5 ms·

What STEM Students Need to Know

41 points by jkuria 9y ago

adamnemecek 9y ago
The fundamental problem is that the US teenager has too much homework. You can like cut it in half and it won’t make a difference (look at like Finland). The gained time can be then spent on hacking and exploration.
- jkuria 9y ago
  Hmmh, really? I thought they spend 6 hours on social media and another 4 hours watching TV? :)
  - ausjke 9y ago
    or similar hours on games especially for boys. the smart phone is taking a toll on teenage daily.
    - megaman22 9y ago
      Without PC gaming and getting into modding as a teenager, I'd have never become a programmer. Not to mention all the experience unborking computers after trying to install something trashed the system. Or the history and geography I picked up by osmosis playing strategy games. Those hours were much more valuable in the long run than most of the time I spent in the classroom.
      - eat_veggies 9y ago
        Modern mobile/social games and even some PC games are pretty locked down and difficult to mod, which makes them way less educational than the PC games of your time.
        megaman22 9y ago
        I'm sort of glad that my parents never got me and my sister any game consoles; we had the PC for my mother to write test reports, and do the taxes, and type up my father's logging invoices. Consequently, I had the advantage of getting to frig around a lot with getting games to run, and with PC games that had a thriving, if rough-around-the-edges modding scene. I don't think I would have gotten anything like the same learnings if I'd been playing on a SNES or Genesis, vs a Pentium clone. Not to mention the dramatic skew in the kinds of games that are available on the different platforms.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Yeah so what?
  - TrainedMonkey 9y ago
    I think there is no standard for amount of homework. Amount of assigned homework mostly depends on the teacher. Students can choose electives which does provide some control over the total amount. From what I can remember amount of homework per-class features heavily on teacher review sites (ratemyproffesor.com).
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- avenoir 9y ago
  I was a B student in a Russian school from 1 to 8th grade and started in an American High School in 1999. If you factored in ungodly amount of mandatory summer break reading everyone had to do in Russian schools, you'd probably end up with 3 times the material covered in a span of a year compared to American schools. This basically allowed me to just coast through all 4 years of High School with all kinds of stupid awards and a GPA of 4.0. The same amount of effort would've probably turned me into a dropout back in Russia. Kids here don't learn anything and I think lack of quality material both in and outside of school is to blame. Ironically, I hear they don't learn much in Russian schools either these days.
  - maoistinquisitr 9y ago
    These anecdotes from smart foreigners contemptuous of Americans never make any sense against the stats. White Americans outperform all of them in the PISA tests. America only performs poorly in the PISA tests when you don't exclude non-whites.
    - eat_veggies 9y ago
      Non-whites are Americans too, and I don't see a reason to exclude them. The fact that non-white students perform so poorly as to drag down the average so much speaks of a massive systematic failure in education.
      - txcwpalpha 9y ago
        If whites have high test scores while non-whites don't, it might mean that the system does work for some groups, but not for others. This indicates as problem not with the curriculum, but rather with the way the curriculum is "distributed" (aka: the massive disparity between schools in wealthy areas vs poor urban areas). This is a pretty important distinction to make, given that this entire discussion is regarding the content of the curriculum.
        maoistinquisitr 9y ago
eat_veggies 9y ago
As a student currently in "the system," I think the biggest problem with the math curriculum is that unless you're in an accelerated program, math progress stagnates until seventh grade, where they introduce algebra (way too late imo) and then it stagnates again, repeating the same algebra year after year.
- avenoir 9y ago
  I agree. Colleges and Universities end up teaching basic math concepts and playing catch-up instead of being places of higher education. It must be costly to be keeping this up.
  - tyjen 9y ago
    It is costly, which is exactly why Universities and Colleges favor it.
  - icantdrive55 9y ago
    A note to the poor students, whom are doing terribly in high school, but are trying. You can go to a community college, and in two semesters, make up any deficiencies you missed in high school. If I had a do over, I would have gone to a community college during my last year in high school. I belive most students are given this option. I suffered through high school on so many levels. I don't like the way the different schools presented the information either. Yes--I went to three high schools. The last one kinda got it right, but it was too late for myself.
- megaman22 9y ago
  That was my experience as well. In 7th grade I did the Saxon Algebra 1 book, then my school changed curriculum and I spent the next four years rehashing what I'd already learned, excruciatingly slowly, until I took Calculus senior year. There was a lot of dicking around with TI-83 calculators, and drawing graphs to solve equations, which frustrated me since I'd already mastered the symbolic manipulation to do it faster and more easily.
  - 9y ago
Hasz 9y ago
Math in the US needs a revamp. Kids get the notion early on that math is some sort of ominous monster ready to devour their time and grades. It has a bad rap, and this keeps people from getting into it early on. What we need is someone to "popularize" math in a genuine and non-patronizing way. Say what you will about Bill Nye/Neil DeGrasse Tyson/Carl Sagan/Issac Assimov, but they've been incredibly successful at introducing advanced scientific concepts to a wide audience. Math needs these same kinds of "popularizers". Not only to introduce interesting topics, but to validate and remove the stigma surrounding math in the US.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I also have noticed that math and language learning are viewed by many people in the US as something that's not even worth trying because it is too hard. Pretty sad and I think this will hurt the country big time later. You can't run a country with only extrovert MBAs and lawyers that manage foreign immigrants.
  - cofcoycpyfjc 9y ago
    The grand experiment is in progress.
- GuiA 9y ago
  Vi Hart is an amazing math communicator, and is a model of what teaching math in fun, hands on, intuitive ways looks like. I’d pay a lot of money to see what she could do with a full television crew to produce a PBS style math show. https://youtube.com/channel/UCOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg https://youtube.com/channel/UCOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  From an early age math was a puzzle and game for me, and it was fun to solve these puzzles. It'd be nice if we can somehow get that perspective into the classroom.
