Why Johnny can’t do math (Update: or English.)
So, why can’t Johnny do math? Because Johnny’s teacher can’t even do fractions:
For kids to do better in math, their teachers might have to go back to school.
Elementary-school teachers are poorly prepared by education schools to teach math, finds a study being released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Math relies heavily on cumulative knowledge, making the early years critical.
The study by the nonpartisan research and advocacy group comes a few months after a federal panel reported that U.S. students have widespread difficulty with fractions, a problem that arises in elementary school and prevents kids from mastering more complicated topics like algebra later on.
The report looked at 77 elementary education programs around the country, or roughly 5% of the institutions that offer undergraduate elementary teacher certification.
It found the programs, within colleges and universities, spend too little time on elementary math topics…
…Francis Fennell, the past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, said the report fails to examine the math instruction students receive while attending community colleges, where many elementary-school teachers start their higher education.
He also said the study’s authors should have surveyed teachers to get their views on how well prepared they were to teach math.
Fennell, who instructs teacher candidates in math at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., said a common area of weakness among his students is fractions — the same subject the national math panel described as a weak area for kids.
“Part of the reason the kids don’t know it is because the teachers aren’t transmitting that,” he said.
Another part of the reason? Too many teachers are too busy bloviating about the self-esteem benefits of Everyday Math to bother with the basics.
1 + 1 = I feel good about math, so who cares?
_____________
UPDATE (See-Dubya): Meanwhile, English high school teachers want you to know that correct spelling counts, even if you’re having a grumpy day. (H/T Doubleplusundead.)
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Hey even I know 2+2 is 5, Give em a break…
One tenth of a dollar is still 25 cents according to the IRS so, what is the problem?
look at ANY college’s requirements for an elementary education major. the requirement is something called “math for liberal arts” (and it’s called something different at other colleges) that’s a math class that’s a level below college algebra. in fact, from that math class, you can not move on to other math classes, because that math track stops there. so, elementary education majors, unless that retake a non credit class, can not move on to take other math classes if they wanted to if they chose the ‘math for liberal arts’ track.
schools replace those math classes with math theory classes – not to be confused with mathematical theory. these math theory classes are more like social science classes – they focus more on why children don’t learn math (because it can’t possibly be the teachers!). these classes are not found under the heading of ‘math’ but in ‘education’.
I can personally relate to this issue …
One of my daughters had tons of trouble in high school with math …
She would ask questions in class and all she got was the teacher pulling out the teacher edition of the math book … then putting up the same example again and repeating verbatim what she said originally … proving the teacher was not math trained and could not explain things on her own …
Then at home I would spend considerable time going over the book to figure out what they were trying to teach … (first I had to muddle through the fact that every math operation I learned 45 years ago now has a new name) … once I figured it out and explained it she had no problem …
This particular daughter went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude from ASU … so obviously it was not that she couldn’t learn … but her high school math teachers were horrible … and probably was part of why she became a teacher herself …
As a computer programmer, I took some math in college and believe myself to be better at it than most people.
Once, I considered getting in to education, so I looked at the types of courses taught at education schools. Not being a touchy-feely, everything-is-therapy, self-esteem uber alles kind of person, I ran like hell in the other direction after that brief look.
Thus the rule of thumb: The people kinds of people who like math study math, or computers, or engineering, or physics or something similar. This unfortunately leaves math education in the hands of people who never wanted anything to do with math and who will never have much of an understanding of it.
But the “Teachers College” certainly knows how to (allegedly) plagiarize and (allegedly) plant phony nooses, now don’t they?
I am sure lgm will chime in on this!!
If his math is as accurate as his understanding of politics…
I don’t know how they’re teaching math these days. I remember the rote memory exercises we had to do with multiplication and division tables up to the number 12. I did hear that nowadays that is considered useless. However, if I remember how to add and subtract fractions correctly you sort of need to know those tables.
They need to go back to the old fashioned ways. Some things are always right. And it needs to start with the teachers.
#6
And let’s not forget domestic terrorist (and FOB, Friend of Barack) Bill Ayers, also a professor of education. But hey, who needs fractions? It’s not like anyone builds 1/2 of a bomb.
Math skills are sorely lacking. As a professor of chemistry, I’m seeing fewer and fewer students with necessary algebra skills to solve problems in general chemistry. I’m not talking about calculus here– I’m talking about solving for X.
