Math

[Colonel Sanders]

An e-mail I recieved:

Logan

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Education continues to progress!

Teaching Math in 1950:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80.
What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970:
A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M" of money.
The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth one dollar.
Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M."
The set "C," the cost of production contains 20 fewer points than set "M."
Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M" and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set "P" of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20.
Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990:
By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20.
What do you think of this way of making a living?
Topic for class participation after answering the question:
How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees?

There are no wrong answers.

Teaching Match in 2000:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $120.

How does Arthur Andersen determine that his profit margin is $60?

[audiyoda]

Ain't this the truth. How freekin' sad that our educational system has been so 'liberalized' and 'demoralized' that there is no longer a right answer.

-Craig

[juppy]

Sad but true. Most of my math classes were in the late '80s but alot of our problems sounded like your example of the '70s. Most of the class just sat there with this look on their faces.

[Colonel Sanders]

I'm in Geometry, I wish I would have taken Algebra2 now. There are 2 freshman girls, 5 sophomore boys, 2 junior boys, and 2 senior boys. The smartest is a close tie between me, one of the freshamn girls, and one of the junior boys.

We do similar to what is said, only with ratios(A:B = 3:2 A+B=50, A=? B=?) or yX(2x+3x=50 x=?). There face is more of a or

Logan

[doctorgonzo]

That's an old joke. While our country's students are not bright, that is not a new thing. I don't think it has much to do with our educational system being "liberalized," whatever that means. It has to do with people not caring, parents more than anybody. My parents cared enough so that I was able to take college-level math starting in 8th grade. If parents paid attention to their kids' work and monitored it, everybody would be better off.

[audiyoda]

Originally posted by doctorgonzo That's an old joke. While our country's students are not bright, that is not a new thing. I don't think it has much to do with our educational system being "liberalized," whatever that means. It has to do with people not caring, parents more than anybody. My parents cared enough so that I was able to take college-level math starting in 8th grade. If parents paid attention to their kids' work and monitored it, everybody would be better off.

What I mean by 'liberalized' is the educational system is more concerned that tests are created so as to be equal. They are more concerned that a kid doesn't feel left out because he/she just doesn't get it. Rather than place those kids in a special program (that might actually help them), they are just told that it will come with time.

And here's the reality of it all: I jsut got done with my Master's at Michigan State Univ. I was a graduate teaching assistant for a beginning audio production class. It's a weeder class -- can't cut it there, you won't cut it anywhere and you won't go on in your degree program. Three semesters ago all my students were Telecomm majors except one -- he was a Engineering major. He was also Japanese. This kid was taking a double class load (26 credits) and was a dual major (Electrical Eng. and Computer Eng). He was easily the best in my class -- he finished projects on time and he finished them very well. I of course gave him a 4.0 This kid graduated this past fall semester with high honors -- he had a perfect 4.0 GPA. I heard him speak at the all-University commencement -- this kid's amazing -- plenty of extra-curricular activities, was on ASMSU (undergrad student gov't) for three years, worked 30+ hours a week, finished his undergraduate program in 3 years...and still got straight 4 points. He's also got a job waiting for him that will pay him $135,000 his first year out of college. What floored me is that there were students graduating with him that took up to 6 years to finish there undergrad degree!!!

What's my point -- from an early age, this kid as taught the value of his education. He' no smarter than I am -- he's just more focused. His American counterparts learned early on that it will be given to them over time. Unfortuantly, once you get to college, it's not just given to you.

-Craig

[doctorgonzo]

Rather than place those kids in a special program (that might actually help them), they are just told that it will come with time.

I wouldn't fault the teachers and superintendents. They don't have the funding. The federal government promised long ago to fund 40% of the costs of special ed, but they are nowhere near that. Thus, schools have to spend an increasing amount of their general money on special ed, leaving less for everybody else. This is only made worse by the insane popularity of testing. Instead of using money to fund special programs for the gifted and those that need help, the money is going for tests. Great.

Unfortuantly, once you get to college, it's not just given to you.

No, even most colleges just give it to you, which is why I dropped out temporarily and I am still very critical of the whole system.

[Jenni]

In the school where my husband teaches (and all the others around here too, for that matter), the "special ed" kids are now put in "inclusion" classes, where they are mixed in with the "regular" students. As you can imagine, it isn't working out too well. The "regular" kids often go "oh great, I'm in the retard class" and the "special ed" kids still don't get it. It just ends up causing headaches for everyone. The "inclusion" classes have special rules (like no time limits on tests) too.

