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Ask HN: Why have schools done such a bad job in teaching Mathematics?

5 points by itsmefaz 6y ago

jimmyvalmer 6y ago
Low prestige, low wages, hard subject. Is this not obvious? Situation in Europe and Asia gradually converging to US's as wage gap between private and public sectors widen.
- non-entity 6y ago
  To be quite honest, I probably wouldn't have graduated in time if it wasn't for math teacher who didn't care, and passed almost everyone. Looking back, it probably was my weakest subject, and probably would have been my lowest grades if I hadn't hated ELA classes too much to do the work. Unfortunately now, I find my math ability to be extremely weak, which becomes a problem as I take interest in things that require much higher level math than I'm used to.
  - itsmefaz 6y ago
    I'm also in the same boat. However, I've started reading from elementary mathematics and I enjoy it much more than what I used to.
- itsmefaz 6y ago
  Is this same across countries? I've always assumed that math education in U.S is better than the other countries in general?
  - Someone 6y ago
    Comparing education systems is challenging, but on average, the USA doesn’t score very well for its wealth. https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm shows it as below the OECD average. The top end institutions in the USA are very, very good, but, for a rich country, its bottom end ones aren’t particularly good.
bediger4000 6y ago
Because there's a bias towards so-called "practical" math - arithmetic and accounting and figuring out things like price per unit. I think this started because curriculum was highly biased towards "real American" farmers feeling like they only needed enough arithmetic to keep from being ripped off by city-slickers, and then got perpetuated by high schools needing to churn out standardized factory workers, which meant that knowing how to measure things and do fractions and decimals got imposed. There's also a huge "tradition" component to US public schools. Parents for generations have had cows when something changed. Look at the reaction to doing some small bits of set theory in the "New Math" of the 60s/early 70s, or the freakouts about not teaching phonics in the 80s, and the Core Curriculum conspiracy theories of 10-15 years ago. Making computers and software like Mathematica, MACSYMA, etc, and pocket calculators and later smart phones turned the whole thing upside down. Memorizing how to do arithmetic is actually detrimental to understanding, it turns out, and knowledge of symbolic logic and algorithms is more important than being able to add decimals and multiply fractions. To summarize: US math education was entirely practical, the curriculum dictated by either farming or industrial interests. Pocket calculators, computers and smart phones have made that "practical emphasis" look especially medieval because what used to be higher math, is now what is basic. This is abetted by US citizens preferring tradition in curriculum over all else.
itronitron 6y ago
I actually think Math, as it is taught now in US public schools, is taught better than any of the other topics. Why? Because there is a standard progression from one year to the next and the supporting tools/software are more refined than the related tools/software for Science, History, and English.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  (Australia here.) Maths was my favourite subject in high school mainly because everything else was taught so badly - history (regurgitate names and dates, for some reason mostly Greece, Rome, WWI), science (learnt how to be good at faking experiments! I couldn't believe it), english (memorize and regurgitate teacher's pet theories on set texts). Not to mention art and music which were just atrocious. I absolutely loathed poetry classes until discovering a few years later that I loved it. Maths is just harder to teach badly, I think - less opinion-based. Actually I did learn something of statistics in physics class - our teacher said "Right!" and "Right-o!" incredibly often, and I & some friends made tables and drew graphs of just how often, and various units and ways to measure when a new record had been achieved. But most people have a dislike for maths, maybe because it's been mostly answering other peoples' exercise questions. Seems dry and uninteresting, pointless. I'd been programming since I was about 11, so had uses for it all, could test out the new ideas in graphics programs, and had questions of my own to answer. It was something I was always playing around with. (So were music, art, history, science, but that didn't make me like the way they were taught!)
  - itsmefaz 6y ago
    > so had uses for it all, could test out the new ideas in graphics programs, and had questions of my own to answer That's a very interesting point you made!

5 points by itsmefaz 6y ago

Low prestige, low wages, hard subject. Is this not obvious? Situation in Europe and Asia gradually converging to US's as wage gap between private and public sectors widen.

non-entity 6y ago
To be quite honest, I probably wouldn't have graduated in time if it wasn't for math teacher who didn't care, and passed almost everyone. Looking back, it probably was my weakest subject, and probably would have been my lowest grades if I hadn't hated ELA classes too much to do the work. Unfortunately now, I find my math ability to be extremely weak, which becomes a problem as I take interest in things that require much higher level math than I'm used to.
- itsmefaz 6y ago
  I'm also in the same boat. However, I've started reading from elementary mathematics and I enjoy it much more than what I used to.
itsmefaz 6y ago
Is this same across countries? I've always assumed that math education in U.S is better than the other countries in general?
- Someone 6y ago
  Comparing education systems is challenging, but on average, the USA doesn’t score very well for its wealth. https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm shows it as below the OECD average. The top end institutions in the USA are very, very good, but, for a rich country, its bottom end ones aren’t particularly good.

bediger4000 6y ago

Because there's a bias towards so-called "practical" math - arithmetic and accounting and figuring out things like price per unit. I think this started because curriculum was highly biased towards "real American" farmers feeling like they only needed enough arithmetic to keep from being ripped off by city-slickers, and then got perpetuated by high schools needing to churn out standardized factory workers, which meant that knowing how to measure things and do fractions and decimals got imposed. There's also a huge "tradition" component to US public schools. Parents for generations have had cows when something changed. Look at the reaction to doing some small bits of set theory in the "New Math" of the 60s/early 70s, or the freakouts about not teaching phonics in the 80s, and the Core Curriculum conspiracy theories of 10-15 years ago. Making computers and software like Mathematica, MACSYMA, etc, and pocket calculators and later smart phones turned the whole thing upside down. Memorizing how to do arithmetic is actually detrimental to understanding, it turns out, and knowledge of symbolic logic and algorithms is more important than being able to add decimals and multiply fractions. To summarize: US math education was entirely practical, the curriculum dictated by either farming or industrial interests. Pocket calculators, computers and smart phones have made that "practical emphasis" look especially medieval because what used to be higher math, is now what is basic. This is abetted by US citizens preferring tradition in curriculum over all else.

itronitron 6y ago

I actually think Math, as it is taught now in US public schools, is taught better than any of the other topics. Why? Because there is a standard progression from one year to the next and the supporting tools/software are more refined than the related tools/software for Science, History, and English.

yesenadam 6y ago
(Australia here.) Maths was my favourite subject in high school mainly because everything else was taught so badly - history (regurgitate names and dates, for some reason mostly Greece, Rome, WWI), science (learnt how to be good at faking experiments! I couldn't believe it), english (memorize and regurgitate teacher's pet theories on set texts). Not to mention art and music which were just atrocious. I absolutely loathed poetry classes until discovering a few years later that I loved it. Maths is just harder to teach badly, I think - less opinion-based. Actually I did learn something of statistics in physics class - our teacher said "Right!" and "Right-o!" incredibly often, and I & some friends made tables and drew graphs of just how often, and various units and ways to measure when a new record had been achieved. But most people have a dislike for maths, maybe because it's been mostly answering other peoples' exercise questions. Seems dry and uninteresting, pointless. I'd been programming since I was about 11, so had uses for it all, could test out the new ideas in graphics programs, and had questions of my own to answer. It was something I was always playing around with. (So were music, art, history, science, but that didn't make me like the way they were taught!)
- itsmefaz 6y ago
  > so had uses for it all, could test out the new ideas in graphics programs, and had questions of my own to answer That's a very interesting point you made!