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i disagree i think many children cant do math that well due to simple genetics. As other countries in asia increase there ability to buy books they are more genetically prone to be better at math regardless of environment even if you adopt an Asian kid they will more likely be better at math than your biological kid.
also the the united states has also increased its population the most in the Hispanic community who many do not speak English much less are great at math that should have a huge number in the drop of mathematics/science scores.
elephant in the room is the more Asian the area the better the math the more Caucasian/Asian the better the science. Wherever the demographic numbers drop so will the IQ and the test scores this is all over the world. You cant decipher math/science skills between one individual to another because of race that is impossible, but when talking about millions of people you can bet the house on it.
we also except more females into college than we use to. And college use to have more male population. Females generally even at early ages of 5 years old, then on SAT scores and GRE scores every since they were created score significantly lower in the math/science sections of test while doing just as good on verbal sections. This demographic change also shifted our scores of college students not getting math/science degrees due to the decrease in male percentage students. Again this is not every female but the majority
we look for answers of things we are doing wrong but when the answers aren't egalitarian and politically correct our society wont even entertain the idea.
i disagree i think many children cant do math that well due to simple genetics. As other countries in asia increase there ability to buy books they are more genetically prone to be better at math regardless of environment even if you adopt an Asian kid they will more likely be better at math than your biological kid.
The reasons that Asians do better at math and science is not entirely due to genetics. Asians believe that it is hard work rather than ability that makes people good at things, so they are willing to put in the work.
It is not true that an adopted Asian child will be better at math and science than your biological child.
Asian languages are math friendly. This is another reason for the superiority in math that often occurs.
As English speakers, we may be unaware, but the English language is perhaps the most odd and irrational language around. Particularly with numbers, in English, after ten the teens each have an unique name and each tenth following that gets their own name. In fact, one would need to learn 28 unique words to count up to 100 in English while in any Chinese dialect, Japanese, or Korean, one only needs to learn 11 – one through ten and one hundred.
In Asian languages like Chinese, numbers after ten follow a precise logic. Eleven in Mandarin is shi yi or ten-one, twelve is ten-two, thirteen is ten-three, and so forth. When we get to fifty-nine, the logic continues, five-ten-nine. Five tens and a nine, 59. The internal logic in counting numbers with Asian languages results in kids who speak Asian languages are able to count beyond a hundred before English speakers can even count to 40. But the Asian language advantage doesn’t stop in counting. Remember those dreaded fractions? In English we would read 3/4 as three-fourths. But for languages like Chinese, 3/4 is literally translated, “out of 4 parts, take 3″.
If you have ever seen an American two year old learning to count, you will recognize that s/he often uses the Chinese patterns before s/he learns the extra names of the numbers.
If all students excell in all subjects, then everyone should be getting Cs.
No. What they do then is start making the tests more and more ridiculously detail-oriented as to tease out the top from the bottom.
That's what they did in med school. Otherwise, they would have 200 valedictorians per class. They had 200 people who had spent their lives being perfect in all their classes. So they kept upping the ante. Going beyond mastery and starting to get all ridiculous with details (some irrelevant and some not) just to get separation between the students' grades.
You know what's wild? In India, they post my cousins' grades in the newspaper. For big tests. Now there is some pressure and accountability!
The question isn't why can't they understand it, the question is why do people tell themselves they can't and make mental blocks?
The same reason people defeat themselves in any number of other contexts, I'd imagine. I know plenty of people who play the, "Oh, I'm a terrible speller," card. Really? What is your reason for not learning how to improve? Do you just decide that you lack the ability to remember how words are spelled? That's a mental block.
People convince themselves all the time that they "can't cook," "can't change a tire," "aren't public speakers," "can't dance," "aren't musical," etc. All of these things can be learned, if there is desire and motivation to do so. If people aren't interested in these things and don't find them to be valuable, they won't put in the time and effort to learn them. The same is true for math/science. You have to be interested in it to be motivated to put in the time to learn it.
I think that more than it being an issue of most people not having an APTITUDE for math and science topics is that there are simply a number of people who aren't especially INTERESTED in them, and haven't any real motivation to study them beyond that which is required. I can understand this, as I never found math to be very gripping (although various sciences always fascinated me, and continue to do so). My SO is the opposite...he's endlessly fascinated by mathematical concepts. Never piqued much interest on my end, though.
Last edited by TabulaRasa; 05-18-2012 at 07:51 AM..