- mynegation 9y ago
  USA had Martin Gardner. Ironically, I got so much of my love for math from reading his books, translated to Russian.
jee1shi 9y ago
How do you get past the paywall?
- marblar 9y ago
  Typically, you pay.
- emidln 9y ago
  I have a 'Via Facebook' bookmarklet. Something like this uri saved as a bookmark: javascript:window.location='https://facebook.com/l.php?u='+window.location Will redirect you to your current page via the Facebook link service (and thus with a FB referrer). Most publishers are too desperate for traffic to block FB. If you go to my site[0] in Chrome or Firefox, you can easily install such a bookmarklet by dragging the giant 'Via Facebook' button to your bookmarks bar. [0] https://emidln.com https://emidln.com
  - fibers 9y ago
    not only that but the referrer 't.co' (twitter's url masking service) also bypasses the paywall. it also works for any other dow jones site and sometimes FT if you block cookies
- Kephael 9y ago
  Accessing the WSJ article using incognito mode and a referral from Twitter seems to work.
- sigsergv 9y ago
  https://t.co/x7QwmhkWO7 https://t.co/x7QwmhkWO7
- sigsergv 9y ago
  Easiest way: post URL to the article in twitter and then click link from that new twitter post.
arkona 9y ago
https://archive.is/3HgG5 https://archive.is/3HgG5
gravypod 9y ago
This article is full of funny things. If you want to teach people Computer Science just teach them Computer Science. Why waste people's time with math they will push out of their minds as soon as they're finished with the class? I wish we had a specialization-based curriculum for high school. I wasted a lot of time there that I could have spent learning more. Some funny things in the article: > Discrete mathematics deals with such problems as... No it describes solutions to those problems. You could also describe those solutions with other types of math. A computer Scientist wouldn't think of this problem in terms of a formula first. They would likely think of this in terms of a Data Structure and thing about the most efficient way their representation's strengths can be leveraged to obtain a solution. A "calculus-track" Mathematician may think of this as a shape and attempt to frame this problem as an equation that describes the changes occurring in a subset of the problem. Luckily 3B1B just posted a video demonstrating this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCytJvd4H0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCytJvd4H0 > Students need classical math more than ever. I'd say this is debatable. What's the work/value trade off for teaching someone calculus? I just aced my college's calc program and I've already pushed that crap out of my mind. I'd say it's much more important to be able to learn how to do these things as needed. Learn how to pick up a book, find the chapters you need to read, read the material, apply it, and test your output. > But discrete math is fundamental to computing and ubiquitous in the real world I'd say it's not the only way to express those ideas. > To understand software, you need a basic understanding of computers; for that you need some basic electronics education. [...] There are many ways to build a von Neumann machine—the world’s standard digital computer since World War II... Lol. Who wrote that in the press release? I'd consider many micros with in-chip roms as Harvard architecture. I'm getting ready to laugh at the development and implementation of Common Core 2.
platform 9y ago
observing as a parent, who was educated outside of US, but whose children are attending a well-rated US public school 8th grade: (a) my child is an 'A' student (getting over 92% on most tests) (b) the student cannot do basic algebra without help. For example cannot convert a^2 + 2ab + b^2 , back into (a+b)^2 Does not even know what a geometric proof is. Eg. proving that 2 triangles are equal when each of their sides is equal, would be way beyond any knowledge that was presented in school. (c) Can do many simple problems 'quickly' and efficiently. However, cannot even approach a problem that should take say a genuine 1-2 hours. I am not even talking about more complex ones. So the whole way of thinking about Math (and science subjects) -- is targeted towards 'secretarial/data entry' kind of activities. Quick tricks, filling in blanks, fitting answers... There is a complete lack of homework problems that require a creation of any kind of approach/ thought framework... (and then testing out that creation). Instead, they are overwhelmed with huge number of simple stuff. But, as I know form being in the industry, it is that kind of job skills that being replaced by computers, or outsourced... (d) Student is trained (or may be brainwashed) to think that material in school and good grades -- is not just necessary, but absolutely sufficient (with exception of social work and leadership skills... always can do more of those...) So the resulting mind set is: If I get good grades, and if I am tired and busy with all the homework -- then that's a sufficient indicator that I am doing exceptionally well. This makes it very difficult, almost impossible for a parent to penetrate through this wall, (plus the social media, and peer-pressure cancers that constantly compete with me for influence on the child). I feel like my kids are just being treated as 'head count', in some 'feel good' & 'reward for participation' virtual video game, whose purpose is to create a fake reality, to reduce their chances of being competitive, ... and I cannot do anything about it. Apologies if I sound too frustrated.
- miketery 9y ago
  Your post reads like notes for a Black Mirror episode. :(
- eat_veggies 9y ago
  That's super weird. In eighth grade (2013-ish, not long ago) we had an entire course on geometry that was all about proving theorems and turning some given information into "the shape satisfies the definition of a parallelogram because..." The tests were exactly what you described you wanted: hour long journeys where you applied the theorems and postulates we learned up to that point to prove something about a shape. I struggled a lot but ultimately I believe I am better at thinking because of it. If you want some books: The textbook we used: https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Ray-C-Jurgensen/dp/0395977274/ https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Ray-C-Jurgensen/dp/039597727... The Art of Problem Solving: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Problem-Solving-Vol-Basics/dp/0977304566/ https://www.amazon.com/Art-Problem-Solving-Vol-Basics/dp/097... AoPS is pretty good but more geared toward math competitions. The reading is ok but the problems take some serious thought and if you can get your kid to do one a day s/he'll probably be better off for it.
fellellor 9y ago
Help with the paywall?