We need the education system to face the fact that not everyone is equal, some kids NEVER get it, and that college isn't for everyone, and stop wasting our money trying to fix things that can't be fixed!

[doctorgonzo]

We need the education system to face the fact that not everyone is equal, some kids NEVER get it, and that college isn't for everyone, and stop wasting our money trying to fix things that can't be fixed!

Do you mean special ed kids? Are they not "fixable?" I agree that college isn't for anything. And some kids may never get calculus, or American literature, or physics. However, I have absolutely no problem with spending my money on kids in order to help them reach a level of independence; in fact, I feel that it is an obligation. Again, I think it is the parents. No kid is a lost cause, but many parents are.

Dubya was in Minnesota today, talking about how it should be the goal of every elementary school to teach all children to read. What, it isn't now? Moreover, why should it be the schools obligation? What parent wouldn't teach their kid to read? That's where the real problems are. That's what is holding back our education system. Not the special ed kids; it is certainly not their fault, nor is it the fault of schools, short on funds, that have no choice but to integrate classes.

[Paul Victorey]

Originally posted by doctorgonzo That's an old joke. While our country's students are not bright, that is not a new thing. I don't think it has much to do with our educational system being "liberalized," whatever that means. It has to do with people not caring, parents more than anybody. My parents cared enough so that I was able to take college-level math starting in 8th grade. If parents paid attention to their kids' work and monitored it, everybody would be better off.

Notice you're Minnesotan -- this college level math was UMTYMP? I was an UMTYMPer myself; I would have begun Calc I in the 1994-1995 school year, dunno if that was before or after your time.

Oddly, I just found out yesterday that one of my roommates was also in UMTYMP, small world I guess.

[SARGE]

Well, SHE had to learn Algebra all over again in order to teach our 4 kids. In my opinion (ever so humble), schools make the curriculum for the lowest common denominator in class. The smart kids then get bored but little Johnny passes. Years ago we sponsored a 10 year old who lived in an orphanage. Got him on week-ends, summer, etc. He went to a local public school. The night he graduated, he could hardly read his diploma. They just pushed him through the system. He's 30 now, works 6 days a week as a plumbers helper and feels cheated. He's happy though.

Heard it said that the level of education in college these days is comparable to what I took in high school. Homeschooling has worked for us, and they blow the socks off of "standardized tests", scoring way up in the so-called percantile. $250 a year per kid. Gripes me when officials harp about "spending more $$ on education". Money doesn't equate getting smarter. Lincoln learned to read in a cabin.

[Jenni]

I'm not saying that "special ed" kids are not worth spending money on. All I'm saying is including them in Algebra and Geometry classes probably isn't the best way to try to help them. Heck, NOBODY uses algebra or geometry except maybe engineers and mathmaticians, and I just don't think the "special ed" kids are gonna benefit from trying to learn it. I won the 4 year math award at my high school, my husband is a math teacher, and I don't remember 95% of the stuff I learned then.

Teach them how to be independent, teach them skills they can handle, and stop trying to train them to be rocket scientists.

[Colonel Sanders]

I'd have to agree with Jenni somewhat. Why teach us what we will never use? Why is a college so impreseed that we focus on what is of no use to us in a normal life?

However, I remember my 7th grade year. I was stuck in a reading class(hmm, I'm sutck in one of those again and I hate it just as bad!) and almost none of the other kids could read decently. What was the schools solution? Reading was no longer a forced-to-take course. Eveyone failed miserably so they might as well go into shop or home etc. instead. I can read quite well, I now how to pronounce the somewhat impossible word "the" or most others with more than one sylabal.

What I dislike the most is that the soon-to-be-validictorian of my class is an idiot! She knows very little about what exactly she is doing, but worst of all she gets it in her head that she is smart and you are dumb. Is that what we want? To see some idiot who does 10 equations to find out what you answered 6 problems ago was off a tiny bit(untill argument with teacher commences and you are proven right)? Teaching is hard, very hard.

Logan

[doctorgonzo]

As a matter of fact, Paul, I was in UMTYMP. I took Calc I in 93-94, I think. And I believe in inundating students with knowledge. Throw it all at the wall and hope most of it sticks. I don't buy the "they will never use it later" argument. That seems to assume that the point of education is simply to learn job-related skills, which I believe is the absolute wrong thing to do. If you just want to learn job skills, go to a tech school. But don't call that "education." I believe in a liberal education in the true sense of the word, and I think that universities are failing miserably in that regard. No, I may never use the Russian or French I learned, or the Freud, or the multivariate statistics. But it is in there somewhere, and it helped me in other ways. Everything should be required.