As Janis Joplin sang, “You know you got it if it makes you feel good.”
Reason 4589 why we homeschool our children. The public school system is seriously flawed and broken. The parochial and private schools are becoming more financially out of reach.
Hey, you know what Barbie said, Math ith tough!!
Children who learn to do all math problems on a calculator don’t learn anything except how to operate a calculatror. How long have calculators been used in schools? I would guess that’s when kids started having trouble with math.
Simple math as taught by the Madrassahs for the left (Our school system) is as follows: If 5+8 could be a color what color would it be?
No. The reason the kids don’t know is the teachers don’t know either.
Geez. “Transmitting”? How about “teaching”.
mchristian
mention using a slide rule and people look at you and say “huh??? what’s a slide rule???” … they have no idea what you are talking about and look at you like you just came from some other planet …
I’ve been to some of the most rigorous engineering schools in the nation and I even have a degree in economics. I live and breathe math every day of my life. Sad to read this.
If people wanted to take charge of their public education system and truly fix it, they’d begin a ballot initiative to give parents the option of taking their child’s cut of the tax monies that goes to their school and putting it towards another schooling option, whether it be homeschooling, private school, etc. Money talks, and until schools are threatened with the loss of a child and their money, no change will take place.
Seriously, teachers and administrations have no fear of parents. Why should they? What power does a citizen have? The school still gets the money, and they know that the parents don’t really wish to pay taxes that go to education and pay for their kids’ education on top of that.
Well Duh, that is because they are suppose to be taught that in high school and not colleges or universities.
If you control the children, you control the future.
They will not get their mitts on my little ones. If you want your kidz to get a solid education anymore, you need to look at the alternatives. Public education ain’t what it used to be.
public school education…
I’m a retired math teacher from rural North Carolina. I tried to fight the teacher’s union from the inside for years to no avail.
The most important thing I did for the last ten years I taught was to do a “family tutoring”. I’ll tutor your kid, but you have to come with them and I’ll teach you and them and you’ll be able to help your kids at home.
I offered to do the same thing for two schools near my home for free after I retired. They turned me down because the teachers were afraid they would have to do a little extra work giving me information on what they had been doing in class.
The “Product” of Liberal ideology and Teacher’s unions.
Why bother to learn math? Any kind of job where knowledge of math is required will be outsourced/H1B’d anyway…
It isn’t just math. I’ve heard “teachers” saying “ain’t got no.” My sister once was arguing with a schools superintendent. He was trying to say that Nevada didn’t border California.
I would like to send my children to a private school if I can afford it.
Nevada borders New Zealand right?
/liberal teacher mode off.
I think this will explain it all:
Witness the fact that NOT ONE the scientists and engineers that got us to the moon in the 60’s ever had a calculator in their grade scrool classrooms back in the 40’s and 50’s, (let alone a computer on their desk!). More importantly – neither did those kids who went on to INVENT the computer and the calculator.
I got my first calculator in my second year at college in 1972. Even though it did save me some arithmetic here and there in the civil engineering courses I was taking at the time like statics, stress mechanics and surveying – the professors tried very hard then to design quizzes and tests for the use of a slide rule and often for correct answers to come out to nice even numbers. The important thing then was recognizing the problems and knowing how to solve them – the precision of the means by which answers were obtained was not important, (that was a whole separate topic in engineering anyway complete with it’s own mini course back then).
My first ‘large’, (ok, it was big to me back then!), project using the CDC 360 computer at Northeastern was to write a Fortran program to take the data from a traverse we conducted in the Back Bay for our surveying course lab and calculate the enclosed area and the closure error. Using the computer wasn’t required for the lab but my professor encouraged me to try it when I asked him about it. I wrote it on paper then punched it out on a couple hundred IBM cards for batch execution. It worked out very well by the way. I switched to mechanical engineering the next year and I’ve been using computers and calculators ever since then. In one of my machine design courses the professor allowed us to bring one sheet of equations to the final exam, (some were big suckers you wouldn’t have had a prayer trying to memorize). Everybody had calculators by then in 1975 and I had a new programmable TI SR-52. I asked for and received permission from the professor to pre-program my single hand-written-sheet’s worth of equations onto magnetic strips and read them into the calculator during the test. Long story short; I walked out of the 2 hour exam after about 45 minutes after having run each problem twice and I aced the exam. But I was probably as or more familiar with those equations than anyone else in the class because I spent days programming that calculator to be certain I was getting correct answers…
If you had asked me or any other engineering student why we owned a calculator back then we would have answered with many technical observations. Ask a grade schooler today the same question and they’ll reply, “Well, DUH! They’re required for the class ya know!”
