How to improve U.S. math and science education?

Great Debates
1

A frequent rant, here at the SDMB, in the news media, and in my job in the immigration arena, is that the U.S. does a lousy job of preparing primary and secondary school students for higher education and careers that require advanced knowledge of math and the sciences (or heck, even everyday situations that require a basic knowledge of math and science).

Anecdotally, I am constantly flabbergasted that so many of my fellow Americans can’t handle simple tasks like calculating price per unit in the grocery store, or that they don’t understand basic human biology, or that they don’t know that mixing bleach and ammonia is a Bad Idea. In my professional milieu, a major justification provided for the need to allow non-U.S. workers permission to work in the U.S. is that the U.S. does not produce enough qualified candidates to fill the science and engineering positions needed to keep the country at the forefront of world R&D efforts, or even to handle the more mundane daily needs of industry. Approximately half of graduate students in science and engineering in the U.S. are foreign-born, and without them, there is serious question of whether there would be sufficient numbers of teaching and research assistants to keep undergraduate instruction and academic research afloat.

Why is this? I was a liberal arts major, given, but that doesn’t mean that I had insufficient math background in secondary school to pursue a career in science, had I chosen to do so (actually, I rather liked biology and chemistry, and might have gone that route if I hadn’t liked so many other things so much better). But then when I reached college, in spite of my university’s expressed desire to produce well-rounded liberal arts graduates, the math placement test they gave during freshman orientation was about 70% basic arithmetic, and the rest was material I’d covered in algebra in 8th grade. I placed out of math, and as a liberal arts major, was therefore never again required to take a math class, or in fact any quantitatively oriented class at all.

And my experience has been at some of the best public primary and secondary schools in the U.S., and at a selective private university – what about the vast majority of Americans who don’t have the educational opportunities that I did? How can we improve the quantity and quality of math and science candidates in the educational pipeline? It would be helpful if, in your response, you described your experiences and perceptions of this issue, as well as your educational background (level, type, when and where).

(Hopefully this OP, if a little scattered as a result of being written pre-caffeine, will at least provide a welcome diversion from U.S. electoral politics.)

2

I’m a math major planning to go on to grad school. I’ve talked with a number of math ed students, cause I had one class with a number of them in it. At least at my college, the Math Ed students take a totally different selection of classes than people who are studying math in preparation for grad school or a non-education job.

I went to a public high school that was innovative in trying new styles of teaching and had many good teachers with graduate degrees. My freshmen year there we had a totally different system for high school than any other school in the country that got dismantled by a new school board elected solely to get rid of it who used the slogan “back to the basics”. I don’t think we can keep kids up to date by going back to earlier methods, we have to account for all the new things, like calculators which have a huge impact on math and computer programs like Mathematica.

My opinion is that people who are going to be teaching math or science need to learn more math and science than they do currently. At the college level, professors are almost always experts on their subject matter, but teachers in elementary and middle school most frequently only have a bachelors in math ed, which includes even less math that what I will have when I get my bachelors in applied math.

I always think we need to find a way to make math and science interesting again. I can’t count how many people are really repulsed by math, and think its some sort of dark art when they find out its my major (plus they think Arithmetic is all there is to math.) I can only guess why people get turned off from math, because its never been something that has happened to me. I’ve had bad math teachers to be sure.

Maybe having all these rules about how to solve problems without ever explaining why they work is part of the problem. Rote memorization is a really bad way to teach anything beyond multiplication tables (and maybe even bad for them). Connections have to be made between parts of math, I mean I understand arithmetic a lot better because of algebra.

None of that addresses science of course, but I know a lot less about those areas.

3

Math and science were always my stong points in school. I had 4 years of college but never graduated (major started out comsci but switched to economics and minored in philosophy). I agree totally with MindWanderer. In high school, my math and science teachers generally seemed to only know what they were talking about because they had read the textbook the summer before or something. In the higher level classes, I would often learn the material better than the teacher knew it just from the textbook. There were a few exceptions, but I always wondered if most of them may have just had general education degrees. (I really don’t know what teaching requirements were then or are now.)