50 years ago, American students were overall better in math and science on the world scale than they are today. The schools were also much more amicable toward religion. Today, homeschoolers and privately schooled children do much, much better in science and math than public school kids. I know lots of creationist kids who are going to college on scholarship, majoring in some pretty rigid disciplines, like engineering.
Creationism is not science. It is a religious belief and myth.
The same reason people defeat themselves in any number of other contexts, I'd imagine. I know plenty of people who play the, "Oh, I'm a terrible speller," card. Really? What is your reason for not learning how to improve? Do you just decide that you lack the ability to remember how words are spelled? That's a mental block.
People convince themselves all the time that they "can't cook," "can't change a tire," "aren't public speakers," "can't dance," "aren't musical," etc. All of these things can be learned, if there is desire and motivation to do so. If people aren't interested in these things and don't find them to be valuable, they won't put in the time and effort to learn them. The same is true for math/science. You have to be interested in it to be motivated to put in the time to learn it.
I think that more than it being an issue of most people not having an APTITUDE for math and science topics is that there are simply a number of people who aren't especially INTERESTED in them, and haven't any real motivation to study them beyond that which is required. I can understand this, as I never found math to be very gripping (although various sciences always fascinated me, and continue to do so). My SO is the opposite...he's endlessly fascinated by mathematical concepts. Never piqued much interest on my end, though.
It took me quite a few years to realize that my teachers (including college) didn't quite understand science themselves, especially the most fundamental concepts and ideas of physics and math. This lack of elementary understanding can be buried in the layers of verbosity, abstractions, formulas and carefully worded nonsense and that's what scares a lot of students (who have marginal ability to grasp those ideas).
One can have extremely successful careers in sci&eng without really understanding nuts and bolts behind what you do. That's the beauty of it, you memorize sets of guidelines, design sequences, formulas, etc., and you are in business making reasonable money. Deeper understanding is frequently optional (and lack of it doesn't really affect quality of the product). Everything is specialized, standardized and fragmented, specialists know more and more about less and less, they simply have no time to grasp full picture of what they do or brush up (learn) fundamental basics. With probability >80% I would say that engineers who designed digital circuits for your computer (or rather supplied entry parameters to software that did actual design) absolutely forgot how transistors work, not speaking of fundamentals like energy, temperature, charge, entropy, etc., etc., etc. they never really understood. Yet, your computer works just fine.
Unfortunately, those who can't do teach (and dispense Ritalin prescriptions between classes). And those who teach understand even less than those who do.
Last edited by RememberMee; 05-18-2012 at 01:33 PM..
Originally Posted by Katiana
I think a lot of "math anxiety" (and subsequently science anxiety) starts in elementary school where many of the teachers are not comfortable with math and science, themselves.
I think this is true. I think students also suffer because schools can't decide HOW to teach it.
Quote:
There's a saying among Boomers: "I am a victim of New Math". (It always provokes knowing looks and much rolling of the eyes.) Many schools changed the way they taught math in the 1960's and all it did was result in mass confusion and no one learning long division. My school was one of the schools that taught New Math. Even our parents were throwing up their hands saying WTH is this?!
Yes, some people are "wired" to be better at math. My husband and eldest son can do all sorts of math mentally, where most people would require a calculator or pad and pen. My husband could never understand that most people just can't do mental math the way he can. Neither he nor our elder son, however, like math.
My youngest, now a college freshman, never truly mastered math and struggles with it still. He is a victim of elementary school math.
In my day,the 60's, and in the 80's when my 2 elder kids were learning math, we'd learn things step by step, mastering each step before moving to the next one. We'd learn addition - subtraction - multiplication, etc.
By the time my youngest got to school "testing" had shown that kids learn math better by hopping around from lesson to lesson. The idea was that they wouldn't get bored just doing subtraction, or multiplication or area and perimeter, etc. etc.
I used to help my youngest with math homework every day, and every time he'd begin to grasp the concept A, the class would move on to something else, B, and we'd start all over. By the time they went back A my son had forgotten everything, because he had never fully understood it in the first place.
I spent hours on the computer every week trying to understand new math concepts so I could tutor my son, and must confess, with all the going back and forth, I could never totally grasp the what and how myself.
And algebra.......oh my God!
I did finally find some DVDs on Netflix that did help. My son said this particular teacher explained things in a way he actually understood.
I spoke to a couple of math teachers in my son's elementary and high schools, and they agreed that although the new way of teaching math helped some kids, others, like my son, slid off the other end.
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the real answer