One of the biggest mistakes in grade school math and science education today is requiring the use of calculators and computers. We are teaching kids to push buttons; teaching them to use a machine – not how to design a better one. Al Gore’s ‘computer on every desktop’ is sucking away precious education dollars for what? To learn how to use MS software that most of us oldsters all learned to use on our own? To go on internet to post crap in my-space? I got into an argument with my son’s 9th grade algebra teacher at the open house back in 1996 trying to explain why kids should NOT be using calculators. I’m an automatic factory machine designer, I’d been using computers and calculators for 20 years and he responded to me like I was some sort of Luddite! He didn’t have a CLUE what I was trying to point out. Teaching how to use calculators and computers in grade school has totally obliterated what they are supposed to be used FOR. Kids aren’t learning algebra – they’re learning to how to follow the instructions in a calculator pocket manual. Kids aren’t learning to write code – they’re learning how to copy equations into Excel. They aren’t learning math and science – they are manipulating math and science information without understanding it.
The math and science from Euclid, Archimedes, Newton, Galileo, etc. – that which is still taught today hasn’t changed AT ALL in hundreds of years let alone in 40 years back when students learned it much BETTER. What’s wrong with returning to what worked? Throw out those calulators and the computers on every desk and maybe we’ll have a chance to catch up with India where they don’t have them in grade school – and where many good programmers are coming from these days. Maybe then there will be some money to resurrect high school music and sports – both of which also happen to be proven to improve math and science scores BTW… /soapbox
DL
Yes, the dreaded slide rule was the bane of my existence for two months back in the olden days. Yet, I learned to use it to do the math. I may never have used the math I learned in those classes, but I believe the classes gave me the tools to reason through difficult problems.
Un ranchero vende una carretera de madera para $100. El cuesto de la produccion era $80. Cuantos tortillas se puede comprar?
—————————
huh? (I know it is spanish, I just haven’t been indoctrinated yet.)
Well with either McCain or Obama as President I figure we ought to start learning /brushing up now as I am sure that is what math in our public schools will be like in the next few years.
You can also thank electronic calculators.
A factor not mentioned enough is the fact that 60-80% of these urban students begin smoking pot in Jr. high. I went to a local elementary school recently to find out why our high school students can’t do simple math. I found that as 4th/5th graders they were learning these skills, but one teacher explained that once they start smoking pot they forget it all. She showed me pictures of some bright eyed school pictures of kids in 4th/5th/6th grade followed by the same kids as droopy eyed, spaced out looking 8th graders. Many of my students believe “weed helps them study”. They complain about their grandparents stealing their stash, etc. Just an awful culture we created.
I have sold my house and am moving before the school year starts. One of the top criteria for the new house was that the school district doesn’t teach EveryDay Math.
The sever shortage of math and science teachers is nothing new. I used my GI bill to get a teaching certificate in math in 1973. I returned 10 years later for a masters degree.
The math department chairman asked me how to get more students into the math education program. The number of students had dropped from 87 per quarter to 1. Yep a 99 percent drop.
I asked the department chairman what a comp sci student (alternative study) received for his summer work study program. He said a little over 2000 dollars (and 9 hours credit). I asked him what did the math ed student get for his student teaching. He said nothing (plus pay expenses to live in some small town for a semester).
I suggested that they pool the money together and each draw from the pool. With the current system, the average student given the choice between the two programs would choice comp sci every time.
He said that would never happen, because the other programs (english, social studies etc would not allow it).
So there you have it. The free market wins every time. Why would a math person go into teaching? Makes no sense.
So of course the teachers are not qualified. They haven’t been for over 20 years now. Yet districts raised the number of math courses students had to take. Who was going to teach them? Not me, I left the profession when I got my Masters.
When I was in 8th grade, our math teacher refused to allow calculators in class. His reasoning was that it took just as long to push all the buttons as it did to just do the calculations by hand.
While he was wrong about insisting we only use pens because he felt that “pencils are for people who make mistakes” (try telling that to someone learning Chinese!), he was right about not using a calculator.
