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> primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. I would say that it is demonstrabl
by gioele 15y ago
> primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S.
I would say that it is demonstrably not true in many EU countries. Maybe "non personalisation" is the tendency of lazy teachers, but I remember pretty well how my math teachers repeated the same subject thrice: the first time describing its core in an abstract way, the second time with concrete examples (apples and pears) and the third time in very little incremental steps. The first explanation was for naturally able math learner, the second for those how needed practical examples and the third for less able pupils. Some of us complained about the fact that it was a boring way to teach (and you know how horrible bored kids can be in the class) but I'd say it was worth it to have all my classmates learning more or less at the same pace with nobody left behind.
Actually, I complain more about the fact that we had to change math teachers so many times because of educational reforms and budget cuts/reorganizations.
- hobin 15y agoWhich country do you live in? I don't know about the quality of schools in general here (the Netherlands), but I've met too many people who say they "can't do math" to think very highly of our elementary educational system. Granted, though, this may have more to do with the fact that it's generally acceptable to 'just not able to do math'. (This is not to say that I think everyone can do math equally well, but I've seen some otherwise intelligent people making such comments that made me want to rip my eyes out.)
- flaviusb 15y agoI think of it like Sturgeon's Law applied to humans. Most humans just are not very good at most stuff. Look at the percentage of programmers that are basically not any good at programming all and yet are able to continue being called programmers; if we apply standards of expectation uniformly, then you would expect to see even people in technical fields be able to be useless at math and have everyone basically just shrug and accept it.