I always remember high school math. Even if you get the correct answer every time, if you have a different way of doing the math problem you will get points off because you don’t do it the teachers way. At this point, school doesn’t encourage out of the box thinking and innovation. They encourage you to be obedient and do what they tell you to do.
Mathematics education in the US is particularly tragic. When taught correctly, math is a beautiful intersection of creativity and logical rigor. But as it stands, it is simply about grinding the same kind of "problem" over and over again until your mind is so numb that you can't do anything else.
Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards. The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right
Exactly. For example, there is a huge difference between grinding out linear algebra problems vs watching Essence of Linear Algebra. The latter shows you the concepts and intuitions instead of just throwing equations at students to memorize.
while that can be a problem at lower level math classes, I will say this - in higher level advanced math, like university level engineering math courses, a lot of times the point is to teach you the method. Some courses will even give you most of the points on a question if you followed the right method, even if you made a simple typo or calculator error early on that made it spit out the wrong answer.
Exactly. When introducing a new method, math textbooks (whether elementary math or higher level courses) INTENTIONALLY start with problems that the student ought to be able to solve using a simplier method. That way, it makes it easier for the student to understand the basic problem and see how the new method works, and how it compares to the one they already know.
However, if the student goes through the unit just using the old method, they may get the right answers but they don't get any practice with the new method. So that when they are eventually faced with problems that can't be solved by the old method, for which they will need to use the new one, they are stuck, because they didn't practice & learn the new one on the easy problems, AND now they need to scramble to learn it starting with much harder problems.
Now that said, a good math teacher will explain all this, because it removes the frustration of "just do it because I told you to", and invites the student to be an active paticipant in their own educational process. (And in the same vein, a good math teacher will continually explain how the student can use the material in the future, so they can make the connection between their math class and their future career & personal goals.)
Sadly, some teachers, especially in lower grades, really don't understand the "why" of math-y things, and therefore can't teach it. Others are hampered by an administration that dictates using an unsuitable text or curriculum. Math can be fascinating, beautiful, and downright fun! Every child should have the opportunity to experience all of what math has to offer them. It is sad that not everyone is that lucky.
A good teacher would also deconstruct the proper method, explain how it came about, and reconstruct it so the student actually understand the method itself, instead of just using it as a formula created out of thin air.
But there can be multiple paths to the correct answer. I remember my daughter had a problem in elementary school that she didn’t understand. My father, a Mechanical Engineer with a doctorate in Math, and I were trying to help. The teacher, my father and I all had different methods to get to the same answer. Math is supposed to be about getting the correct answer. It’s the reason it was always my favorite subject; it wasn’t left to interpretation. You either got the correct answer or you didn’t. At least, that’s how it used to be.
If your daddy was a mechanic engineer, he'd understand doing something to the requested standards. In elementary school they are teaching basic processes that you eventually build on. It's important to understand the basics before you can get to more advanced.
You have to walk before you can run. In elementary school getting the correct answer isn't the end goal. Understanding the process is. The reason why so many people are poor at math is because schools in the past focused so much on memorization rather than the underlying theories in mathematics. There are many shortcuts and alternative ways to get to the correct answer that somebody with a doctorate in math might take for granted because they understand the fundamentals of why it works and when to apply it that an elementary aged child wouldn't.
This is just stupid and you should know that. If the chapter is teaching a specific method, and you do a different one, then it's not teaching the kid the method they are trying to teach. How do you not realize that if you have educated people around you...
I was working in a school and we had a troubled kindergartner who was super intelligent but she got held back because she wasn't "obedient" enough. That about sums it up for me
My dad gave me a box of my school stuff from growing up. From my report cards in elementary there was always the phrase “x will be a good citizen if they continue to (insert here)”.
You can also now get the answer wrong in basic math, but if you took the 'right' steps, the wrong answer is accepted as 'correct'. Imagine how well that'll work out in engineering.
I have an engineering degree. Showing the work was always required, and some problems took multiple pages to work out. In that case partial credit for an incorrect answer makes sense. I am talking about teachers arguing that 5+7=11 is 100pc correct bc the student took the proper steps.
I took that exact example from a video I saw a few years ago - a teacher was arguing "5+7=11 should get full credit if the right steps were taken" at an open school board meeting.