Thanks Mr. Cooley.
In my daughters 8th grade math class they used a computer program in what was called the math lab, If you had answered the equation right it let you move on to the next equation, If you got it wrong you had to go back to the beginning, even if you had 25 of 30 answers and you missed #26 you had to start over.
This was very frustrating for many of the kids in her class and the district had many complaints from parent’s, but the school admin. did’nt seem to care and niether did the teacher. I asked my daughter “so what is the teacher doing when you have a question about an equation, and what does she say when you ask for help”, my daughter said that the teacher sits at her desk and talks on her cell phone and reads email during class and if you have a question, she tells you that the last ten minutes of class is for questions and if she has one she needs to see her then, needless to say my daughter never had any of her questions answered because there were so many that had questions, there was not enough time to stand in line and get an answer because they had to be to the next class or be tardy and get in school suspension.
This is why our kids are struggling in math, a bunch of teachers that don’t want to do their jobs and some who rely on F’d up computer programs to do their jobs for them.
Not only did she struggle with that class when she was in middle school they dicided to put her in the same class in high school and it was like pulling teeth to get her into a traditional math class (you know the class that the teacher actually teaches) but we succeded in getting her class changed and it was amazing how when the teacher was in front of the class explaining formulas and such she caught on right away. Huh! What a novel idea teachers teaching and knowing what their teaching.
I’m a commercial plumber/pipefitter. We use math constantly, especially fractions and trigonometry. Trying to teach apprentices how to add and subtract fractions is frustrating because they often have never even been exposed to the concept in school. This is something they should have been expert in before 6th grade.
This is a common problem among all the skilled construction trades, and one of the reasons the industry is having such a hard time finding skilled labor.
People often think of math as something you learn so you can be an engineer or an academic. Those of us who work with our hands need math skills to earn a living.
I view the lack of serious mathematics in our schools as the most insidious aspect of liberalism.
Electronic calculators aren’t the issue, any more than laptop computers. The issue is a combination of things, all of which the liberals oppose:
1. Forcing school districts to only hire math teachers who can do mathematics at the level necessary – including advanced mathematics in High School like calculus and linear algebra. College level, since that’s what the kids need.
2. Reversing the trend of less time for mathematics in school. Eliminate Art, if need be, but if our kids aren’t spending 25% of their school week on mathematics, we as a nation are screwed. Right now? We’re screwed.
3. Push kids to use computers from Middle School. The advanced math classes in 5th and 6th grade should be having students do basic computer programming with their spreadsheets.
During the hey-day of US Technology Ascendance, our students were learning far more mathematics than their global peers. The engineers that designed the cars, planes, medical devices, rockets, refigerators, and early semi-conductors that ruled the world were US Trained, and that meant “well trained.”
Soviet scientists and engineers were our equal – always have been – but they simply couldn’t afford to train nearly enough of their kids.
The same can’t be said for China or India, today. Those nations are filling the heads of their kids with math.
Why? Simple reason: people who truly understand mathematics and the trades that seriously use mathematics (engineering and science, mostly) get great jobs. They build powerful economies. It’s nothing but good news.
Poverty is a powerful incentive to learn math. The children of the US depression learned that fact, and put a man on the moon.
I wonder if the kids who survive the upcoming Obama Depression will do the same? Will the US once again become a world class science exporter in, say, 2040, or will our children be the world leaders in useless (in terms of marketability) “skills” such as:
Tolerance
Sensitivity Training
Art History
Pop Culture
Etc.
???
Education majors were know as the “pre-wed” degree. i.e. most of the women were just there to find a college guy and, maybe, get an easy job teaching. There shouldn’t be an ‘education’ degree. If you want to teach math, get a math degree. English, an English degree, etc.
I was a roofer for many years and it is incredible the amount of math you have to use in the construction industry alone, I also used to create little computer programs and answered my own question “Why would I need Algebra?” I needed to know algebra amongst other things to build the programs.
I blame this problem on lgm.
It’s not just math, but every other subject too.
How can any school teach math when the texts books are so poorly written that noone can understand them? The tests are these scantron things which mark answers right or wrong without the student showing the work, so the teacher has no idea if the student didn’t understand the concept or made a computation error. I gave up trying to talk to defensive, insecure and illprepared teachers about pathetic teaching materials. These people are lost without their answer keys.