And don't worry, logan, valedictorian goes to the person who can kiss the most rear end. Think about it for a minute: the person who is valedictorian gets the most As, or in other words, does what the teachers want most of the time. I consider myself to be quite smart, and I failed classes because I would actually challenge the teachers when they were wrong. Hence, no valedictorian; I didn't even get into NHS because I questioned too much. C'est la vie.

[Paul Victorey]

IMO, teaching "only what they need to know" would be the ultimate least common denominator education. Firstly, what some people never use, others use on a daily basis. But more importantly, do you want children to be only educated enough to survive? Also, do you want to send children the message that "OK, you're not learning the material, so we'll just give up on you?" That hardly seems a helpful thing to do, either.

[bdunn]

I have a degree in electrical engineering. As I got farther along in school I became part of a smaller and smaller minority, Americans.

At my graduation it appeared that the majority of graduates were either indian or asian. Most of them had come here to go to school and then go home again.

I went to public school thru the eighth grade and then a private high school. The private jewish high school with a dual curriculum made college easy by comparison.

[Jenni]

Paul, I'm not talking about all kids. I'm talking about those who have been tested over and over again and identified as "special needs". Trying to teach then Calculus isn't going to accomplish much.

Fact of the matter is, all schools now teach to the lowest common denominator anyway. Putting "special ed" kids into that group limits even more what you can and can't do. As a "gifted" kid, I was bored to death in most all of my classes, because I was "getting" what they were teaching after seeing it once or twice, and it took most of the rest of the class way longer. So I had to sit there and be bored. No moving on to the next lesson (because then what do they do with me when I finish the whole class in a matter of months?), no enrichment, no "gifted" classes (not required in Mississippi high schools)...

BTW, I'll bet that if you research the public education system in places like Japan and India, the "special ed" kids are not included with everyone else, but go to a completely different school.

[doctorgonzo]

I'll bet that if you research the public education system in places like Japan and India, the "special ed" kids are not included with everyone else, but go to a completely different school.

Of course, the suicide rates of teens in Japanese schools is also much higher than anywhere in the world, due to all the pressure kids are put under. I certainly don't think that their extreme is a good answer. I also think that there is more of a stigma with mentally disabled people there, which also doesn't help much.

If gifted classes aren't required, then they should be. If parents aren't asking for gifted classes, then they should be. If parents are asking for gifted classes but can't get them, then that should be changed. When I was in elementary school, I would go to the next higher grade for some classes. I just sat in there and did the work. No problems. Why isn't that being done more?

[Cheryl]

I have to jump in here..as the mom of a "special needs" kid in an integrated class. Maybe our school is different, but my daughter has an aide to assist her...the class does sometimes go forward without her..she doesn't hold them back. The aid will assist her with a different project more at her level. My daughter does learn things a little slower than most kids her age, but she does learn. So to not bother teaching her because it's too hard is wrong, in my opinion. In an earlier post, someone mentioned kids complaining about getting stuck with retards...those kind of remarks should not be tolerated at any school...I know they are not at my daugher's school. One of the reasons for integration (or so I was told) was to help "regular kids" learn tolerance/to respect differences of of people who are not like them & it helps the "special" kids with socialization, and just plain learning.

Cheryl

[SARGE]

Down here, the purpose of integration was to allow those from supposedly lousy schools to be bused across town at 6a.m., the thinking being that attending the good schools would make them smarter. It didn't.

[doctorgonzo]

Up here, students from inner-city Minneapolis schools can choose to go to schools in the suburbs if they want. So far, it seems to be working just fine. I agree: nobody should ever be allowed to complain about being in the "retard" class. That is simply disgusting. A friend of mine works with developmentally disabled people and would smack people upside the head if they ever used that word. That kind of language was never tolerated at any school I went to.

[HAL9000]

If you really want to see changes in the math systems, talk to a math teacher that's say around 50 years old. It's quite interesting to see what they know and how little is being taught. In University, my prof actually taught us long division and showed us how to get the square root of any number in your head (and I mean any number, right down to how many decimal places do you want to calculate to).

