Infantry is the Queen of Battle, and Mathematics is Queen of the Sciences.
Posted on 03/15/2008 1:58:58 AM PDT by neverdem
American students’ math achievement is “at a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide, according to a new report by a federal panel, which recommended that schools focus on key skills that prepare students to learn algebra.
“The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. “Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”
The report, adopted unanimously by the panel on Thursday and presented to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, said that prekindergarten-to-eighth-grade math curriculums should be streamlined and put focused attention on skills like the handling of whole numbers and fractions and certain aspects of geometry and measurement.
It offers specific goals for students in different grades. For example, it said that by the end of the third grade, students should be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers. Two years later, they should be proficient in multiplying and dividing them. By the end of the sixth grade, the report said, students should have mastered the multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.
The report tries to put to rest the long, heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers have fought passionately in school districts around the country over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to do problems and then drilled on them, versus reform or child-centered instruction, emphasizing student exploration and conceptual understanding. It said both methods had a role.
“There is no basis in research for favoring teacher-based or student-centered instruction,” Dr..
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Infantry is the Queen of Battle, and Mathematics is Queen of the Sciences.
The statement ‘Without the Use of a Calculator’ is missing.
Also the “feel good” idea of passing everyone along and giving most students A's and B's hurts our overall education. Students take home report cards filled with A's and B's, when they are actually falling further and further behind.
Using a calculator is not the problem. The problem is not teaching the children the concept behind it and instead giving them a formula or process.
I was trying for 2 hours to teach a girl what a derivative and second derivative was and she just could not understand because she had never really understood the concept of slope. I was having to teach her things she should have learned from her teachers in junior high.
Memorization has absolutely no place at all in mathematics.
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Yes it does: You can't do multiplication or division without memorizing the multiplication tables. Addition and subtraction require memorizing the tables of every single digit added or subtracted to/from every other single digit (or you can use your fingers, I suppose).
quality of teachers maybe?
Quality of teachers most probably! The really good ones won't put up with the bureaucratic bullshit present in most schools/colleges and/or the NEA and (many/most) eventually leave.
Saxon Math, anyone?
Only the private schools and the Home Schools seem to have understood the value of Saxon’s incremental approach to mathematics.
It’s not just the quality of the teachers. Our school systems have completely neutered teachers and school administrations from enforcing discipline in the classroom or from even failing students.
To complicate matters, it used to be (at least talking to anyone a few decades older than I am) that if you came home with bad grades in school and reports of poor conduct, you got it from your parents. Where is that today? Essentially non-existent in far too many areas.
What are your opinions on the Singapore mathematics program?
Memorize multiplication tables
Do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and Long division, both in their head and with a pencil (No D*MN calculator)
understand and apply fractions
Do slope intercept problems.
I have ninth grade students that can't do any of the above.
However, only one of them literally visualized numbers and was like a human calculator. This child by 5th grade mentally tracked grades to know what percentage was required on any given assignment/test to maintain a particular grade. Use to infuriate me to no end.
I have come to believe that the math - functioning part of the brain has its own compartment and the keys to opening that ability largely depends upon the ability of the instructor teaching the discipline.
For trained-rat activity, just following procedures is fine. However, for higher-level accomplishment, it is necessary to recognize concepts that aren't spelled out. Without that recognition ability, a student can never move beyond being told what to do and when to do it.
Recognition skill can be developed through either rote work, pattern development, or memorization. Whatever path is taken, the end result will be memorization, if it's done correctly.
We used Saxon, starting in 5/4 in the 3rd grade. Since math was the one subject we studied, year round, we just progressed through each of the books. By 9th grade we had finished Alg. II, and since we have dual enrollment at the local colleges, in 10th grade he tested into and started College Alg. at the local college. My son hated Trig but did fine in it...so makes one wonder if he just didn’t like the prof’s teaching style, and he liked the Calculus courses.
All that to say, although not a math genius, by any stretch of the imagination, Saxon prepared the way for college math courses. The thing I REALLY like about Saxon and homeschooling was, if I wasn’t sure if he fully grasped a concept the first time it was presented, I knew we’d be seeing it the next day and the next day and 3 months from now, in the form of review, so I could relax if he didn’t have a full understanding on the first go.
Oh, really? How high did the multiplication tables go in your school? Up to a million. If not, then how did you ever figure out how to multiply 62 X 70?
If you understand the concept then you can figure it out. If you just memorize the tables you are limited to what you have memorized.
Did your tables include fractions?
Saxon sure knows how to use high numbers. Do they have programs for individual children?
One thing missing there is how to calculate interest on loans! We wouldn’t be in the mess in this country that we are in if people could do math. Not just those who got mortgages, but the loons that bought and resold the bad loans.
Math ping
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