement from work all the schools I went to cared about was do I have money and not need financial aid, oh you have tuition reimbursement, we loves you. Public private don't matter if you're not applying as a high school student and you have money, you're in, its about that easy.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:04PM
Let's search for "STEM"!
University of Puget Sound: "We demand the university provide the Dean of Diversity and Inclusion and Title IX officer with additional staff to aid in the search processes to hire professors from underrepresented identities in disciplines that reside outside of their racial and sexual/gender identity. We demand these professors specifically be hired in STEM, English, Music, Theater, Politics & Government, Business, and International Political Economy which are disciplines traditionally filled by dominant identity groups."
Beloit College: "d. Review the hiring practices of professors of color in the STEM fields."
So they want established STEM professors kicked out and replaced with nonwhite nonmales. Because having a Latino woman teach me how to build a bridge will definitely make my bridge less racist and less sexist.
Dartmouth College: "Increase budget and support for FYSEP and pre-orientation STEM program for students who come from under-resourced backgrounds."
So, more money, but not really for STEM.
Let's search for "cultural"!
"iii. Fall 2018: Establishment of the Multicultural Center"
"An increase of two million dollars to the current annual operational budget for each cultural center."
"2. We want the construction of a multi-cultural center, a safe space for students from underrepresented groups."
"b. Create a Native American Cultural Center (e.g. Stanford University) with a dean, associate director, graduate recruitment and retention coordinator positions in the Native American Program."
"2. We demand the construction of a free-standing Multicultural Center with its own budget from the University to support social and academic programming by Spring 2017. "
"4. Expansion of Multi Cultural Center and addition of a retention center into The Mashouf Wellness Center."
"Examples of oncampus resources that would benefit the off campus community: Perspectives Committee, the Wellness Center, the Multicultural Center, etc."
"8. SMU will allocate new financial resources towards the expansion of the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs into a Multicultural Center."
"3. We demand for an opportunity to congregate and share our experiences in a new TrotterMulticultural Center located on central campus."
And 30ish more of the same. Good thing you don't need math to build a cultural center.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:19AM
I've had a lot to drink, so I can't reliably mod you up (or apparently reliably aim at supermutant enemies in the Commonwealth), but (given the properties of what I've drunk) I thought I'd say this:
Additional staff to aid in the search processes to hire professors from underrepresented identities in disciplines that reside outside of their racial and sexual/gender identity.
SRSLY, WTF!?!?!?! (Increase the repetition of "?!" quite a few more times. This is trivial with Ruby, but I admit I am not familiar with Python.)
I know a Hispanic identifying woman right fucking here! And she's out of a fucking job because of asshole, gaslighting cocaine snorting mangers! Why don't they fucking ask me? I can get them black women, Hispanic women, you fucking (sorry, the explicitive can only properly express my emotional state) name it. I know two Hispanic/Latino women, one who has demonstrated great hacker capability, and another who has demonstrated potential!
Damn, now I feel dirty, like some kind of pimp.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:37AM
asshole, gaslighting cocaine snorting mangers!
Heh, the sanity loss is always interesting. Let me try again, with restoring a few sanity points. naro̢ͦ̋kath sant̥̥͉ak pargon xel'lotat͂̈҉̮̗h pargơ̂̔n̨̲.
asshole, gaslighting cocaine snorting managers!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:36PM
Yes teach them all to code... I mean why would they need to know algebra to code! All you have to do is drag some crap around on the screen to animate your lobster/crab/whatever and bam certified coder! </sarcasm>
Is it not plain how a huge percentage of people are not capable of abstract thinking? Sure the previous generation had no need for abstract thinking in their lives, to them the world was simple. But lets continue pretend like it doesn't matter! It will solve all the problems.
Personally I have no patience for people who cannot comprehend algebra, because they are people who cannot dissect complex issues and think them through but stand at a campaign rally for 10 hours screaming "Do X" like it will magically fix everything. But my problem is there are a lot of such people, so how to keep them from fucking things up without tyrannically oppressing them? We can try coddling them, use breads and circuses, and try to keep them distracted from real work that goes on behind the curtain.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:52PM
It is indeed not plain that a huge percentage of people are not capable of abstract thinking. I feel that's an inference that you don't really substantiate here.
