Are schools failing to teach our kids math?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Didn’t want to hijack this thread as I had no real comments on the articles, but I thought of this for the ‘new school teaching methods’ at least in Rhode Island, and wanted to ask a question of the Dopers:

I have a degree in Electrical Technology, with math up to and including calculus. Now, I’m not claiming any genius level here, just pointing out my education level.

I taught my daughter the times table when she was young (6-8 yrs old), and I’ll be damn if the school did their best to beat it out of her. They didn’t want the kids to learn math by rote, or memory. Wha? If you know the times tables, most math falls into place pretty easily after that, doesn’t it?

They wanted the kids to have calculators in 3rd grade (THIRD GRADE!!!). Their version of reality was that kids need to understand what a number is and what it means, not how they work. 4 is 4 isn’t it? 2 + 2 = 4 right? 2 apples is 2 right? Eat one you have one left? What other way does one know what a number means outside of counting things up and figuring out totals, equations, etc.

When my daughter brought home her math homework, and asked me for help, I showed her how I had learned from elementary school on, how it was done. She told me I was doing it wrong, that isn’t how we do it in school. Huh? Math is math isn’t it, how do you do it differently? 5000 years of math is tossed because the kids don’t need to know how to add anymore? They just need to know what numbers are? Let the calculators do it for them? Seriously?

I’ve had discussions with a couple of her math teachers, and left wondering what planet they learned math on. It seems they wanted to teach the kids how they feel about a number, or what a number is in the abstract, not really focusing on the math itself.

Thankfully, as my daughter got older (20 now and fairly intelligent), she learned the times tables, improved her math skills, and is fairly proficient at doing general math in her head, no thanks to the school.

Occasionally, when I’m at the store, and the kid behind the counter stares at the register and has no clue what change to give me, I cringe. It is shameful when a couple times I have had to actually tell them what and how many coins to give me back.

I don’t know, and don’t claim this is prevalent everywhere, but this is what I’ve experienced. But, these articles about remedial courses required to enter college are a telling tale:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/5189336-418/college-can-be-a-rude-remedial-awakening.html

I guess I’m wondering if others have witnessed this, or struggled with it yourself with your kid(s)? Is this common everywhere, or is RI just so screwed up in the educational system?

2

I’m an adjunct math and science professor at a local, four-year, private university. Most of my students are business majors. In fact, yesterday was my first class for this semester’s MAT 115 course (“Algebra w/ Business Applications”).

On the first day of class I cover the very basics (identities, operator conventions, exponents, etc.). Most do not know their multiplication tables. When I write 8•4 on the board, most do not know the answer is 32. Heck, most do not even know that a dot or parentheses signifies multiplication.

And this is a college-level algebra course with third-year students.

3

I learned my times tables through 12 in third grade (along with cursive, another skill people accuse schools of phasing out) and I’m only a few years older than your daughter.

4

Two thirds of the schools are, but 55% are doing a great job.

5

My kid is in 4th grade now. I would say that her school didn’t want her to **just **memorize her times tables, but once they taught her to understand what multiplication was all about, then they most certainly did drill them, because if you have to figure out what 6x8 is every time it comes up in more complex math, it’s going to take ages.

I’ve been pretty impressed with their overall approach. I have had the experience of “help me with this homework . . . no you’re doing it wrong,” and my sense is this usually occurs with new techniques they use to try to get children to grok the concepts of math. They seem to come at ideas (say, ones, tens, and hundreds places) with several different representations, in the hopes that everyone can find the “entry point” to the concept that suits them. But luckily this doesn’t mean that they also threw out all the mechanical or memorized techniques that are more like how I learned math.

I’m very impressed with the more integrated (heh) approach to math my daughter is getting. Rather than rigid separation of subjects by year, she has learned bits and pieces of things I didn’t get to until middle school. Rather than being taught a mechanical process by repetition, and then later having word problems introduced, where you have to extract the starting equation from the story, word problems have always been part of her math education.

Obviously YMMV. Even between my husband and me (1 year age difference), our math education was very different. He learned techniques for doing math in his head, while I learned pencil-and-paper math. I confess to this day, if I’m put on the spot to do math in my head, much like your register jockey, I can’t do it right.

6

Paul Lockhart agrees.

ETA: if I recall, the “lament” is because conceptual math is not taught well, not that mechanical arithmetic should be taught better.

7

Singapore tops the lists for best maths education, and they’re exporting their methods. You can google some talks explaining their method. They use lots of blocks and physical examples. It seems good, but I was left wondering if the children do have to memorise their times tables. I completely agree that the fundamental understanding is vitally important, and that the colourful blocks can help with that, but memorising times tables is very valuable. Of course, Singapore teachers are all PhDs, so I suppose that helps…

You wouldn’t believe how often I have been asked to calculate things just because “I’m good at maths”. All it means is I have the times tables memorised, can still do long division and drum roll please I can do percentages! It’s shocking. I spent half my time at university calculating for my friends what mark they could get to still end up with a 2:1 etc. In fact, I had to explain to a professor that with percentages you can’t say “actually, you should look at it like this”, percentages mean actual things, they’re not subject to ways of looking at them. There is definitely a problem.