I always assumed that being in a poor, rural area we just had sub-par teachers. Imagine my surprise a few years ago to find out that my high school has performed significantly above the national average in every measurement I could find for the past twenty years or so. :confused: Could our teachers actually have been better than most?? That would be scary.

So, back to the point, what are the degree requirements to be a teacher these days?

4

When I taught Math at the college level (warning older info)…

I would be advisor to some Math Ed students.

In my area of the country, a person could get a Math Ed degree without finishing the Calculus sequence and not taking a single Junior level+ course in math (excepting History of Math which doesn’t count IMO).

Our division would often be pressured to hire M.ED.'s who taught in the local high schools and we would take terrible grief for not hiring them. The rule is that you needed a minimum of a masters degree in mathematics.

On extremely popular teacher and the community put so much pressure to hire him that we had to contact his Alma Mater and get a written confirmation from them that an M.ED. in Mathematics wasn’t even the equivalent of a B.S. in math let alone a masters.

YMMV.

5

Another thing hampering math and science education…

Education is very ‘socialistic’. Math/science teachers may be harder to find and other types might be much easier to find but there is huge pressure to pay them the same. They are all teachers after all.

This means lower supply of math/science teachers available to the schools so the obvious solution is to water down the requirements to increase the supply (paying them more to attract qualified math/science teachers is completely out of the question!)

6

This is just at my college but the listing gives 44 credits of Education classes for math ed people, and 30 more credits of math listed classes. It sounds like a tough program to be a math teacher, but none of the math classes listed look challenging in the way that upper division math is supposed to be, with the exception of abstract algebra, which is their highest required math course at my school.

It is really shocking how different the experience is for becoming a college teacher vs high school. On one hand we focus almost entirely on learning the subject matter and I’ve taken no education classes at all, wheras for a high school teacher the majority of their classes are going to be about how to teach, at least at my school. I’ve ran into a number of people going into math education who, on first impressions appeared to have no interest in math at all beyond arithmetic and basic geometry. Wheras classmates in my senior numerical analysis class are all people eagerly interested in math.

7

Luckily at my school they have to go through Calc III, but its possible double majoring in math and education is only for high school math teachers.

8

If you want better math and chemistry teachers, you should start with better mathematicans and chemists.

In my limited experience, the “ed” biz focuses more than it should on methods and teaching ideas than it does on subject. I’m referring both to the education of teachers and to the educating of students.

I think there’s a higher connection between knowing the subject and teaching than there is between knowing teaching and teaching.

You might possibly be able to teach a subject you know well even if you had no knowledge of teaching – there’s virtually no possibility of teaching a subject you don’t know.

9

There’s a pretty widespread perception that it’s not cool to be good at math and science. That’s a large part of the problem.

10

I’m a college student, currently employed as a math tutor (for high school and college students). Thus, it is my job daily to compensate for the poor quality of mathematics instruction in a classroom setting.

Part of the problem is that primary education is a joke, at least here in Georgia. The students I work with typically have no idea whatsoever how to work a problem they haven’t seen before. I feel that this is because no one has bothered to cultivate the necessary logical skills and critical thinking that needs to be taught and encouraged from early on.

The math teacher gives several types of quadratics combined with a formulaic method for solving each. Later, the students are tested on how well they can use the exact same method but with slightly different numbers. Similarly, in an English course, the studnets are tested on how well they can remember the themes of stories they have already read, discussed, and agreed upon. Science courses spend the first class period on the scientific method, which is taught by rote and then never returned to.

At no point are the students challenged to innovate. They never have to use their old knowledge in new ways. They are led every step of the way to the SAT, which attempts to test their ability to innovate. Since they never learned this, many of them do badly. And since the knowledge they do have is no longer needed after the tests are over, even those that succeed find themselves gradually forgetting their accumulated repertoire of problems they know.