I agree with most of what you said with this exception. If my daughter does not know the basics of art or math for that matter, how will she be able to purse her dream of being a graphic artist or animation artist?
It becomes very obvious when you talk with recent high school grads that their education is lacking. It is sad that in so rich a country we have robbed our young of their future.
This is not surprising at all. I have not read all the comments so I Don’t want to repeat what others have said. However, two friends who are teachers told me these horror stories. The first friend interned with a yound black intern just out of college, whom, she quickly noticed, could not read or write.
The other friend had a similar experience but with a senior teacher in her forties who was so completely illiterate, that there was a well-coordinated circle of “teachers” that somehow kept her from being exposed to the outside world. How they managed this without official collusion I cannot imagine.
This is the way the Marxist America-haters bring us to ground, by throwing sand into the educational works. It’s part of their strategy. It has to be, no bureaucracy can be this fundamentally dense.
I’ve always hated math, and am not very good at it beyond the basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division stuff. I was good at spatial math – e.g., geometry – but algebra damn near killed me. I couldn’t do calculus, physics, or advanced chemistry – all relied too much on math I just didn’t get.
I always thought the problem was with me, but when I think back on it, perhaps I didn’t get the best math education possible. My mom (a math wiz) tried very hard to teach me, but I just didn’t get it and the way she did it was “wrong” (because it wasn’t how the teachers wanted me to do it). Once, I remember doing math my mom’s way and failing because I didn’t show work exactly the way I was supposed to (never mind that all the answers were right).
As someone who eventually went into English anyway, I need little math in my daily life beyond balancing my checkbook and budget, but I know when my child(ren) get into school I’ll be unable to help them in math because I’ve been so poorly equipped myself.
Blind Mule-me too!
Tarpon, I have a friend who teaches at a community college in FL. She said that the last 5-6 years have been really terrible on what kids are supposed to know to get a high school diploma. Another friend of mine has a husband that works at Hampton University and he said that they more kids in remedial everything than ever before.
I agree about the bad teachers. I learned how to add, subtract, multiply, divide and do fractions from the nuns I had from first to fifth grade. When I got to junior high, I had the “let’s get out the math key and see how this is answered” teachers too. Thankfully, I had priests and nuns for math in high school and could pick up a lot of what I lost.
should read “that they have more kids”. Rough day.
And I would bet it’s not just math they are not prepared to teach — I have been saying this for years, the universities have to be held partly responsible for the failure of the schools to be able to educate the kids. The universities have dumbed down their education courses so that more teachers can pass and go on to instill their profound knowledge to the students.
Just like computers: GIGO
Did I miss it or has lgm actually not posted on this yet?
Barry,
My guess is that lgm can’t blame Bush so, why bother.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world who understand binary.
Those who understand it
and those who don’t.
Some great comments here.
Tradesmen need arithmetic and algebra, and a good tradesman can usually do more math in their head than pretty much anybody. Their mental dexterity with fractions is astonishing, and always has been.
As for kids who want to become graphic artists, art majors, etc. That’s fine. They can learn about Art when they learn their trade.
Think about the astonishing number of arts degrees that are given, with no prior knowledge from school.
Eighth grade kids need math far more than they need art, or music, or “centers.”
For us to be a great country, what do we want an 18 year old college-track kid to know?
Reading and Writing. They should know how to read and write, at an adult level.
Civics and History, including Geography. Our kids don’t have to know if Jayne Eyre was brilliant, or John Lennon wasn’t. They need to know about the world, country, state, and region that they live in. They need to understand who they are, as Americans, and what that means. They need to know who has liberty, and what that looks like to them. And they need to know who doesn’t. A lot of their reading and writing can be accomplished in conjunction with Civics and History. Why do we fill 15 year old minds with “literature” and not history or non-fiction? Easy: because liberal teachers value it.
Science. Kids should have a very strong scientific background by the time they leave High School. Periodic Table, Scientific Method, Basic Biology, etc. – they should have this stuff mastered. Not just exposed, but really understood.
Math. Of course. Including computers, at this point.
And by the last two years of High School, we should offer them electives that take up 15% of their time. This is where a 16 year old can start dabbling in art, music, literature, more advanced computer programming, etc.