When I taught in Brazil the first problem I came across was that they had been teaching the children to count on their fingers. I found this when we came to 5+6 and was met with blank stares. Fingers were banished to the loud protests of the children. The teacher was also not happy. However, within weeks we were multiplying large numbers. We had to get rid of the purely physical idea of maths to be able to move on. Memorisation was absolutely essential. How on earth were they going to multiply those numbers counting on their fingers and not memorising the times tables? Grumpf, those teachers still piss me off :mad:

8

I teach percentages in my MAT 105 class. When I put the following problem on the board:

“Yesterday the price of gas was $2.99/gallon. Today it is $3.04/gallon. Thus the price of gas today is _____% higher than yesterday.”

No one can do it. And they all have calculators.

I have taught this class for 4 years, and I have never had a student who had a clue on how to solve this problem.

9

The bolded statement makes me shudder concerning the rest of your post.

That’s a very good way to put it, thanks. I downloaded his essay to read later at home, looks like a very good read.

:smack::smiley:

10

I wanted to hop in here and say that we had to memorize times tables up to twelve in third grade, do manual long division, started algebra in sixth grade, geometry in eighth, stat and trig in tenth, discrete math in eleventh, and calculus in twelfth.

Then I realized that I’m 32 now and that was all a very long time ago. Not at all what the OP is asking about.

11

What … the …#%€¥?!:eek::eek:

Business majors?!. :smack:

12

I have teenagers. They were never taught the times tables in school either.

I suppose pulling out your smart phone at the store or lumber yard would work, but it seems to me that innately knowing what, say 7*9 off the top of your head is would be a lot easier.

It’s rather sad isn’t it?

I’m sure there are other skills that my previous generation learned though that I never picked up on due to technology.

13

How did they get to this stage without basic arithmetic? Am I missing something?

14

It’s irrelevant what they want on this point, because it is not possible to learn math by rote. The standards-setters are only just now starting to realize this, and as a result, we may even actually start teaching math in elementary school. As it stands now, most students never take any math class at all until high school, if then.

Does this mean that I’m opposed to teaching students arithmetic? No, I’m not. Arithmetic is a valuable skill, and should be taught. But arithmetic is not math, and it should be taught in addition to math, not instead of it.

15

This is the sort of problem solving we started learning in grade 4. I think most of us could solve this in our heads in about 10 seconds. It’s not that the math itself is hard. Which means they were never taught how to even approach this problem. :frowning:

16

I am glad that, multiplication tables are still taught the basic way in my country. Rote learning comes in handy for this.

I am still shocked that 18 year olds couldn’t do 8 x 4.

17

My wife teaches HS chemistry (her third year) and has frequently wondered aloud what her kids’ math teachers did in their classes.
Most of her students are in 10th grade, and there are two (related) concepts that the students at this generally very well-to-do school fail to grasp:

  1. Rearranging equations - these students learn 3 relationships between density, volume, and mass: m=d*v, d=m/v, and v=m/d. By the time they get to PV=nRT, there are too many arrangements of variables, but they haven’t learned to perform the same operation to both sides of an equation. Many either try to memorize long lists of equations (or get them provided in formula sheets) or fail on the test. This same inability makes stoichiometry the absolute hardest of the year.

  2. Unit conversion - similar to rearranging equations, they don’t grasp that every unit conversion involves finding a useful fraction that equals 1 and multiplying your expression by that. Memorizing lots of unit conversions is tedious, and multiplying out several fractions leads to lots of simple math errors. Many are also unable to divide using a scientific calculator.

Most of the students exhibiting these problems have passed Algebra, but I guess I don’t understand what algebra is if you can pass it without being able to divide both sides by X. I took it about 16 years ago, and I vaguely recall rearranging equations/expressions being largely the point of the whole thing. Our best guess is that social promotion through jr. high left them too far behind, because she hasn’t met many incompetent math teachers at her school.

18

That’s brilliant. It’s no wonder I hated math. In fact, his take on high school Geometry is spot-on IME.

19

I wonder where we are going in this country. Was it Exxon that has the commercials on TV showing where the US ranks among other countries in education? And if I recall correctly, the US is ranked 27th. 27th out of 180(?) or so nations seems ok, but considering the resources of the US, one would expect much higher ranking.

What exactly are schools preparing our kids for if not the real world?

20

I understand the ‘hatred’ of math, some people just simply hate it. My brother is like that. But, give him the tools and a lumber yard, and he’ll build you a fine house up to code. It’s amazing how he ‘knows math’ in that concept, but otherwise hates math.