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"Evidence suggests - and my experience agrees - that correctly teaching process creates the ground-work for moving to understanding." Yes, but this discussion

by SiVal 16y ago

"Evidence suggests - and my experience agrees - that correctly teaching process creates the ground-work for moving to understanding." Yes, but this discussion can't really be understood without understanding what it is that the US education system is trying to optimize itself for. In the US, teaching methods are NOT optimized for mathematical proficiency. They are designed to implement a "progressive" social agenda, "social justice," that puts "closing the achievement gap" ahead of all other considerations. The more rigorous the math curriculum, the more obvious our achievement gap, so the progressive ed schools have decided to de-emphasize objectively measurable math performance and emphasize other things that reveal less of an achievement gap. Instead of reasoning through geometry problems and "finding the measure of angle A," which can be easily graded for correctness, we have them increase the amount of time spent "engaging in mathematical discourse." ("Who can name a job that uses math?") Of course all answers are correct so, voila, no more achievement gap. We de-emphasize calculational proficiency--too likely to produce an achievement gap--and emphasize "conceptual understanding," which sounds great and can mean whatever you need it to mean for political purposes. "Do we all understand that there are many ways to multiply?" Sure we do! Instead of "find the answers to these problems," our kids are assigned to "find pictures in magazines of math being used in real life, cut them out, and bring them to class." This is called "engagement." Who can't cut pictures out of magazines? Bye-bye achievement gap, hello social justice. While the East Asians train their primary math teachers in techniques that have been found to maximize math proficiency, our teachers get a very different sort of preparation for teaching out kids: http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_2_a1.html http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_2_a1.html Read the above article, consider what the proficiency-focused Asian schools are doing instead, and imagine the implications for our future.

jleader 16y ago
I'm not sure what to say about this; my son is in 5th grade (in California), and his experience doesn't really resemble what you describe. A plurality of his classmates are 1 or 2 generations removed from East Asia, but relatively few of the teachers or administrators are Asian and nearly all were US educated.
- SiVal 16y ago
  Everyday Mathematics, a "reform math" curriculum, is taking California by storm. You should check out a speech on reform math by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd expressing his incredulity at what passes for math instruction today. Byrd calls it "rainforest math". It's in the official Congressional Record (1997-June-09) here: http://frwebgate1.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/PDFgate.cgi?WAISdocID=4Ty5Er/0/2/0&WAISaction=retrieve http://frwebgate1.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/PDFgate.cgi?WAISdoc... While American 5th graders (to use your example) get one homework assignment after another requiring them to cut, paste, draw, and color, their equivalents in Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc. are grinding away at difficult, real math. The Asian American students you describe are not exempt from this nonsense if they're in the public schools. You can find the reason for all this described in the article I link to in my post above. If you don't believe this is going on, here's an example article from an academic journal describing the difficulty the education schools are having "breaking down the resistance" of math teachers to the social justice agenda: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/1045476611-60265133/content~db=all~content=a791261361 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/1045476611-60265133/content... Here's how the abstract begins. It sounds like something from a dystopian future science fiction story: "This paper reports on an action research project designed to explore the complexities of pre-service mathematics teacher resistance to social justice issues. Research on equity and mathematics education has indicated that such resistance seems particularly strong for mathematics teachers."
  - jleader 16y ago
    But that's just my point: my son, in 5th grade in a US public school, hasn't gotten "one homework assignment after another requiring them to cut, paste, draw, and color". In fact, last year, he didn't score well enough on a math test, so he spent an extra half hour every morning for the rest of the year going to another teacher for rote arithmetic drills, which I thought was a bit excessive. Maybe you need to read fewer right-wing rants about what educators say they're trying to get teachers to do, and pay more attention to what teachers are actually doing in classrooms. Also, I believe most of your citations pre-date "No Child Left Behind", which from what I understand greatly increased the emphasis on standardized test scores.

by SiVal 16y ago

jleader 16y ago

I'm not sure what to say about this; my son is in 5th grade (in California), and his experience doesn't really resemble what you describe. A plurality of his classmates are 1 or 2 generations removed from East Asia, but relatively few of the teachers or administrators are Asian and nearly all were US educated.

SiVal 16y ago
Everyday Mathematics, a "reform math" curriculum, is taking California by storm. You should check out a speech on reform math by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd expressing his incredulity at what passes for math instruction today. Byrd calls it "rainforest math". It's in the official Congressional Record (1997-June-09) here: http://frwebgate1.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/PDFgate.cgi?WAISdocID=4Ty5Er/0/2/0&WAISaction=retrieve http://frwebgate1.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/PDFgate.cgi?WAISdoc... While American 5th graders (to use your example) get one homework assignment after another requiring them to cut, paste, draw, and color, their equivalents in Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc. are grinding away at difficult, real math. The Asian American students you describe are not exempt from this nonsense if they're in the public schools. You can find the reason for all this described in the article I link to in my post above. If you don't believe this is going on, here's an example article from an academic journal describing the difficulty the education schools are having "breaking down the resistance" of math teachers to the social justice agenda: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/1045476611-60265133/content~db=all~content=a791261361 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/1045476611-60265133/content... Here's how the abstract begins. It sounds like something from a dystopian future science fiction story: "This paper reports on an action research project designed to explore the complexities of pre-service mathematics teacher resistance to social justice issues. Research on equity and mathematics education has indicated that such resistance seems particularly strong for mathematics teachers."
- jleader 16y ago
  But that's just my point: my son, in 5th grade in a US public school, hasn't gotten "one homework assignment after another requiring them to cut, paste, draw, and color". In fact, last year, he didn't score well enough on a math test, so he spent an extra half hour every morning for the rest of the year going to another teacher for rote arithmetic drills, which I thought was a bit excessive. Maybe you need to read fewer right-wing rants about what educators say they're trying to get teachers to do, and pay more attention to what teachers are actually doing in classrooms. Also, I believe most of your citations pre-date "No Child Left Behind", which from what I understand greatly increased the emphasis on standardized test scores.