Now, I've noticed a divide in how students approach math class starting at algebra, with one group having no trouble through higher order math like calculus, differential equations, and the like. And the other deciding they "hate math" in high school. And that difference doesn't relate to native ability. Some students try to understand what the mathematics means, the underlying relationships that are beautiful and elegant. The others memorize formulas and algorithms that give them answers, and they burn out and often can't handle problems that are an intersection of two different skills.
I read an essay about how we teach mathematics being wrong, particularly with word problems. That our approach to get students to think mathematically should, ironically, be less mathematical. Rather than the traditional word problems "Hose A takes N time to fill pool Z, Hose B takes M, how long does it take both?" we should ask "You have two hoses, and want to fill a pool, what do you need to know to figure out how long it will take?"
Because while the formula presents a rote problem with a rote solution, the latter encourages deeper consideration of what factors are relevant and why the equations are useful. I'd certainly be interested in whether that approach would help.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:06PM
I'd also agree that math is taught all wrong. My go-to example is the Pythagorean theorem. I remember always wondering just why a² + b² = c², but the numbers always came out correct, so hey. All they tell you is that some really smart guy figured it out in ancient times. Well, how did he figure it out? I was surfing Wikipedia a while back and skimmed the article, and lo and behold, there's a simple, elegant geometric proof I could have easily understood when I was 12.
There's a combination of that, that the teaching methods are all wrong, too much rote and too little discovery and context, but let's go further. I found a scan [wikieducator.org] of Herbert R. Kohl's article I Won't Learn from You [buffalolib.org].
I developed a system of teaching programming where everything is on pencil and paper for roughly the first six weeks or so in response to an insane accusation that the reason I had failed several times before when responding to “I wanna be a programmer!” solely because I was assigned the male gender at birth, combined with observing computerphobia turn an otherwise intelligent person into a dummy when at the keyboard. Of course, this is getting into social “science,” so I can't clone somebody who says “I wanna be a programer” like in a movie and do a proper experiment. It would still be nice to maybe teach a classroom using my method where the electronic computer isn't even involved until we've figured out how to represent information as a series of bits (few rounds of 20 questions usually work, then we expand to integers and character codes for text) and completed a host of exercises (including the venerable fizz buzz) with pseudocode and see how the students do vs. the traditional “Ok, type this in, click the compile button in the tool bar, then go to the debug menu and click on run” approach.
(I'm going on a tangent and trolling a bit so I'll try to wrap it up. One will note that code.org uses the latter, conventional approach that has consistently failed for me, especially with women.)
I feel something similar is happening with algebra. I never ceases to amaze me just the sheer number of people who can't do algebra.
I've also found using props helps. If I adapted my programming method to algebra, I think I'd start with using number and operators written on paper squares and doing something like 7 + 8 = 15, ok, so let's slide some things around (the - would be on the opposite side of the +), we'll move seven to the other side and the rules of the game are we need to flip the operator card over when we move it past the equals, so does 8 = 15 - 7, yep, sure does. Then after establishing the rules of the game, introduce the dread variable x. 7 + 8 = x, what's x, well, looking at our previous work, it must be 15. 7 + x = 15, what's x? Slide things around. x = 15 - 7. Again check the previous work, x must be 8.
It's probably not that original of an idea. I'm could probably find a commercial version of a game resembling that if I dug around at websites that sell teaching supplies or ask at the local brick and mortar teaching supply store. Perhaps somebody can provide an example.
Instead we have these confusing, arbitrary story problems as you'd mentioned. There was another article in addition to I Won't Learn from You I wanted to link, but I can't seem to find it. It was about someone who managed to turn around an entire classroom of adults taking remedial math who weren't not learning, but were simply being confused by the story problems. So she decided to scrap the story problems and instead apply the maths to practical every-day problems like creating a shopping list or planning a victory garden. Also as you'd mentioned, doing it in an open-ended way encourages deeper thinking and a more complete engagement with the subject matter. The student may go somewhere completely unexpected by the lesson plan, which provides a natural way to open the student up to more advanced topics than planned.
Anyway, to tie my rambling together, I think it starts with being put off by stupid story problems, then that evolves into a full-blown case of “math is hard.” Then it's a double-whammy for the not learning phenomenon if math is hard “because I'm a woman” or “because I'm a nigga not an oreo cookie.”
