Math and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline in teens globally

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

Yes, my job would likely disappear, but it's for the good of society.

 

Thank you for your service brave Canadian 🫡

[SuperSpreader]

[cusideabelincoln]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

Listen...as the head of the IT service desk for a school division that is considering going 1:1 laptops with kids...we should ban all technology in schools. When you walk into school, you deposit your cell phone. The only computers should be in labs, and those classes should be dedicated to how to use the laptop/computer. Kids don't need a laptop for every class, and they certainly shouldn't have any distracting phones on them in the classroom. Yes, my job would likely disappear, but it's for the good of society.

 

Our director made a comment that to help save money to go 1:1, we could cut a few instructional aids since kids wouldn't need as much help in the classroom. I was like...what the fuck, you should remove all computers (which cost like $1.5 million per year in replacement/updating) and hire a bunch more instructional aids. I want more people in the classroom, or smaller classroom sizes.

 

Ban phones and let's welcome The Return of the Ti-84+. Surely no students would install Tetris [and other apps] on it; I mean I never did that 

[CitizenVectron]

51 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

 

Ban phones and let's welcome The Return of the Ti-84+. Surely no students would install Tetris [and other apps] on it; I mean I never did that 

 

Yeah but having the patience and skill to learn how to do that is actually helpful!

[Keyser_Soze]

I didn't have money for a TI-84

 

I had a Casio fx-7400G Plus

 

[johnny]

3 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

Listen...as the head of the IT service desk for a school division that is considering going 1:1 laptops with kids...we should ban all technology in schools. When you walk into school, you deposit your cell phone. The only computers should be in labs, and those classes should be dedicated to how to use the laptop/computer. Kids don't need a laptop for every class, and they certainly shouldn't have any distracting phones on them in the classroom. Yes, my job would likely disappear, but it's for the good of society.

 

Our director made a comment that to help save money to go 1:1, we could cut a few instructional aids since kids wouldn't need as much help in the classroom. I was like...what the fuck, you should remove all computers (which cost like $1.5 million per year in replacement/updating) and hire a bunch more instructional aids. I want more people in the classroom, or smaller classroom sizes.

honestly the best use for a chromebook is to keep kids occupied when i have a sub. if i have them on chromebooks i have to constantly monitor some of them so they’re not playing games or finding some workaround to watch netflix. 

[dualhunter]

1 hour ago, cusideabelincoln said:

 

Ban phones and let's welcome The Return of the Ti-84+. Surely no students would install Tetris [and other apps] on it; I mean I never did that 

 

I never did that either . We used the TI-85 at my school.

[legend]

Math is taught terribly. That's not a knock on the recent changes in method. I think those are actually for the better. Just across the board its taught in the most soul sucking way. They teach you how to be a computer rather than how to do math. They are not the same thing.

 

Incidentally, I regularly programmed my TI-83 to solve math problems so that I didn't have to in HS. That's the point of the computer. Actual math is far more interesting.

[Jason]

5 minutes ago, legend said:

They teach you how to be a computer rather than how to do math. They are not the same thing.

 

It's always struck me as weird that you can make it all the way through calc III, so potentially like a year or three semesters into college, before getting exposed to what you'll actually be doing as a math major.

[legend]

26 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

It's always struck me as weird that you can make it all the way through calc III, so potentially like a year or three semesters into college, before getting exposed to what you'll actually be doing as a math major.

 

Calc 3 was probably the first class where there were hints of actual math and I loved it. Probably my favorite undergrad math course.

 

I then promptly took no more "official" math courses mainly because of scheduling. But naturally, I've learned a lot of real math after that.

[LazyPiranha]

20 hours ago, legend said:

Math is taught terribly. That's not a knock on the recent changes in method. I think those are actually for the better. Just across the board its taught in the most soul sucking way. They teach you how to be a computer rather than how to do math. They are not the same thing.

 

Incidentally, I regularly programmed my TI-83 to solve math problems so that I didn't have to in HS. That's the point of the computer. Actual math is far more interesting.

 

Teaching HOW to do math is weird.  It's like trying to translate your own brain into someone else's.  My son is in fourth grade and trying to teach him the shortcuts and logic my brain uses to do math quickly in my head just doesn't work most of the time.  

