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9486 in the collection
Just the Facts, Ma'am
This article includes reader responses. This article is a powerful piece.
Roger Schank
Another brilliant revelation from our heroes in Washington:
"Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation."
Would you like to know why this is true (and I have no doubt that it is true)? The answer is given further down in the article:
"The report also cited findings that students who depended on their native intelligence learned less than those who believed that success depended on how hard they worked."
See, this is an easy one. If you work harder you get into college. Now the question is: why are we making the thing that students have to work harder at - Algebra II?
We know why this panel decided that. At stake is a $100 million federal budget request for Math Now and guess who was on the panel?
I dunno. People who might receive that funding would you guess? You betcha. A panel of university folks who are just dying for that grant money to be approved worked on a very well funded study that proved that the nation would not succeed without that grant money.
My favorite part of the Times' article was the following:
Dr. Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the panel "buys the notion from cognitive science that kids have to know the facts."
No, Dr Faulkner, as a graduate of your esteemed institution, and as a founder of the field of Cognitive Science, let me suggest, with all due respect, that it is you who needs to know the facts.
The first fact is that you are a chemist, and I am pretty sure don't really know much about Cognitive Science.
The second fact, is that there is plenty of work in Cognitive Science that shows that background knowledge helps one interpret the world around one, and thus reading, for example, is facilitated by understanding something about the world you are reading about.
The third fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever, that accumulation of facts and background knowledge are the same thing. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Facts learned out of context and apart from actual real world experience that is repeated over and over are not retained.
The fourth fact is that kids don't like math much and it is clear why. They find it boring and irrelevant to anything they care about doing. If you think math is so important, then why not teach it within a meaningful context, like business, or running a school doing the kind of math you had to do to do that - which certainly wasn't algebra II. There is plenty of evidence that shows that teaching math within a real and meaningful context works a whole lot better than shoving it down their throats and following that with a multiple choice test.
The fifth fact is that there is no evidence whosoever that says that a nation that is trailing in math test scores will somehow trail in GDP or whatever it is you really care about. This is just plain silly, but we keep repeating the mantra that we are behind Korea in math as if it has been proven that this matters in some way. Nothing of the sort has been proven.
The sixth fact is that there are lots of vested interests who need to keep teaching math. Let me name them - tutoring companies, testing companies, math teachers, book publishers, and many others who make lots of money when people are scared into thinking that their kid won't get into college because he or she is bad at algebra II.
The seventh fact is that nearly every grown adult has forgotten whatever algebra he or she ever learned to pass those silly tests, so it is clear that algebra is meaningless for adult life. I ask every important person in public life that I meet to tell me The Quadratic Formula. No one has ever been able to do so.
The eighth fact is that any college professor who is honest will tell you that algebra almost never comes up in any college course, and when it does come up it usually needn't be there in the first place.
I know this is a hopeless fight, but algebra really matters not at all in real life and the country will not fall behind in any way if we simply stop teaching it. That is not a fact, it is just a former math major's, UT graduate's, and Computer Science professor's, point of view.
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POSTED COMMENTS:
I wish I had some pithy advice; you have been put into a no win situation and you are trying hard to do what is right; what is right is to let your kids have fun with mathematical ideas and to think in a mathematical way; this is very hard to do given the current algebra and testing fixation; I wish you luck
roger -- Posted by: Roger Schank on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 5:51 PM
I appreciate you writing this article. I absolutely agree with you! I am a 5th grade math teacher. I work each day to provide meaningful instruction for the content that I am required to teach. I am responsible for introducing the application of some mathematical formulas as well as solving multiple stepped algebraic equations. For example, I have been successful when having to provide real world application for finding the area and perimeter.On the other hand, helping students to understand the relationship between x/y function tables and the equations that correlate with them is meaningless to my students. My students' prior experiences do not provide much background for these concepts. These are just two examples and there are many more. I just find my students not grasping the algebraic concepts at the lower level due to the lack of real world experiences that relate. I am sure this idea effects the success at the higher levels. I encourage my students to work to grasp the overall concept simply because they will be expected to use these concepts throughout the remainder of their educational experiences.
Any suggestions? or a different outlook?
Posted by: wanda govan on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 10:46 AM
yes; they all do; in every country I visit I give the same speech about what is wrong with their schools; every country has the same issues and students everywhere are unhappy and frustrated; I addressed the parents of a progressive school in lahore, pakistan recently; the parents asked how, if this school did what I suggested, would their kids ever get into college; same issues everywhere
roger -- Posted by: Roger Schank on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 6:00 AM
Thanks for the interesting article. But I wonder: Don't other industrialized nations teach algebra in high school?
Posted by: Eric Fry on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 7:51 PM
It amazes me that the same people who want us to compete with Japan, Singapore, Korea and many European countries also want to mandate courses like Algebra I and Algebra II, while those countries whose success we admire don't teach such courses. Rather they take a more integrated approach to mathematics including weaving algebraic thinking into geometric, numerical and other mathematical contexts. If by algebraic thinking we mean understanding and generalizing about problem situations and solution strategies, using algebra as a master key to unlock numerous similar but not identical problems (thank you, Dr. Er for the analogy), then I agree it is an extremely important part of mathematics education. However, the title, "Algebra I (or II)" immediately conjures up an intensive study of the last 3 letters of the alphabet. It is hard to keep the same old name and teach the subject in a whole new way. So--we will continue to do what we've always done and will continue to get what we've always got.
I am disappointed that the NCTM has opted to play the political game rather than standing firm for the call to help students develop their mathematical power as they did in the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989) and the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000).
But then, maybe traditional methods are working--look how educatified our president is.
Posted by: Pat McNichols on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 9:53 PM
I continue to be puzzled by those who want our kids to do things that machines are good at. When you live with things whose computational capacity doubles every eighteen months (maybe we should be grateful that software companies continue to write sludge code and slow things a tad) it's hard to keep saying that kids need to know algorithms, proofs, and other mathematical memorabilia. If we continue to debate the "hows" and ignore what to me are as or more important, the "what" and the "why" then we will continue to spin in this 21st C version of Benjamin's Saber-Tooth Curriculum.
Posted by: Chris Bigum on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 8:06 PM
— Roger Schank
The Pulse: Education's Place for Debate
2008-03-18
http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=49556
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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