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The reality is that the US still turns out a lot of bright minds, but when ranked against the world we fall short because we tend to test everybody where many other countries do not.
That's not a valid assertion.
"The goal of TIMSS was to investigate achievement in mathematics and science from a cross-cultural perspective. The international study is based on a cross-sectional sample of three age groups: (I) students from the two adjacent grades with the largest proportion of 9-year-olds, (II) students from the two adjacent grades with the largest proportion of 13-year-olds, and (III)students in the final gradeof upper secondary school in the general and vocational education system." - MPI for Human Development: Educational Research
"The concern that all U.S. students are being compared unfairly to elite students abroad runs deepest in regard to the last year of secondary school. The conventional wisdom is that in some other countries only the best students are still in school at that age. In fact, to the extent that biases can be identified in the population III samples, most of them should have favored the United States. For example, the United States has proportionally fewer 17 year olds enrolled than the average of other TIMSS countries with enrollment data. Since students who drop out presumably tend to be lower achievers, this phenomenon may enhance the relative rank of the United States." - Global Perspectives for Local Action: Using TIMSS to Improve U.S. Mathematics and Science Education by the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education Global Perspectives for Local Action: Using TIMSS to Improve U.S ... - Committee on Science Education K-12 and Mathematical Sciences Education Board, Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Resea
Teaching estimation is not a dumbing down of the curriculum. It an expansion of the skills we are expecting our students to master
An expansion, yes, but NOT a substitution for basic math instruction. Read my post on instructional method limitations. The constructivist method of teaching estimation skills must occur subsequent to the mastery of the math skills involved in such estimation techniques, or little to no math skills will be learned by the majority of the population.
An expansion, yes, but NOT a substitution for basic math instruction. Read my post on instructional method limitations. The constructivist method of teaching estimation skills must occur subsequent to the mastery of the math skills involved in such estimation techniques, or little to no math skills will be learned by the majority of the population.
I agree. One cannot estimate without first mastering the skills necessary to estimate. That said, it has been my experience that elementary school children are taught and expected to master the traditional algorithms, but they are now expected to use approximation to determine whether their answers make sense. They are not being taught estimation as a replacement for exactitude. I've witnessed plenty of math fact drills over the past decade or so to know that they are still being taught in elementary school, and that appears to be where all the controversy over CC arises, right?
I agree. One cannot estimate without first mastering the skills necessary to estimate. That said, it has been my experience that elementary school children are taught and expected to master the traditional algorithms
Actually, they're not. Elementary math for a long time now has been taught via various ineffective methods (constructivist Everyday Math, etc.). Traditional math algorithms are out. Making up one's own explanation for how one gets one's answer is in, and it doesn't matter if the answer is wrong.
The evidence? The U.S.'s declining rank in math on international comparisons.
Actually, they're not. Elementary math for a long time now has been taught via various ineffective methods (constructivist Everyday Math, etc.). Traditional math algorithms are out. Making up one's own explanation for how one gets one's answer is in, and it doesn't matter if the answer is wrong.
The evidence? The U.S.'s declining rank in math on international comparisons.
Then I suppose all those math fact worksheets were a figment of my imagination.
Back to estimation. Is it the opinion of previous posters that estimation does not belong in an elementary school math curriculum? Because I'm not sure how a fourth grader faced with long division would handle it without first having mastered estimation.
Then I suppose all those math fact worksheets were a figment of my imagination.
Probably just very local. Many school districts don't teach or require their students to learn math facts. That's the entire point of the constructivist curricula that has been used since the 1990s, and now CC. You don't memorize math facts, you figure out an answer to a mathematical problem and explain how you did it.
Quote:
Back to estimation. Is it the opinion of previous posters that estimation does not belong in an elementary school math curriculum?
Estimation belongs as an expansion of already acquired knowledge, NOT in place of it.
^^^Truth. I've posted several times about my area math competitions and area sports clinics and the demographics are utterly reversed.
To echo here - I tutor, primarily math, almost for free (I trade tutoring for the student's mother making me home cooked meal). Every one I work with, go to church with and just know as acquaintance knows I do this, and only Indian or Chinese parents every take me up on the offer. I hear the lament that so_and_so's kid is doing poorly in math, but they never ask me if I can tutor, and most often simply lament how their kid was just not meant to do well at math. A free resource exists, but it's just easier to blame fate and move along.