I’d make as much money today if I had never read Thoreau or made a “pinch pot.” I wouldn’t if I didn’t know civics, math or science.
Time was that every teacher was teaching their special field of study … I remember that my English, History and Math teachers all had degrees in those fields …
Now what you get is a teacher that gets “assigned” to teach math, English or history …
That’s like expecting a non-swimmer to give scuba diving lessons …
Ahh, the consequence of letting the government educate our children. Because, you know, that sounds like a great idea . . . right?
Don’t know how many of you saw this, but on Smarter than a 5th grader, they had an elementary grammar school teacher, who failed out, making no money, on a 3rd grade grammar question. It was a sentence with five pronouns which asked her to say how many plural pronouns there were in the sentence. She said three, her helper said four and the answer was five. She was quite certain at least one of the supposed pronouns was an adjective because it was modifying one of the nouns (huh?).
Don’t worry, I am sure she is not teaching your child, but someone else’s child.
I think that is still the case in secondary education (grades 6-12), DL, at least here in TN. But, primary education (grades K-5) teach all subjects.
I think this points to a more serious problem. People are not taught to think critically. Try to get someone to actually “fix” something electronic now a days. The solution is to throw it away and get a new one. As someone who can take electronics apart and fix them at the component level (and knows how to use a slide rule) I find it frustrating to speak with morons who have not taken AC/DC physics working in the repair department of electronics firms.
We are loosing the ability to think logically. How many of us have run into the idiot that can’t count back change? I stopped teaching Nursing at the Community College level because I can’t explain acid/base balance to a student that has not had chemistry, pathophysiology, nutrition, or algebra.
Ideally, they should: it ought to be that kids receive an all-round education, obviously specializing in a few areas and having a more general knowledge of others.
However given the state of public education today, I concede that’s wishful thinking, so I glumly have to agree that some subjects be ditched in favor of the more pressing ones.
Oh, no doubt. My mom went to Catholic schools for her 1-8 education. When she got to 9th grade, she went to public school – they were doing things as freshmen in high school that she’d done in 6th grade, thanks to the good Sisters and Fathers who educated her.
There are several problems.
First, teachers should not be unionized. Too often, they put their interests, as a union collective, above the interests of students.
Second, due to their union membership and the detrimental influences that come with that, teachers tend to be afflicted with the political correctness disease: instead of imparting knowledge, they treat their students with kid gloves (see this latest example out of the U.K., for example.
Yes he can but let me save him the trouble:
If we weren’t wasting so much tax money on Bush’s war for oil we would have money to spend on training and paying good teachers. We could take some lessons from the Europeans on this point.
sarc/off
To be honest, WernerP, I think the pupil in question should have received an better score for replying like that. I would have done the same to that idiotic question (”Describe the room you’re sitting in”).
Whoever came up with the exam question should be fired.
Come on Michelle,
Everyone knows 1+1 = 10!
There are ten types of people in the world, those who understand binary math and those who don’t!
This goes beyond math. Liberal teaching (e.g. openness) does not like math: it requires a right and wrong answer. It requires reason. They’ve already hijacked so many other subjects, such as philosophy, which no longer uses reason but emotion and a warped sense of equality. Education used to be about finding the good, finding the better life, learning how to use our God-given ability to reason. We don’t value education anymore. We only value the little piece of paper that comes from graduating, by any means possible. This is a shame.
My wife and I will homeschool our children so that when they’re older, they’ll be able to read, think, and improve their lives… You know, those things that make us human.
Well the Italian kids at least are being taught about illegals:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1022811/The-Italian-schoolchildrens-drawings-illustrate-chilling-hatred-Roma-gypsies.html
The Public school system is a hugetastic failure. The same people who think this mess can be fixed are the same ones who want socialized medicine!!! My 3 year-old is learning how to read this summer. While my 3 year-old is learning reading skills, and math concepts, children in kindergarten will be learning about two daddies, and how to use a condom. There is no way in hell my child is going to public school!!!!!!!1
jsr,
I bet your head hurt after that one. I know mine always does when I switch to /lgm mode.
I had a highly educated friend (Masters London School of Economics, PHD University of Utah) tell me once that, based on personal observation “those who can, do . . those who can’t, teach. . .and those who can’t teach, become politicians.”
This was in the mid ’80s when my children were in grade school and jr. high. I noted some exceptions of course (and most of them left the profession by the time my youngest graduated), but for the most part, in Granite School District at least, he was right.