I try very hard to instill in my pupils the importance and utility of figuring out how to work a problem as opposed to knowing how to work said problem. Occasionally, it works. Most of the time, however, their logical thinking skills have atrophied from years of non-use, and I am reduced to parroting their teachers.

11

I don’t think the value of some sort of basic logic/philosophy of knowlege class in high school could possible overstated. I was shocked in philosophy classes in college that all that stuff wasn’t just common sense to most people. How could you learn anything without a basis there first?

12

I wish that these math education classes would actually prepare teaches to correctly answer questions that will come up, like is 1 prime? Is 0 even or odd? Why can’t you divide by 0? And moreover not to treat students who ask those type of questions as troublemakers. Teachers have large classes and so that makes it tempting to quash anything that smacks of rebellion. You can’t have good mathematicians if you don’t allow them to ask why.

Reasons for doing something should be taught along side how to do it. Each new topic should be proven to the students before teaching it. Before I learned quadratics, I had to be able to derive the formula and understand how and why it works. That should be the way all math topics are taught. If you can’t prove it, why should you believe it? This is mathematics not religion. What is an axiom should be made clear, all else should be proven.

Mathematics through algebra should be taught without calculators. Calculators are distractions from the math itself. Multiplication tables do need to be memorized thoroughly. It may not be easy or fun, but it makes the rest so much eaiser.

Students should be taught to estimate and check answers for reasonableness from the beginning.

Any teacher that can’t calculate her own classes’ grades and must use a wheel type grade calculator should not be allowed to teach math at all. If the teacher can’t understand simple ratios, percentages and work them out with nothing more than pencil and paper, then the teacher should not teach math.

13

This is at the absolute core of the problem. (HS Computer Science teacher here).

Students succeed when their parents are involved in their education. Popular culture in America dictates that if you have too much knowledge of science and math, you are a sub-par human who may have contagious leprosy. This has been going on for a number of generations, so at this point, there are many parents with little or no retained knowledge of these fields.

When the students reach a sticking point in these areas, many parents simply brush the matter aside, since math and science aren’t all that important anyway, laying the groundwork for their child’s own priorities.

So real success in the teaching of Math and Science involves changing the culture in a way that re-prioritizes these areas. That means teaching and testing more advanced material THAT means changing the system and failing a lot of kids early on. Which leads their parents, who don’t know what all the fuss is about a lot of geek stuff in the first place, to vote in a school board who gets rid of the new math and science program. I used to work for an afternoon program in a school where the students had to petition to keep their enhanced science programs from being cut from the budget.

One must never make the mistake that the ignorance of an ignorant American is a passive thing. Much American ignorance is actively sought, and at this point, is self-perpetuating.

That said, there is much to be improved upon in Math and Science education. Math is often laid out in a way that makes no sense to the student. I recall my more advanced high school math classes causing material from years earlier to finally dovetail into something that formed a coherent whole, but which made no sense at the time. This is discouraging for young students, and needs to be overhauled, if it has not already.

There has been much information revealed about how important interactvity is in retention of knowledge, but most science classes are taught in mostly a lecture format, with the occasional lab thrown in whose results are already known by the students, so that the only thing learned is the drudgery of lab work.

Math and science curriculum designers need to take a page from the Ed schools and realize that child development patterns play a huge role in what can be taught. The designers of the current California Science Education standards very obviously started with a set of things they wished Freshman already knew, and then figured what knowledge must precede this, then what precedes the precedents, until they came up with these standards for Kindergarten!

I ask you, what child of barely five years of age is going to absorb all these concepts concretely in a year?

14

Well that’s part of it. Another part of the problem is that it sucks and is really boring. A lot of people just don’t like crunching numbers. And if you don’t like something, no one else seems to like it, why go through the trouble?