[HackinCowboy]

Hal, you mean you actually had to think? This is almost unheard of nowadays. Most of my math classes (the ones that actually involve numbers and not logic or algorithms) we don't even consider thinking. Just grab the calculator. My TI89 works great

[glc]

It's sad - cashiers today can't even count back your change manually. If the power goes out, no electronic cash registers.

[doctorgonzo]

That is sad. I learned long division in class, but finding square roots by hand is something I had to learn myself. There is no doubt that schools need to teach far more than they already do. At the same time, it is easy to see why that isn't happening. Teachers have to be psychologists as well. They are presured by parents to teach to tests instead of teaching for knowledge. Heck, recently when a teacher failed several students for cheating, the school board reversed that. I certainly wouldn't want to teach in today's environment. Too much improper outside intervention, not enough resources to do the job right.

[Jenni]

Cheryl_2--it sounds like your daughter benefits more from the one-on-one assistance of the aide than she does from being in the class.

And I didn't say I thought it was right for the kids to call the others "retards". I just said that they do. And you know they do. Kids are the cruelest creatures on earth when it comes to insulting one another. Doesn't make it right, doesn't mean that I agree with it, it's just a fact of life. I doubt that there is anyone among us that wasn't picked on in school because of something.

My husband's class is supposed to have an aide too. But 95% of the time, she is busy doing something else. They are used as emergency substitutes many times.

[Cheryl]

Jenni

I have to disagree with you, I feel my daughter gets alot out of being with the class. She doesn't have severe disabilities, she's ADHD/Learning Disabled; but she has been listed as being "integrated" since pre-school. The one-on-one part is used as necessary...not for most of the day. Maybe I'm lucky with the school district I'm in. All the classrooms have a teacher's aide, some have even have 2 (which my daughter's does). There's a zero tolerance policy at school, so no, I don't hear of anyone being picked on (& I have a fifth grader there also who hears everything, or so she says ). It may be different in middle school, but I hope not. But I can understand your frustration with your husband being a teacher & not having the support necessary to make it work for all the students. I guess there is no easy answer.

Cheryl

[Jenni]

I'm not talking about kids that just need a little extra help and then they get it. My husband tutors kids like that every day after school. I'm talking about kids that you could explain things to a million times, and it still wouldn't make any difference. For whatever reason, be it drugs, a learning disability, or that they just don't care.

BTW Logan_85, I have to agree with you, the classes are getting easier. My husband taught me (don't ask, lol) Algebra I, Geometry, and AP Calculus. I can remember test he gave that were like books, 200 problems, no multiple choice. Now I type his tests. His final last year was 75 problems, all multiple choice. (8th grade math) I laughed at him, and said "you can't be serious, this is a joke, it's way too easy!" He said "not only will they not finish it, about half of them will flunk it", and sure enough, a large portion of them flunked it. I was amazed.

Zero-tolerance on name calling---that isn't very much like the real world, now is it? Part of growing up is learning how to deal with those that are bullies, be they physical or verbal. It always amazes me how quickly the "tolerance crowd's" tolerance disappears as soon as you state an opinion the differs from theirs. Seems to me that if we are supposed to be "tolerant" of all people, we have to put up with the jerk that calls us names too. He has as much of a right to his opinion as I do to mine.

[Cheryl]

The zero tolerance policy is not strictly for name calling...it is for bias of any type. And I don't think allowing children to be bullied either physically or verbally prepares them in any way for the real world - it lowers self esteem, teaches that the loudest & toughest are always right; not messages I want my children to learn. That's not the real world as I know it. Tolerance should teach respect for others' differences -- it doesn't mean I have to respect a bully.

Cheryl

[doctorgonzo]

I am part of that "tolerance crowd," and I am very much aware of people who scream, "You say you are tolerant, but the minute I call somebody _____, you tell me not to do that. Hypocrite!" Tolerance means that I repsect your opinion, even if I don't agree. If you think that developmentally disabled people are "retards" and worthless, you can have that opinion. But the minute that opinion hurts another, then it becomes unacceptable. And calling people retards does that. Hurting people maliciously should not be tolerated. It is the malice that I have zero-tolerance for, not the different opinions. If you simply stay at home with your family and rant and rave about things that don't hurt anybody, go right ahead (just don't expect me to come over). And it certainly can work in the real world; it seemed to work just fine at my school.

Also, why doesn't your husband go back to the hard tests and flunk his students? If they don't pass, its their own fault. Why doesn't he make a stand for higher standards?