It seems our colleges and public education system (NEA) have set up the teaching program to accomodate the least ambitious (those that think teaching school gets them an easy job and summers off) and discourage those that really want to teach. To the detriment of our society.
Not that hard. I just stop the thought process and blurt out the first thing that I would have said when I was about 18 year old. Brings back fond (fuzzy?) memories of being a mindless liberal drone.
Well that’s because the math problems don’t include condoms and sex.
Example, Johnny buys a 12 pack of condoms and has sex with 4 girls, how many condoms does Johnny have left?
0 if he’s doing it right.
John,
Zero is correct but he got 4 girls pregnant ’cause he used the condoms on bananas.
Parents need to see why any give teacher is even qualified to be teaching. I would like to know the GPA of each teacher and how many courses were taken in math. Majoring in education and taking 2 courses in math will not make a teacher proficient enough to be a math teacher.
LOL Soap. Will have to send Johnny to WII Hab because he won’t be able to play the video games now.
I read this and could not agree more. I used to substitute teach elementary a great deal and found that there was an over reliance on Math cheats rather than studying the entire process in accomplishing such Mathematical functions as fractions. Another troubling factor in why many elementary kids don’t get Math is how it’s planned in the curriculum at the state level. Teachers often don’t have enough time to focus on Math skills when they’re too busy constantly testing their students and getting them ready for assessments.
I found myself giving kids “practice tests” rather than just practicing the actual math skills. Perhaps, if kids were actually allowed to practice the math skills they’d be able to develop more of a math knowledge, right?
If only it were that easy….
When I earned my BS in Mathematics Education from Ohio State (in 1990) I actually had to have more credits in Mathematics than a straight Math major would have had. The difference was breadth rather than depth; the Ed track went across more disciplines, whereas the Math track delved deeper into two or three disciplines.
Sounds like a lot has changed in a short time, and not for the better.
Fractions are the “big words” of math…
Seriously, bad teachers are a particular pet peeve of mine, and I spent years doing my best to torment them. You can have a PhD in math, or be a Nobel Prize winner, and are still considered “unqualified” to teach. You have to complete the union apprenticeship (i.e., teacher training) where they spend time indoctrinating the lowest SATs into the black arts. Yeah, I’ve gone hyperbolic, and I apologize to good teachers out there, but the system is fundamentally broken. Lets start with teachers who understand their subject matter. There are plenty of people who have had fulfilling careers who decide they’d like to teach, and end up in private schools because public schools reject them. So the public schools are worse off, and the private schools get better.
I’m signing off, I’m ready to really rant – like I said, a pet peeve…
I once taught a summer class for teachers. I had an elementary teacher go balistic because PI was too difficult of a concept. So people, what do you expect. We have the worst educational system in the first world. Soon we will be a third world country because of it.
You two had better be careful. No one knows if there are longterm effects for conservatives that try to get into the mind of a liberal. You could end up babbling incoherent thoughts with drool running down you cheek for the rest of your lives.
BTW: “No child left behind” just makes it worse. Obviously it was a brain child of a librarian. It FORCES the teachers to move the whole class at the pace of the slowest students.
ROFLMAO
LOL #65
LOL
You have a very strong argument there and I’ll have to say I agree. I told my daughter when she was struggling with math on the computer, she had better figure something out because she will need it in the field she wants to go into along with geometry, trig and physics, she looked at me funny so I went to my 3D programs and started asking her questions which pertained to all of these subjects, she could’nt answer the questions but she knows now how important they are to her future.
The absent-minded math professor at the blackboard:
– he wrote ‘a’
– he said ‘b’
– he meant ‘c’
– the correct answer was ‘d’
True MisterP, but we could sort them out into classes with similar abilities…oh no wait – that’s “undemocratic”.
One thing to consider also is the fact that most MTV teachers today have weak characters and little love for the kids. I still have fond memories of my best grade school teachers. I doubt kids today have such memories.
BTW: Calculators were first allowed at the University of Maryland in 1973-4. The first ones were too costly for the average student. Until then, physical science students used slide rules.
Hey, no bad mouthing pinch pots. It allowed lots of time for daydreaming and looking at the girls.
That was excellent, especially the Spanish part.