[legend]

Just now, LazyPiranha said:

 

Teaching HOW to do math is weird.  It's like trying to translate your own brain into someone else's.  My son is in fourth grade and trying to teach him the shortcuts and logic my brain uses to do math quickly in my head just doesn't work most of the time.  

 

I think we shouldn't even bother with that. We should focus on exposing abstract questions to explore and how to seek answers to questions, not teach solutions and shortcuts. Shortcuts etc follow from understanding and interest.

 

Basically, this: A Mathematician’s Lament

 

[legend]

Actually, I'll post the first well written paragraphs here in an effort to inspire interest in where he goes with it.

https://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~pawelst/rzut_oka/Zajecia_dla_MISH_2011-12/Lektury_files/LockhartsLament.pdf

 

Quote

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where
music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more
competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are
put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and
decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or
composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious
black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students
become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it
would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a
thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone
composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until
college, and more often graduate school.

As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this
language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we
take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or
transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures
right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely.
One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit
because I had the stems pointing the wrong way.”

In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind
of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t
completely memorized his circle of fifths. “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply
won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out
the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”

 

 

 

And I'll skip ahead and post the last part of the introduction, because it really makes the point:

Quote

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 3 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.

 

[CitizenVectron]

42 minutes ago, legend said:

Actually, I'll post the first well written paragraphs here in an effort to inspire interest in where he goes with it.

https://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~pawelst/rzut_oka/Zajecia_dla_MISH_2011-12/Lektury_files/LockhartsLament.pdf

 

 

 

 

And I'll skip ahead and post the last part of the introduction, because it really makes the point:

 

 

My anecdote isn't directly related to this, but I think worked on me the same way (exposing me to general concepts and letting me play with an idea, and then understanding more about the fundemental nature of stuff):

 

In high school chemistry, I remember we were given a basic explanation of what the periodic table meant, including the different numbers, etc. However...before we knew a whole bunch, my teacher split us into groups and gave us all the little tiles for each element, but on their own. They said: organize these into a pattern that makes sense based on these numbers or properties, ignore whatever you've seen before. So, of course, everyone arranged them in different ways based on different patterns in the numbers. And it turns out there are different ways you can organize the table, depending on what info you want to relate. It was really interesting, and it made us analyze the core values of elements, and what causes them to be grouped in different ways, etc. So then when we started to learn more about atomic weights and electrons and everything else, it was so much easier to fit that into the intuitive understanding we'd gained from just playing around with stuff we didn't fully understand the rules of.

[gamer.tv]

As a teacher of 8-9 year olds in a system that, despite its massive flaws, is working well in a global sense - is interesting.

[Remarkableriots]

On 12/7/2023 at 3:28 PM, legend said:

Math is taught terribly. That's not a knock on the recent changes in method. I think those are actually for the better. Just across the board its taught in the most soul sucking way. They teach you how to be a computer rather than how to do math. They are not the same thing.

 

Incidentally, I regularly programmed my TI-83 to solve math problems so that I didn't have to in HS. That's the point of the computer. Actual math is far more interesting.

Any books that would be worth getting to try to learn actual math?

[legend]

38 minutes ago, Remarkableriots said:

Any books that would be worth getting to try to learn actual math?

 

I don't have a list on hand, because most of the real math I learned outside of any specific course (again, because courses generally suck) and indirectly from my own research studies (meaning: working on problems myself and then reverse searching for papers or texts on the concepts I needed to learn) and mentors. We're in the shit situation that because our education program is so fucked, it's hard to find real math books that aren't at a more advanced level. The damage is kind of done and we really need to change a lot of things to fix it.

 

What's your math background now? You might want to see if you can find anything from Paul Lockhart, who was the author of the essay I posted, because he clearly gets it.

 

EDIT: Yeah, actually he does have a book that might be great. I haven't read it, but I would trust it to be good.

Amazon.com

WWW.AMAZON.COM

 

 

Here is another from him:

Amazon.com

WWW.AMAZON.COM

 

[Remarkableriots]

@legend I barely remember but I believe Algebra 2 and precalculus. I think I took calculus for electronics class. I'll get that book sometime soon.

[legend]

1 minute ago, Remarkableriots said:

@legend I barely remember but I believe Algebra 2 and precalculus. 

 

Gotcha. Yeah, in that case I think the two I posted might be worth a shot!