15

Speaking as a professional software engineer and an amateur mathematician, what number crunching?

16

“Number crunching” is the physical/mental act of calculation. Add a column of numbers and you are doing it. Calculate stresses, with or without a calculator, and you are crunching numbers.

17

Engineering is a quasi-professional occupation. By that I mean there are few professional or legal barriers to becoming an engineer, in contrast to medicine or law, in which all members of the profession must hold a degree, undergo specified training and pass an examination, and also be bound by professional ethics and standards that have the force of law. Except for the small percentage of jobs that require “professional engineer” licensing, to be an engineer you just get a B.S. in engineering (and even that’s not an absolute requirement) and go to work for a company. Next thing you know you’re designing seat belts. :eek:

I bring this up because most (not an overwhelming majority, but most) engineers are in the profession because it’s the highest-paying and most secure career they can get into, not because they love science and math or building things. Engineers are much more economically driven than doctors. There is a lot of mystique about the medical profession - saving lives, dealing with death regularly, the grueling training, colorful personalities, etc. Anyone can name two or three TV shows about doctors and lawyers, but there has never been a TV show about engineers, at least that I know of. There’s no logical reason for this - engineering is at least as full of excitement, danger and death as pediatrics. We’re just not trained to see it as anything other than a way to make a living, and it’s reflected in the attitudes engineers have toward their jobs. I hear about engineers who change careers all the time, and it’s to oddball, non-technical stuff like sales or insurance. That doesn’t happen on any kind of scale in the other professions.

Since most engineers are driven by dollars and cents, the only way to get substantially more people to go into the field is by substantially raising salaries or improving job security. And that hasn’t happened except in a few isolated and temporary instances. The reason is simple: there just isn’t this massive pent-up demand for engineers that our universities cannot satisfy. This perpetual “shortage” of engineers is a myth concocted by big companies to make kids think if they go into engineering, they’ll make a stack of money and never get laid off. This myth is also useful in persuading the government that there is a special need for foreign engineers, which is transparently a way to keep salaries down and nothing more. Check out these links. The U.S. should invest more in manufacturing, and it should invest more in research, but the situation is what is is, and unless something changes, the demand for engineers just isn’t there.

Think about it - if you wanted to buy a yacht but couldn’t afford it, would you whine to the government that there’s a yacht shortage and that they should massively increase yacht imports in order to increase the supply and reduce prices? That’s exactly what companies who hire engineers do all the time. If there were a shortage of engineers anything like what the corporate whiners say, we’d all be making $300,000 a year and playing golf every Wednesday afternoon.

18

Not liking math because number crunching is boring, is like not liking sports because going running is dull or not liking music because singing scales is boring. That is one reason early arithmetic and multiplcation tables are important. Get the basic stuff down pat and it won’t be a chore when you have to use it to do the more intersting stuff.

It is important even if you find it boring. How else can you understand basic things like what your credit agreements or mortgages mean? Or be able to look at one of these studies that are always coming out and tell if it likely has merit or is utterly worthless?

19

Stop blaming educators and put the responsibility on the learners. If someone can’t perform basic mathematical operations, it isn’t because some math teacher somewhere didn’t take enough higher math classes – it’s because the person didn’t bother to learn.

How difficult is this to understand, people?

20

My husband is a scientist, educated in Australia, and his opinion (which I have heard a couple few times, mind you) is that science education in American high schools is too fragmented. For example, I took “physical science” in 8th grade, “earth science” in 9th grade, biology in 10th, and could have (but didn’t) take chemistry in 11th and “physics” in 12th. Since I never took physics, my knowledge of physical science remains pretty much at the 8th grade level. My earth science is stalled at the 9th grade. I was interested in bio, and took it in college, along with chemistry, but you can see where this is going.

His contention is that science is science is all connected and you should have some of everything at every age/grade level, kicked up a notch, so you learn something more about it every year. I have a suspicion this might be a good idea.