Clarification: I most certainly find those two “becauses” to be abhorrent, but we can't just dance around and ignore some big drivers of the not learning phenomenon.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:09PM
I kind of feel like explaining the why behind things and going so far as to relate it to a practical example goes a long way toward understanding for those who can't immediately "get it". Unfortunately, it seems that usually teaching (at any level, really) is the "grease trap" of general talent in any particular field out there. "Student #217, vomit this rote memorization exercise back to me on blind faith it is true and without knowing why, otherwise you fail." So many medicore teachers, and nowadays the few good ones can't deviate from teaching the standardized tests if they want to keep their jobs.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:10PM
It is indeed not plain that a huge percentage of people are not capable of abstract thinking. I feel that's an inference that you don't really substantiate here.
Being capable of doing something and being good at it are two different things. While all people are capable of abstract thinking, most have a very low upper limit with regards to what they're capable of.
"You have two hoses, and want to fill a pool, what do you need to know to figure out how long it will take?"
That's a good start, but it invites just memorizing the information needed to answer the question. Once you have memorized this sort of pattern, you can simply regurgitate the answer easily. We need to have people explain, in their own words, why you need those things to figure out the answer. That still doesn't mean it's impossible to simply memorize that, but we should take this as far as possible.
I have always felt that we should try these kinds of approaches instead of having people do "Find the missing side to the triangle."-type problems 50 times over.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:45PM
> Andrew Hacker, an emeritus professor of political science at Queens College, argues that it is wrongheaded to force all students to study algebra.
Awww, a political science professor who doesn't like STEM and wants fewer students in it. Next he'll be telling you his old PolSci co-workers could use a new building, and you might as well defund the math department to get the money. I mean, who's gonna learn calculus when students have problems counting past 10 with their shoes on?
But then, he had an article in the NYT three or so years ago that was beating on the same anti-math drum. He's nothing if not consistent.
(Score: 3, Touché) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:55PM
It is a strange and telling world when a teacher declares teaching 'wrong'.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:40PM
Well, given that we've seen a teacher call for the physical assault of someone exercising their 1st amendment rights, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that some of them want learning to be quelled.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:08PM
It's a strange thing. I have a friend who does adjunct work (also in Missouri), and he gets the same way. Very quick to defend the importance of free speech, until someone uses it incorrectly. Gets pissed off to the point of violence. I've known the guy for years too, and this is a relatively recent extreme. I wonder sometimes if there's not such a thing as a thought virus or something.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:36PM
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:55PM
> I wonder sometimes if there's not such a thing as a thought virus or something.
Isn't that the textbook definition of a meme? (As opposed to the non-textbook definition, which is apparently random pictures with writing on them.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:20PM
Samuel Johnson talked about this 250 years ago:
(Score: 4, Informative) by damnbunni on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:52PM
To graduate high school in New York State you need to pass one of the three Regents-level math exams.
Algebra is one of the three. You could take Geometry or Trig instead.
If you want a Regents Advanced degree you need to pass all three. That's mainly useful in getting into colleges in New York.
You can also get a Local Diploma instead of a New York State Regents Diploma. Not all schools offered the required courses for a Regents, and if you flunk the Regents tests but not by much you get a Local Diploma. They all count as a 'high school diploma'.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:53AM
Algebra is education's beef gate. It's the real test for whether or not you're capable of abstract and critical thinking.
In theory, many other subjects also test abstract and critical thinking: science, geometry, calculus, literature. But algebra FORCES it. It's possible to brute force your way through the other subjects, in part due to how those subjects have their homework and exams set up traditionally, but algebra really forces you to think: if you can think, you pass, if you can't, you fail.
Thus, algebra plays an important role in education, especially since we don't teach formal logic anymore or properly teach the scientific method.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeefGate [tvtropes.org]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:02AM
That's very cute, but you're incorrect. It's perfectly possible to memorize facts and procedures ("brute force") in order to pass algebra classes. In fact, that's what a grand majority of students do, because that is how it is taught. "Do this, this, and this to get the right answer when you see a problem like this." Our education system is anything but an education system.
If only rote memorizers would fail. If only.