41 points by jkuria 9y ago

The fundamental problem is that the US teenager has too much homework. You can like cut it in half and it won’t make a difference (look at like Finland). The gained time can be then spent on hacking and exploration.

jkuria 9y ago
Hmmh, really? I thought they spend 6 hours on social media and another 4 hours watching TV? :)
- ausjke 9y ago
  or similar hours on games especially for boys. the smart phone is taking a toll on teenage daily.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    Without PC gaming and getting into modding as a teenager, I'd have never become a programmer. Not to mention all the experience unborking computers after trying to install something trashed the system. Or the history and geography I picked up by osmosis playing strategy games. Those hours were much more valuable in the long run than most of the time I spent in the classroom.
    - eat_veggies 9y ago
      Modern mobile/social games and even some PC games are pretty locked down and difficult to mod, which makes them way less educational than the PC games of your time.
      - megaman22 9y ago
        I'm sort of glad that my parents never got me and my sister any game consoles; we had the PC for my mother to write test reports, and do the taxes, and type up my father's logging invoices. Consequently, I had the advantage of getting to frig around a lot with getting games to run, and with PC games that had a thriving, if rough-around-the-edges modding scene. I don't think I would have gotten anything like the same learnings if I'd been playing on a SNES or Genesis, vs a Pentium clone. Not to mention the dramatic skew in the kinds of games that are available on the different platforms.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Yeah so what?
- TrainedMonkey 9y ago
  I think there is no standard for amount of homework. Amount of assigned homework mostly depends on the teacher. Students can choose electives which does provide some control over the total amount. From what I can remember amount of homework per-class features heavily on teacher review sites (ratemyproffesor.com).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
avenoir 9y ago
I was a B student in a Russian school from 1 to 8th grade and started in an American High School in 1999. If you factored in ungodly amount of mandatory summer break reading everyone had to do in Russian schools, you'd probably end up with 3 times the material covered in a span of a year compared to American schools. This basically allowed me to just coast through all 4 years of High School with all kinds of stupid awards and a GPA of 4.0. The same amount of effort would've probably turned me into a dropout back in Russia. Kids here don't learn anything and I think lack of quality material both in and outside of school is to blame. Ironically, I hear they don't learn much in Russian schools either these days.
- maoistinquisitr 9y ago
  These anecdotes from smart foreigners contemptuous of Americans never make any sense against the stats. White Americans outperform all of them in the PISA tests. America only performs poorly in the PISA tests when you don't exclude non-whites.
  - eat_veggies 9y ago
    Non-whites are Americans too, and I don't see a reason to exclude them. The fact that non-white students perform so poorly as to drag down the average so much speaks of a massive systematic failure in education.
    - txcwpalpha 9y ago
      If whites have high test scores while non-whites don't, it might mean that the system does work for some groups, but not for others. This indicates as problem not with the curriculum, but rather with the way the curriculum is "distributed" (aka: the massive disparity between schools in wealthy areas vs poor urban areas). This is a pretty important distinction to make, given that this entire discussion is regarding the content of the curriculum.
      - maoistinquisitr 9y ago

