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I had a rather bruising experience last fall "teaching" precalculus to a lecture of 180 students. Although I'd try to engage the students and explain how the s

I had a rather bruising experience last fall "teaching" precalculus to a lecture of 180 students. Although I'd try to engage the students and explain how the stuff is useful, the students would have none of it. I got scathing reviews about how I was teaching stuff that wouldn't be useful until calculus 2 (which is, of course, a feature and not a bug). We're fundamentally talking about 18-year-olds with bad attitudes here. If we can engage them with programming as opposed to further disengage them with math, I'm all for it. Anything that hastens the realization that learning is your own responsibility would pay great dividends to the students.

chopsueyar 16y ago
Teaching 180 18 year olds math in the same room, at the same time? How much does that cost?
- yaks_hairbrush 16y ago
  Let's see... in tuition, the students paid collectively over $300,000. Between me and the two TAs who were grading and doing discussion sessions under me, about $60,000 was spent on teaching for the class (the $60,000 figure includes the graduate student tuition waivers and our health benefits).
  - barry-cotter 16y ago
    Is that $300K their collective annual tuition or the amount paid for the credit hours for the course?
    - yaks_hairbrush 16y ago
      Just for the precalculus course.
    - burgerbrain 16y ago
      180 students for a single term can get over 5 million USD pretty easily in the US.
eru 16y ago
Perhaps an apprenticeship-system might be worth a try? Let them work together with adults---that might put some sense into them.
- evanhanson 16y ago
  I've long believed the master-apprentice system to be the most effective type of teaching system. Unfortunately, it doesn't scale.
  - eru 16y ago
    You just need more masters. It works fairly well in Germany.
  - cynicalkane 16y ago
    It scales, but only in a massively parallel way.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
calibraxis 16y ago
I think your employers set you up for failure. Nearly all educational institutions make math seem like something only weirdos could enjoy, for their later employment as tools of industry. I say that as someone who was once so motivated to learn math, I lied to a highschool precalculus teacher in order to take proof-oriented calculus at a university. (Though she thought she forebade me, I gained prerequisites in a summer-school, running as fast through the material as I was allowed, passing the maximum 3 tests per day — one test per chapter — once I hit my stride. This allowed me to take classes at a university with a highly regarded undergrad math program). Yet... the university class was boring. Producing "rigorous" epsilon-delta proofs (and whatever else we did) was a tedious exercise which improved my abilities in no significant way. Probably made me dumber. I took only one more math class after that. All of it was a waste of time. Didn't "teach me how to think better" or any of that paternalistic claptrap. I wish you did not blame your students for their "bad attitude." I sincerely don't mean to be rude, but maybe your attitude could also use some modification. In a better world, you might have been teaching an intro to enjoying one's inborn mathematical abilities, with a crack team of TAs from the psychology dept undoing everyone's damage from earlier schooling.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  I can't figure out what your hatred of epsilon-delta proofs has to do with employers setting up a pre-calculus teacher "for failure" and the indoctrination of students as "tools of industry". I'm sorry that your introduction to real math left you sour, but I assure you that epsilon-delta proofs are not a conspiracy by the industrialist class to brainwash kids away from critical thinking--or whatever you are alleging.
  - calibraxis 16y ago
    My "hatred of epsilon-delta proofs"? Boy, your little put-down is not only insulting, it's even absurd that I have feelings one way or another about simple mathematical techniques. Unless 'boredom' = 'hate' in your world. Sorry to even mention this and get your blood pressure up. (Didn't mean to scratch a sore spot by simply criticizing an educational system that I certainly paid my dues in.) And BTW, in addition to your other unsupported inferences (ironic given the subject matter), I wouldn't confuse not taking further math classes with stopping one's mathematical education. If you insist on reading things that don't exist in someone's words, how do your proofs turn out well? You must be constantly assuming things which aren't given, and even changing "equals" to "not equals" in a problem to turn it to one you have a textbook solution for. [Edit: Ahh... Not to sound at all stalker-y, but I looked at your public account info to understand your perspective better. I see that not only you studied at UChicago — which probably means Spivak's Calculus and learning epsilon-delta proofs might be a matter of pride with you — you work at a financial market. My comment does contain a criticism of the status quo, which you may have strong ideological feelings about and therefore respond with a bit less rationality than otherwise. And... maybe I did come across as calling a subset of people here 'tools'.]
mcn 16y ago
If my junior high and high school curriculum didn't even make it through precalculus after the typical six years of dedicated math courses, often featuring nightly homework, I would probably wretch at the mention of math too. I suspect that your students had already learned that they weren't going to use the covered material, even within subsequent math classes -- by being taught the same material year after year.