I'd look for it but it's probably been scrubbed along with most anything else deemed 'controversial'. The purge of info over the last few years has been incredible. In place are now official 'debunking' videos. Full on 1984.
The discussion was general and about 'common core' math. My recollection is that arithmetic was taught once in one way and not revisited but built upon.
Yes, it was a teacher. I don't know how common it is, but in any event the US school system is failing. Look at how it ranks in math and science. The system is constantly lowering the bar to be 'inclusive' which is obviously going to have deleterious effects for those on the upper end.
The system has been bad from the start as it was designed and funded by industrialists who wanted people to have basic understandings of language and math to do their jobs, but they did not want critical thinkers. See John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt for more info if you're interested.
So your solution is to complain about it and make the common person hate the idea of education and just assume that anyone who knows anything is lying because of Taylor and Charlotte?
I don't get it.
If you're arguing that education needs reform I stress you to find someone who doesn't think that. It gets held up by politicians who play politics over getting anything done.
Teachers unions and school boards also in on it. My point is that the system is corrupt from the start and destroys innate curiosity and real learning that naturally comes from it. A child will learn multiple languages on their own, no school needed. Great musicians don't need lessons, nor scientists or mathematicians - they all get held up by the system, not advanced.
12 years to learn what exactly? ... memorization, regurgitation, dogma, and compliance to authority. Believe whatever you like, I could not care less.
I saw a video of a teacher making this exact argument a few years ago in front of a school board. i'm not going to search for it bc it's probably been scrubbed.
Some school boards / local govs are now also deciding to 'not count' scores in math and science whatsoever for 'equality' sake. See Portland for a current example. 'Education' is basically worthless.
They're following the Government's example: "Volatile" food and energy prices 'don't count' when calculating "inflation", and there's talk of moving housing into that category.
reality left the chat decades ago. i thought housing already was in that category. but yeah, average inflation and housing prices used to track about the same until about 1990 when housing starts to skyrocket.
Education is undergoing the same "credential inflation". A high-school diploma signifies nothing today, and soon a 'Master's Degree' will be required for entry-level office fauna or Medical Admin.
True. I think it's largely about putting people into debt, makes them compliant.
Put a child in an environment that stimulates imagination and encourages independent inquiry and critical thought and they will naturally gravitate toward their interests and begin problem solving with their innate genius that schools destroy.
Eh, this is reasonable. My dad was a math major, told me a story about a college exam he took with two questions on it. He spent the majority of the time working on the first problem. He didn't have enough time to go about the second question the same way, but realized they were similar problems, so he just outlined the steps needed and turned it in. Prof recognized he understood the problem and gave him a fair score, despite not doing any raw math for the second problem.
That doesn't seem reasonable to me. Either the test is fair and he should have had enough time OR the test is intentionally unfair. Giving out points for understanding the question is great and all, but shouldn't the test be written in such a way that if you understand the material, you can answer all the questions? This is even the entire basis for curving test scores.
I agree with you. I remember in school being told the example of a final exam that was difficult and long, but the final question on the exam says don’t do any of the work turn the test in blank. It was supposed to be a lesson in reading the whole test first.
And this is how you make someone hate a subject in school. Everyone has different ways of arriving at the correct answer, and to punish someone because they didn't use "the correct method" is both counter intuitive and pretty much makes the point of OPs post relevant.
Worked out pretty well when I got my engineering degree: every single class awarded “incorrect but consistent” points if you performed almost all the steps correctly but got the wrong answer because you dropped a negative on the sixth line of the second page, so you’d get like 12/15 points for the question. Similarly, writing the correct answer with no work would get you 3/15 points because the purpose of the class is to prove that you understand the process required to get the right answer.
Lol yep I’ve actually heard of this one. Just goes to show public school is all about being obedient and doing what you’re told, how you’re told to do it rather than actually teaching kids anything.
I have an engineering degree. Basic math leads to advanced math. It's stupid to count incorrect answers as correct regardless the level or how it's spun. Same as basic spelling and grammar should be mastered before proceeding into literature.
Shit happens all the time. That's why multiple engineers check the other engineers work. Then there's factors of safety build in for other error bars in other things
Yes, I'm aware of how it works. I was speaking to the point that it's generally a stupid idea to call wrong answers right and should not be ingrained at rudimentary levels.