eat_veggies 9y ago

As a student currently in "the system," I think the biggest problem with the math curriculum is that unless you're in an accelerated program, math progress stagnates until seventh grade, where they introduce algebra (way too late imo) and then it stagnates again, repeating the same algebra year after year.

avenoir 9y ago
I agree. Colleges and Universities end up teaching basic math concepts and playing catch-up instead of being places of higher education. It must be costly to be keeping this up.
- tyjen 9y ago
  It is costly, which is exactly why Universities and Colleges favor it.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  A note to the poor students, whom are doing terribly in high school, but are trying. You can go to a community college, and in two semesters, make up any deficiencies you missed in high school. If I had a do over, I would have gone to a community college during my last year in high school. I belive most students are given this option. I suffered through high school on so many levels. I don't like the way the different schools presented the information either. Yes--I went to three high schools. The last one kinda got it right, but it was too late for myself.
megaman22 9y ago
That was my experience as well. In 7th grade I did the Saxon Algebra 1 book, then my school changed curriculum and I spent the next four years rehashing what I'd already learned, excruciatingly slowly, until I took Calculus senior year. There was a lot of dicking around with TI-83 calculators, and drawing graphs to solve equations, which frustrated me since I'd already mastered the symbolic manipulation to do it faster and more easily.
- 9y ago

Hasz 9y ago

Math in the US needs a revamp. Kids get the notion early on that math is some sort of ominous monster ready to devour their time and grades. It has a bad rap, and this keeps people from getting into it early on. What we need is someone to "popularize" math in a genuine and non-patronizing way. Say what you will about Bill Nye/Neil DeGrasse Tyson/Carl Sagan/Issac Assimov, but they've been incredibly successful at introducing advanced scientific concepts to a wide audience. Math needs these same kinds of "popularizers". Not only to introduce interesting topics, but to validate and remove the stigma surrounding math in the US.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I also have noticed that math and language learning are viewed by many people in the US as something that's not even worth trying because it is too hard. Pretty sad and I think this will hurt the country big time later. You can't run a country with only extrovert MBAs and lawyers that manage foreign immigrants.
- cofcoycpyfjc 9y ago
  The grand experiment is in progress.
GuiA 9y ago
Vi Hart is an amazing math communicator, and is a model of what teaching math in fun, hands on, intuitive ways looks like. I’d pay a lot of money to see what she could do with a full television crew to produce a PBS style math show. https://youtube.com/channel/UCOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg https://youtube.com/channel/UCOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg
hkmurakami 9y ago
From an early age math was a puzzle and game for me, and it was fun to solve these puzzles. It'd be nice if we can somehow get that perspective into the classroom.
mynegation 9y ago
USA had Martin Gardner. Ironically, I got so much of my love for math from reading his books, translated to Russian.

jee1shi 9y ago

How do you get past the paywall?

marblar 9y ago
Typically, you pay.
emidln 9y ago
I have a 'Via Facebook' bookmarklet. Something like this uri saved as a bookmark: javascript:window.location='https://facebook.com/l.php?u='+window.location Will redirect you to your current page via the Facebook link service (and thus with a FB referrer). Most publishers are too desperate for traffic to block FB. If you go to my site[0] in Chrome or Firefox, you can easily install such a bookmarklet by dragging the giant 'Via Facebook' button to your bookmarks bar. [0] https://emidln.com https://emidln.com
- fibers 9y ago
  not only that but the referrer 't.co' (twitter's url masking service) also bypasses the paywall. it also works for any other dow jones site and sometimes FT if you block cookies
Kephael 9y ago
Accessing the WSJ article using incognito mode and a referral from Twitter seems to work.
sigsergv 9y ago
https://t.co/x7QwmhkWO7 https://t.co/x7QwmhkWO7
sigsergv 9y ago
Easiest way: post URL to the article in twitter and then click link from that new twitter post.

