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I don’t know how math education has evolved since the late 90s - early 2000s when I experienced it, but it was far more damaging to my self esteem and my relati

by kbos87 5y ago

I don’t know how math education has evolved since the late 90s - early 2000s when I experienced it, but it was far more damaging to my self esteem and my relationship with math than anything else. I learned from a pretty early age that solving long equations with a pencil and paper is simply something my mind is never going to be good at. I hated every minute of it, and it was a huge source of anxiety for me and my parents. My mom, a house cleaner at the time, managed to muster the money to get me a tutor, which got me through high school and into college. Fast forward 15 years and my relationship with math couldn’t be any different. In the context of my career where math has a practical purpose and I no longer have an artificially imposed requirement to memorize, I actually have quite a bit of use for and natural curiosity around math. I’m not saying that my experience means that math education should change dramatically for everyone, but it certainly fails a wide swath of people like me. Their math education is traumatic, that they are “bad at math” is reinforced into their brains by the educational system, and they live the rest of their lives avoiding it. (I’m married to someone like this!) I’m just glad that I was able to see how math as it is experienced in the classroom is pretty dramatically different from the way it is used in the professional world, and that I’m only bad at the former, not the latter.

deepsun 5y ago
I hear this "let's change math education" often. But how do you propose to do it?
- beej71 5y ago
  A lot of the attempts at teaching Common Core math that I looked at were far superior to my experience in the 80s/90s. I was taught math wrongly. Like the GP, I didn't grow to appreciate it like I do today until years after the fact... and I got a math minor! But really what I'd like to see is math taught in a far more granular way. Weekly chunks that were pass/no-pass. If you didn't get it, repeat the week. If you got it, progress to the next week. If you have _n_ weeks of math done, great, you get a HS diploma. If you have _m_, you have a minor, etc. And I'm saying "math", but that could be broken down into subspecialities. You don't qualify for precalc week 1 until you've reached Trig Week 12 and Geometry Week 8, or whatever. Weeks could be "challenged", as well, if you were able to skip ahead. And there'd be no need for a gifted program. (Such programs--I was in one--always sat the wrong way with me. Like it was an artifact of bad structural design of the education system.) Anyway, that's what I'd do if I were king. In fact, I'd change every subject to use this model. (HT Kahn Academy and their flipped-classroom work.)
  - skyde 5y ago
    what do you mean by flipped-classroom work?
    - ivansavz 5y ago
      I'm assuming you don't know what the term means in general, not specific to beej71's comment Flipped classroom = instructional approach in which "lectures" are pre-recorded and watched by students and home, while class time is used for discussions and solving problems (individually or in groups). The term flipped is used because what you do "homework" in class, and watch "class lectures" at home. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
      - skyde 5y ago
        Thanks a lot for the explanation. This make a lot of sense now.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    California largely does not have the same kind of gifted and talented program as NYC, which was recently discussed. Rather, students have multiple chances to move forward based on their performance on standardized tests.
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
    > But really what I'd like to see is math taught in a far more granular way. I really like your proposal! (And not just for math; any subject could be taught this way.) Problem is, if everyone advances in a different way, it is no longer possible to have 20-30 kids in the classroom listening to the same lecture. Because one of them is today at week 1, another at week 2, etc. So now you need to learn from books or computer. > And there'd be no need for a gifted program. We would need some bonus "weeks" that are not meant for the average student, but the matematically gifted students could take them. First, students should be able to take "weeks" typically meant for older students, even if that meant that gifted kids at elementary school would take lessons meant for high school students. Second, there could be alternative lessons exploring the topic in greater depth, or exploring connections between various topics. Third, there could be optional lessons with topics that are normally not taught at all. All three of these should be available, not just the first one (although even that would be way better than nothing, which is what we have now). To give an example of a deeper lesson, while average students learn e.g. that binary numbers exist, and maybe learn to convert from decimal to binary and vice versa, gifted students could also learn to do addition and multiplication directly in binary. An example of a topic typically not taught could be set theory, or game theory.

by kbos87 5y ago

deepsun 5y ago

I hear this "let's change math education" often. But how do you propose to do it?

beej71 5y ago
A lot of the attempts at teaching Common Core math that I looked at were far superior to my experience in the 80s/90s. I was taught math wrongly. Like the GP, I didn't grow to appreciate it like I do today until years after the fact... and I got a math minor! But really what I'd like to see is math taught in a far more granular way. Weekly chunks that were pass/no-pass. If you didn't get it, repeat the week. If you got it, progress to the next week. If you have _n_ weeks of math done, great, you get a HS diploma. If you have _m_, you have a minor, etc. And I'm saying "math", but that could be broken down into subspecialities. You don't qualify for precalc week 1 until you've reached Trig Week 12 and Geometry Week 8, or whatever. Weeks could be "challenged", as well, if you were able to skip ahead. And there'd be no need for a gifted program. (Such programs--I was in one--always sat the wrong way with me. Like it was an artifact of bad structural design of the education system.) Anyway, that's what I'd do if I were king. In fact, I'd change every subject to use this model. (HT Kahn Academy and their flipped-classroom work.)
- skyde 5y ago
  what do you mean by flipped-classroom work?
  - ivansavz 5y ago
    I'm assuming you don't know what the term means in general, not specific to beej71's comment Flipped classroom = instructional approach in which "lectures" are pre-recorded and watched by students and home, while class time is used for discussions and solving problems (individually or in groups). The term flipped is used because what you do "homework" in class, and watch "class lectures" at home. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
    - skyde 5y ago
      Thanks a lot for the explanation. This make a lot of sense now.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  California largely does not have the same kind of gifted and talented program as NYC, which was recently discussed. Rather, students have multiple chances to move forward based on their performance on standardized tests.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > But really what I'd like to see is math taught in a far more granular way. I really like your proposal! (And not just for math; any subject could be taught this way.) Problem is, if everyone advances in a different way, it is no longer possible to have 20-30 kids in the classroom listening to the same lecture. Because one of them is today at week 1, another at week 2, etc. So now you need to learn from books or computer. > And there'd be no need for a gifted program. We would need some bonus "weeks" that are not meant for the average student, but the matematically gifted students could take them. First, students should be able to take "weeks" typically meant for older students, even if that meant that gifted kids at elementary school would take lessons meant for high school students. Second, there could be alternative lessons exploring the topic in greater depth, or exploring connections between various topics. Third, there could be optional lessons with topics that are normally not taught at all. All three of these should be available, not just the first one (although even that would be way better than nothing, which is what we have now). To give an example of a deeper lesson, while average students learn e.g. that binary numbers exist, and maybe learn to convert from decimal to binary and vice versa, gifted students could also learn to do addition and multiplication directly in binary. An example of a topic typically not taught could be set theory, or game theory.