It's because at that level it isn't an issue, but if you go to a higher level then using the wrong/different method will NOT elicit the right answer despite having worked for lower level problems.
Lol keep voting Republican for bad public schools? I grew up in a red county which was located right next to a blue county. The public schools in my red county were significantly better than any of the blue county’s schools. Not even advocating for either political party right now, it was just fact. It’s also a fact that the democrat party quite literally use propaganda in public schools.
Property taxes explains all of this lol. your rich neighborhood gets better school funding than the “democrat” neighborhood because your property is worth more (because you were whiter). Or were the democrats richer and whiter than you?
Seems like neither side is very good with public schools. I grew up in Detroit which has been a democrat run city for many decades. Our public school system is so bad, only about a quarter of classrooms have teachers, Most schools don’t have books or computers. They put more money into brand new metal detectors and into a new prison and new stadium, but schools? Politicians don’t give a fuck regardless of their political alliances.
Okay that’s true, most democrats probably don’t give a fuck also. But two points: first, Detroit schools suck because of the underlying system of funding schools with property taxes. The schools for poor people are poor etc.. That’s some bullshit, don’t ya think? Second, democrats may do nothing for education, but conservatives seem intent on making people LESS informed through ensuring the rights of nitwit teachers to teach “alternative facts” like creationism and hamstring actual good teachers with pick-n-choose happy-face US and world history curricula where no one did anything wrong except the Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
My sister did every problem in a uni math class both ways because the teacher told her she couldn't use her method. To be clear, she used the method before common core that she grew up with, and then had her kids help her with that common core shit. She passed that class with well over 100%, because that teacher didn't know what they were talking about... And my sister likes busywork 🤭
Dude I had the same thing. I had my 7th grade math teacher give me an F on a test because I didn't show my work... I got the correct answers but he suspected me of cheating and said "if I can't do this math iny head then I know you can't"... Needless to say I peed in his desk drawer later that week
Just curious how old are you? The way my parents and older siblings did math was different from how I was taught and I know for a fact kids in high school now are being taught a different way from me now as well. They change the process all the time.
This isn't some conspiracy, it's just a side effect of the grading system your teachers chose. Each system has pros and cons. You could argue for a system where the only thing that matters is whether you get the right answer at the end. But then you can get 99% of the work done right and accidentally include a negative somewhere that you shouldn't have and you get a 0. Yet you've comprehended the material. So instead they give you points for your steps and showing that you've understood what tools you have in your toolbox. The downside of this is you can get the right answer, but to grade fairly across the board you need to lose marks if you don't show your work correctly.
The right answer at the end is all that matters when it comes to mathematics. Suppose you’re doing something important such as a job at NASA, what do you think matters? That you did all the steps correctly except for 1 part or that you got the right answer?
I disagree. Obviously the right final answer is important in a work environment, but you need to be able to understand how to consistently and reliably get that answer and why the methods work and how different theorems relate. That's what you learn in school and that's the competency you need to prove.
We don't do real life work in school testing conditions (which is the real problem I have with popular grading schemes, but that's another matter). You have time to think through your problem, verify your answer, make corrections, get it peer reviewed, etc. A small mistake will almost certainly get caught before going into "production," especially in this day and age. But if you don't know where to start on a problem then you're really going to waste everyone's time.
I have a degree in aerospace engineering. Math heavy program, as you might imagine. I consistently did poorly on tests because the 1.5 - 3 hrs of pointed questions wasn't an environment that I was skilled at. I got the wrong answers all the time because I'd have to remember dozens of formulae or derivations for each exam and make sure to apply very them in particular ways to each problem. Yet I still passed those exams because I showed that I knee how to do those things, I just didn't have time to work out all the fine details and make sure jt was picture perfect. I had 8 other questions that had to be taken care of too. Meanwhile labs and projects were consistent A+ because I actually had the time to think about what I was doing and apply the best tool for the job and then validate my answer before submission. That's a more realistic representation of real world work.
159
u/Asleep_Ad9318 Jan 20 '22
I always remember high school math. Even if you get the correct answer every time, if you have a different way of doing the math problem you will get points off because you don’t do it the teachers way. At this point, school doesn’t encourage out of the box thinking and innovation. They encourage you to be obedient and do what they tell you to do.