I’ve heard the “New/Fuzzy” Math explained as a story problem:
“Three baby birds are in a nest. Two of them fly away. How does the third one feel?”
Or, as a commenter on another blog used math to explain the liberal mindset:
“Just say 2×2=87, then get really angry!”
The mission of the public schools, controlled as they are by the teachers’ unions, is to create legions of future donkey voters. They accomplish this mission by ensuring that those who either drop out of or otherwise escape the system are as poorly educated as possible: leaving whole continents of scientific, historical, and cultural knowledge unexplored and filling the void with a donkey-manufactured worldview consisting of canards, slogans and cliches.
A society that churns out lawyers by the boatload but has to import scientists and engineers is a society headed for a fall. But as long as libs can lord over what’s left after the crash while feeling good about themselves, they’ll keep chipping away at foundations like education.
I personally witnessed this recently in a MATH 124 (College Algebra) class.
The professor passed out a 10 question pre-test. Regular college algebra work. Nothing suprising. He went on to work each and every problem on the pre-test.
More than one student asked if these were the test questions. He responded, “not exactly, some of the numbers will be different.” Several students who do understand such confusing answers, asked again and again, the same basic question.
Two days later, test day, the test while somewhat as he described, same type questions, different numbers. Not all the numbers were changed. So some were exactly the same. In addition he allows open book and open notes in a college MATH 124 Class.
Results, several students still failed. I personally saw more than 5 F’s out of a class of approx 30 students.
This is your American education system.
My brother who teaches 8th grade math in a public school (he use to be a VP of Mechanical Engineering, but the jobs went to China), told me that tracking of students is now happening. I think they are now rebelling against the whole “no child left behind” mandate. No more “dummy down.”
If todays public schools were part of the free market system instead of this taxpayer funded monopoly, they’d be out of business. I have yet to find one public school bureaucrat recpect the taxpayer for funding the public school system. The unions and the ACLU have more influence over the schools.
Mister P is batting 1.000 today, guys.
I concur with everything he’s said, and have similar anecdotes.
If there was ever a reason to impeach our standing president, it was for No Child Left Behind. It dumbed down the schools, dumbed down the students, and bled yet more cash from an aleady over-taxed populace.
A degree in general education these days is a joke, at any level. The only education degree that is on par with science and engineering degrees is typically Math education. Other than that, it’s a fiasco.
If you have kids, you know full well that the older teachers tend to be mediocre, but the new ones are typically a joke. If you happen to get a good one, it’s a abberation.
What we need is vouchers, and about 10 years for the free market to fill the gap. Otherwise, as P said, we are sliding deeper into the Third World.
My children are both elementary school aged and they both seem to be doing fine at mathematics. Oh wait, I forgot, that’s because my wife and I home school them.
Reason # 45,367 to keep your kids away from the public schools in this country.
You know, turn on children’s programming on the cable networks, like Fox Kid’s Network or the Disney Channel, and see how they portray school and teachers and the value of being smart. It’s a damn shame. Yet when you see how much school and education (and tests!!) plays a respectful central figure in Japanese anime and manga, you can’t but wonder at the quality of their kids!
James Greenidge
Queens NY
Does anyone know of the story of the new elementary school teacher who teaches her class very advanced stuff for several months. An administrator, trying to figure out why the kids were doing so well, asked her what she was doing to get all the kids to excell. She responds that since all the kids had such high IQ they would be able to handle it. That’s when she is informed that the number next to each kids name was their locker number.
I don’t know if the story is real (Snopes doesn’t have anything on it), but it reveals the belief that when we expect more from our kids they will rise to the challenge.
Aim high, hit high. Aim low, vote Democrat.
I have a friend whose sister is a tutor at Sylvan Learning Center. She had a client – a grown, 20-something woman who had gone through high school and college and become a early childhood ed teacher – and couldn’t read! I was floored. How on earth does someone like that move through the “system?”
My favorite scene from the movie Red Planet starring Val Kilmer, Carrie Ann Moss, Tom Sizemore.
BURCHENAL
We’ve got every other mission variable in here, we ought to be able to figure aerobrake friction and the speed and orbit of the Ares when we exited. We should be able to close in on the downrange variables. Tighten up the ellipse. It’s about the math.
GALLAGHER
This is it. This is that moment they told us about in high school. Where one day again we’d use algebra. And it would save our lives. And I thought they were f**** kidding.