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I'm in my late 20s. I think a lot of these tricks were a result of George Bush II's "No Child Left Behind" testing mandate (2002? around there), where test resu

I'm in my late 20s. I think a lot of these tricks were a result of George Bush II's "No Child Left Behind" testing mandate (2002? around there), where test results directly correlated to the amount of federal funding you'd receive. In response, teachers adopted quick tricks in order to optimize for test performance (i.e. 'teach for the test'). I'd wager these "tricks" are what teachers are forced to use to cater to effectively get the average student to perform optimally on those standardized tests. People just now entering their undergraduate programs, I speculate, will be familiar with these shortcuts. Math is taught in a wide variety of ways, depending on where you live, what type of schools you're going to (private east-coast Andover/Exeter vs inner-city Chicago), how rich your city is (higher taxes => more money for schools => safer/better environments => fosters a better learning experience & a life at home that values rigorous grasp of academic concepts), etc. I was one of those lucky guys to grow up in an environment that had a heavy emphasis on academia at the 'publish or perish (then tenure)' level and my school systems emphasized concepts over rote memorization (i.e., a course on geometric proof formulation where you are given a set of axioms from which you must derive all consequential Lemmas, which is basically the opposite of 'heres a few tricks'), If your class size is 35, and you have even one or two disruptive kids in class I'd imagine even the most dedicated teachers would start 'teaching by the tricks, for the test'. To answer your question: America is a big place. The difference between most Euro countries is culturally less than the difference between NYC and Harlan, Kentucky. An interesting corollary of this is (let's choose to ignore ethical implications here -- I believe everyone has the right to free, high quality education, housing, and food), but purely from the POV of workplace-competition-over-jobs, the more schools continue to teach poor analytic skills, the less competent my competitors are. I'm no Perelman or Feynman, but I do pretty fine

Decade 11y ago
OMG. Bush has been out of office for 6 years already. “It’s Bush’s fault” is not a legitimate response, and almost never was. I’m not saying he was good for the country, oh no not at all, but you can’t blame this on him. This partisanship is a disease on the nation. Many of the tricks are there because math in the US has traditionally been taught for repetitive manual use. You need your accounts calculated, you get somebody to add all those numbers and put the result on paper. I was just looking at a math book from the 1940s, and the first couple chapters are all shortcuts to doing multi-digit multiplication and stuff. Math education has not caught up to a reality filled with abundant accurate computing power. This horrible way of teaching math really is the most common way it is taught in America, and it has been so ever since schools were started in America. Not all those tricks are common, especially things like horses and Jesus fish. Those stupid drawings are only a desperate attempt to use a mnemonic to memorize a rote procedure. Every previous effort I’ve noticed has tried to eliminate this problem and failed. New Math in the 1960s. Reform Math in the 1990s. Everyday Math in the 2000s. The problem is not in the exact curriculum used. A good teacher with enough autonomy can teach well with any of these curricula. Obviously, there is a problem somewhere between concept and implementation.

Decade 11y ago

OMG. Bush has been out of office for 6 years already. “It’s Bush’s fault” is not a legitimate response, and almost never was. I’m not saying he was good for the country, oh no not at all, but you can’t blame this on him. This partisanship is a disease on the nation. Many of the tricks are there because math in the US has traditionally been taught for repetitive manual use. You need your accounts calculated, you get somebody to add all those numbers and put the result on paper. I was just looking at a math book from the 1940s, and the first couple chapters are all shortcuts to doing multi-digit multiplication and stuff. Math education has not caught up to a reality filled with abundant accurate computing power. This horrible way of teaching math really is the most common way it is taught in America, and it has been so ever since schools were started in America. Not all those tricks are common, especially things like horses and Jesus fish. Those stupid drawings are only a desperate attempt to use a mnemonic to memorize a rote procedure. Every previous effort I’ve noticed has tried to eliminate this problem and failed. New Math in the 1960s. Reform Math in the 1990s. Everyday Math in the 2000s. The problem is not in the exact curriculum used. A good teacher with enough autonomy can teach well with any of these curricula. Obviously, there is a problem somewhere between concept and implementation.