When I worked in my university's math tutoring center for a year, of the 2-3k students in undergrad math classes, the same 7 or 8 people are the only ones I saw those 30 weeks, during my 12 hours per week, and comparing notes with other tutors, it was the same for them. So sure, less than a quarter percent of all undergrad math students were having any problems? Yeah, not if grades were any indicator, because in just two classes I assisted with grading, I know that the vast majority were struggling. Answer most commonly given - I am dumb at math. And everyone just nods their heads and agrees. Again, easier to just blame fate, get the annoying math/science requirement completed with as little effort as possible, move along.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
I cannot tell you how many times in my life I've heard....
"Wow, Bob has put in a lot of hard work and dedication to get so good at basketball (or football etc.)"
and
"Wow, you are so lucky to be so smart."
They just don't get it.
Oh, but fortunately we have the government and others out there to whine about how the STEM fields are racist because it has the same demographic imbalances you see when you go to math competitions and sports clinics. Then when you turn on the NCAA tourney you see the opposite demographics except they aren't getting a billion in federal funding to "fix the problem".
As math major, golfer and (very novice, beginner) guitar player, I know there is no such thing as "natural talent." Yeah, tall people are generally better suited to being NBA players, but for the most part, every person who is deemed "a natural" at something has simply put in a lot more work at being so natural, and the person making the claim is trying to find an excuse to not start the laborious process getting good at anything typically requires. Tall alone does not make you a basketball player, playing 1,000s of hours of basketball does. Having long arms and great flexibility does not make you a great golfer, hitting hundreds of 1,000s of golf balls does. And minus the occasional prodigy/savant Ramanujan that comes along every 50 years or so, being intelligent doesn't make you good at math....doing a ton of math problems does.
But people do not like to accept the fact that it is not cruel fate that stops them from achieving, but straight up lack of effort. Much easier to just convince oneself that only the "naturally" talented can do a thing, that way no further thought must go into why one cannot do a thing that others can. As I said before, math is just the first time most people experience this form of quitting, but normally not the last.
Back to estimation. Is it the opinion of previous posters that estimation does not belong in an elementary school math curriculum? Because I'm not sure how a fourth grader faced with long division would handle it without first having mastered estimation.
Long division is a simple, straight forward loop algorithm of multiplication and subtraction. And regardless of how many digits are being divided by how many digits, the "guess" at each step isn't a guess, if one was required to master the multiplication tables (as I did) to 15x15. The first two digits of the divisor and the first 2-3 digits of the current step of the dividend remove the guess, if one knows their multiplication tables anyway. But it isn't constant guessing or guessing at all. It is knowing multiplication and subtraction and alternating between the two.
Long division is the first experience most people get with the concept of the loop algorithm, and they don't even know they are learning some CS fundamentals while learning it.
Then I suppose all those math fact worksheets were a figment of my imagination.
Back to estimation. Is it the opinion of previous posters that estimation does not belong in an elementary school math curriculum? Because I'm not sure how a fourth grader faced with long division would handle it without first having mastered estimation.
I already answered the latter part of this, that knowing multiplication tables totally removes the guess from long division. But to the first part of the quoted above - even with national standards being pushed, not everyone adopts them, and places like CA who did adopt constructivist (reform) math in the 90s have since gone back to traditional computational/algorithm math after seeing how disastrous the NCTM crap like reform/constructivist/Mathland was for students later on in their education.
The Common Core does not mandate those reform methods, it simply allows those reform methods to be used as evaluation of whether a student learned math or not. The examples I linked are reform math that in the 60s and 70s was called "new math" and became all the rage in the late 80s. My school (70s), thank the Blessed Mother, used traditional, rigorous algorithm math instruction, not that new age nonsense, so I was spared the forced mathematics retardation that we inflict on a lot of today's children.
But it is still local in a lot of respects, so you may be fortunate to be in a school system that hasn't lost its collective mind in Hippie La La Land yet.
Back then, X = Ought. - "ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: perhaps from an ought, by wrong division of a nought;"
It was when I was learning long division that I oftentimes incurred wrong division.
Many Chinese-Americans learn wrong division.
Last edited by Hyperthetic; 03-24-2014 at 01:23 PM..
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