arkona 9y ago

https://archive.is/3HgG5 https://archive.is/3HgG5

gravypod 9y ago

This article is full of funny things. If you want to teach people Computer Science just teach them Computer Science. Why waste people's time with math they will push out of their minds as soon as they're finished with the class? I wish we had a specialization-based curriculum for high school. I wasted a lot of time there that I could have spent learning more. Some funny things in the article: > Discrete mathematics deals with such problems as... No it describes solutions to those problems. You could also describe those solutions with other types of math. A computer Scientist wouldn't think of this problem in terms of a formula first. They would likely think of this in terms of a Data Structure and thing about the most efficient way their representation's strengths can be leveraged to obtain a solution. A "calculus-track" Mathematician may think of this as a shape and attempt to frame this problem as an equation that describes the changes occurring in a subset of the problem. Luckily 3B1B just posted a video demonstrating this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCytJvd4H0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCytJvd4H0 > Students need classical math more than ever. I'd say this is debatable. What's the work/value trade off for teaching someone calculus? I just aced my college's calc program and I've already pushed that crap out of my mind. I'd say it's much more important to be able to learn how to do these things as needed. Learn how to pick up a book, find the chapters you need to read, read the material, apply it, and test your output. > But discrete math is fundamental to computing and ubiquitous in the real world I'd say it's not the only way to express those ideas. > To understand software, you need a basic understanding of computers; for that you need some basic electronics education. [...] There are many ways to build a von Neumann machine—the world’s standard digital computer since World War II... Lol. Who wrote that in the press release? I'd consider many micros with in-chip roms as Harvard architecture. I'm getting ready to laugh at the development and implementation of Common Core 2.

platform 9y ago

observing as a parent, who was educated outside of US, but whose children are attending a well-rated US public school 8th grade: (a) my child is an 'A' student (getting over 92% on most tests) (b) the student cannot do basic algebra without help. For example cannot convert a^2 + 2ab + b^2 , back into (a+b)^2 Does not even know what a geometric proof is. Eg. proving that 2 triangles are equal when each of their sides is equal, would be way beyond any knowledge that was presented in school. (c) Can do many simple problems 'quickly' and efficiently. However, cannot even approach a problem that should take say a genuine 1-2 hours. I am not even talking about more complex ones. So the whole way of thinking about Math (and science subjects) -- is targeted towards 'secretarial/data entry' kind of activities. Quick tricks, filling in blanks, fitting answers... There is a complete lack of homework problems that require a creation of any kind of approach/ thought framework... (and then testing out that creation). Instead, they are overwhelmed with huge number of simple stuff. But, as I know form being in the industry, it is that kind of job skills that being replaced by computers, or outsourced... (d) Student is trained (or may be brainwashed) to think that material in school and good grades -- is not just necessary, but absolutely sufficient (with exception of social work and leadership skills... always can do more of those...) So the resulting mind set is: If I get good grades, and if I am tired and busy with all the homework -- then that's a sufficient indicator that I am doing exceptionally well. This makes it very difficult, almost impossible for a parent to penetrate through this wall, (plus the social media, and peer-pressure cancers that constantly compete with me for influence on the child). I feel like my kids are just being treated as 'head count', in some 'feel good' & 'reward for participation' virtual video game, whose purpose is to create a fake reality, to reduce their chances of being competitive, ... and I cannot do anything about it. Apologies if I sound too frustrated.

miketery 9y ago
Your post reads like notes for a Black Mirror episode. :(
eat_veggies 9y ago
That's super weird. In eighth grade (2013-ish, not long ago) we had an entire course on geometry that was all about proving theorems and turning some given information into "the shape satisfies the definition of a parallelogram because..." The tests were exactly what you described you wanted: hour long journeys where you applied the theorems and postulates we learned up to that point to prove something about a shape. I struggled a lot but ultimately I believe I am better at thinking because of it. If you want some books: The textbook we used: https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Ray-C-Jurgensen/dp/0395977274/ https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Ray-C-Jurgensen/dp/039597727... The Art of Problem Solving: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Problem-Solving-Vol-Basics/dp/0977304566/ https://www.amazon.com/Art-Problem-Solving-Vol-Basics/dp/097... AoPS is pretty good but more geared toward math competitions. The reading is ok but the problems take some serious thought and if you can get your kid to do one a day s/he'll probably be better off for it.

fellellor 9y ago

Help with the paywall?