chopsueyar 16y ago

Teaching 180 18 year olds math in the same room, at the same time? How much does that cost?

yaks_hairbrush 16y ago
Let's see... in tuition, the students paid collectively over $300,000. Between me and the two TAs who were grading and doing discussion sessions under me, about $60,000 was spent on teaching for the class (the $60,000 figure includes the graduate student tuition waivers and our health benefits).
- barry-cotter 16y ago
  Is that $300K their collective annual tuition or the amount paid for the credit hours for the course?
  - yaks_hairbrush 16y ago
    Just for the precalculus course.
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    180 students for a single term can get over 5 million USD pretty easily in the US.

eru 16y ago

Perhaps an apprenticeship-system might be worth a try? Let them work together with adults---that might put some sense into them.

evanhanson 16y ago
I've long believed the master-apprentice system to be the most effective type of teaching system. Unfortunately, it doesn't scale.
- eru 16y ago
  You just need more masters. It works fairly well in Germany.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  It scales, but only in a massively parallel way.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

calibraxis 16y ago

I think your employers set you up for failure. Nearly all educational institutions make math seem like something only weirdos could enjoy, for their later employment as tools of industry. I say that as someone who was once so motivated to learn math, I lied to a highschool precalculus teacher in order to take proof-oriented calculus at a university. (Though she thought she forebade me, I gained prerequisites in a summer-school, running as fast through the material as I was allowed, passing the maximum 3 tests per day — one test per chapter — once I hit my stride. This allowed me to take classes at a university with a highly regarded undergrad math program). Yet... the university class was boring. Producing "rigorous" epsilon-delta proofs (and whatever else we did) was a tedious exercise which improved my abilities in no significant way. Probably made me dumber. I took only one more math class after that. All of it was a waste of time. Didn't "teach me how to think better" or any of that paternalistic claptrap. I wish you did not blame your students for their "bad attitude." I sincerely don't mean to be rude, but maybe your attitude could also use some modification. In a better world, you might have been teaching an intro to enjoying one's inborn mathematical abilities, with a crack team of TAs from the psychology dept undoing everyone's damage from earlier schooling.

cynicalkane 16y ago
I can't figure out what your hatred of epsilon-delta proofs has to do with employers setting up a pre-calculus teacher "for failure" and the indoctrination of students as "tools of industry". I'm sorry that your introduction to real math left you sour, but I assure you that epsilon-delta proofs are not a conspiracy by the industrialist class to brainwash kids away from critical thinking--or whatever you are alleging.
- calibraxis 16y ago
  My "hatred of epsilon-delta proofs"? Boy, your little put-down is not only insulting, it's even absurd that I have feelings one way or another about simple mathematical techniques. Unless 'boredom' = 'hate' in your world. Sorry to even mention this and get your blood pressure up. (Didn't mean to scratch a sore spot by simply criticizing an educational system that I certainly paid my dues in.) And BTW, in addition to your other unsupported inferences (ironic given the subject matter), I wouldn't confuse not taking further math classes with stopping one's mathematical education. If you insist on reading things that don't exist in someone's words, how do your proofs turn out well? You must be constantly assuming things which aren't given, and even changing "equals" to "not equals" in a problem to turn it to one you have a textbook solution for. [Edit: Ahh... Not to sound at all stalker-y, but I looked at your public account info to understand your perspective better. I see that not only you studied at UChicago — which probably means Spivak's Calculus and learning epsilon-delta proofs might be a matter of pride with you — you work at a financial market. My comment does contain a criticism of the status quo, which you may have strong ideological feelings about and therefore respond with a bit less rationality than otherwise. And... maybe I did come across as calling a subset of people here 'tools'.]

mcn 16y ago

If my junior high and high school curriculum didn't even make it through precalculus after the typical six years of dedicated math courses, often featuring nightly homework, I would probably wretch at the mention of math too. I suspect that your students had already learned that they weren't going to use the covered material, even within subsequent math classes -- by being taught the same material year after year.