Algebra As A Gateway Subject 667
Spock the Baptist writes: "The Washington Post started a two article series Sunday, and Monday August 18 and 19 2002. The articles deal with something that the math, engineering, and physics faculties at colleges, and universities have long known. Algebra is a 'gateway subject' for math, science, and technology, and secondary schools in general are not doing a good job teaching algebra."
Beware the gateways... (Score:4, Funny)
Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
A skill without a use is going to be forgotten quickly.
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would suggest that this attitude is the main problem, and based on my own experience, it is something that the educational system in general seems to promote. After all, instructors are not necessarily encouraged to promote a real appreciation for and understanding of a given subject, but rather meeting various "standards", increasingly codified very strictly in terms of various new state standardized tests. This environment leaves a student no goal but passing these tests, which whether they reject it or accept it does not enhance their long-term understanding.
Personally, I would rather have seen the intrinsic logic and beauty first, and the "real-world" applications later.
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:2)
*However* - nearly everyone has a hobby that involves a fair amount of math. Like cars? Math. Like sports? Statistics. Computer games? Etc, etc. You can't instill a love of math in students - especially at a level of basic algebra. But you can entice them to love math by showing them how they can apply it to things they already *do* enjoy.
And so that I don't seem overly negative - I agree with the majority of your second paragraph. Everyone seems to agree that the school system needs some help. But can any of us point to a system in use today and say "This is what we need?" This isn't a rhetorical question. If there are any spectacular systems out there that consistently produce well-adjusted students who see learning as a joy rather than a chore, I'd love to hear it.
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, I feel like if a person only likes cars or sports, they should be free to direct their education in that direction, without being forced to study any more math (or anything else) than they want to in order to do what they like. Reciprocally, the only people who would study mathematics would be those people who actually wanted to.
But a system like this runs into tons of problems, I don't deny that, especially when financial success depends on taking a certain educational path during ones youth. The dynamics of education are totally different when things are made compulsory, and the focus becomes "how can we make people like what we are forcing them to do", rather than allowing people to do what they like. And maybe trying to tie it into things which do make sense to their lives will work better (read: higher test scores, or perhaps more qualified engineers in the future) than working under the mistaken assumption that everyone wants to learn.
As an aside: Everything I remember of myself and my friends, from before prolonged exposure to education, suggests to me that children in their "natural" state really do enjoy learning. To paraphrase your comment, I think that most students see learning as a chore because learning in the school setting _is_ a chore. I've known many people who ended up dropping out of school or getting through very marginally, who I must say loved to learn, but simply could not work within the framework of school. There are things (drawing comes to mind) that, because they were forced on me at an early age against my will, I don't think I will ever be able to learn to do or even appreciate. And moreover, when I think about those teachers whose classes I really enjoyed, the one thing that they all had in common was a belief in the intrinsic worth of what they were teaching, and a sort of stubborn insistence that really, the students in the class _did_ want to learn, whether that was the apparent case or not.
Re: You can thank John Dewey (Score:5, Insightful)
Men used to learn as apprenctices, learning while doing for years at a time. The educated labored over Socratic dialogues written over two thousand years before, learning that wisdom and knowledge comes only in knowing to ask the right question.
Many students used to take great pleasure in practicing Socrates' dark art by befuddling others into realizing their own ignorance.
But then, the powers that be at the great school of Columbia looked at the masses of the great unwashed in the masses of tenaments of the South Bronx and decided that man was in fact a machine, ready to be programmed at any time. One must merely sit, listen, and learn from those more knowledgeable than he.
And that is when the transformation took place. Instead of teaching children to ask the right questions, it was the teacher who asked the questions and the student who answered them. Critical thinking was no longer a necessary aspect of learning. One could merely develop the inhuman ability to memorize on end without any care as to its purpose. And then succeed. Some can do this, no doubt. Most likely, the abundance of Cocaine in numerous remedies for uncooperative children in the 1890's probably led some to believe humans could practice such tasks better than they otherwise could. Those complaining of stimulant use by children today are sadly ignorant of a tradition going back 120 years.
But there is a limit, all the stimulant drugs in the world can't teach a child to think critically.
The human being is different than other creatures in that we solve problems creatively, by using our heads, not our bodies. The dog when attacked, knows it will fight back. It cannnot imagine any other way to do this than by using its teeth. When it is hungry, it cannot imagine any other way to get food unless that food is right in front of it.
Humans possess the spark of imagination that is wonderous in its abilities to do and create like never before. It is unfortunate when I see anyone creating the false dichotomy of beauty, art, and science, for they are all the same. We must teach children from the beginning to solve problems, to create what has never existed before, and help them along the way. Algreba should not be a subject in and of itself, it is the most basic form of deductive logic that should be a part of a simple logic class. Math in general should not be a stand alone subject, but taught as a tool in the course of study.
We have followed John Dewey's advice for nearly one hundred years, that a child's brain should be poured full of knowledge. It is false, and destructive. We now have a nation of zombies, unable to question anything or solve any problems. They are hardly human, other than form. is it any wonder they merely stuff their faces with food and vicariously live out there sexual fantasies on television? They know nothing of humanity, they feel only the urges of animals. Eat and fuck, eat and fuck. Is this all life is? Of course, they cannot even ask THAT question...
Re: You can thank John Dewey (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. Go for it. After all, the last 10000 years of human society clearly had a far better education level and standard of living than we do today.
Or, hell, we don't even have to go back that far. Go look at some of the areas of the world that don't have mandatory schooling. They're top notch. Just last week I was thinking of moving to sub Saharan Africa because they have the best quality of life in the world.
The reality is that you're completely wrong. Even as far back as Socrates and Plato the teacher posed questions to the student. Did students ask questions too? Sure. And *gasp* -- they can now too. If you want to bitch about the (US) educational system, bitch about the funding. Teachers work harder than just about any other profession (hrm, an 8 hour day with no breaks plus another 4-8 hours of planning and grading after school hours), pay them relatively little, make them pay for class supplies out of their own budget, and expect them to educate and morally instruct our children at the same time. With little or no parental backup.
The other minor fact you forgot to mention is the expansion of knowledge in the past 150 years. The concept of a Renaissance Man is dead -- because there is no way for one person to hold the sum of human knowledge now. You can (and should) have a broad base of education, but "jack of all trades, master of none" is becoming increasingly true. Without modern schooling it's impossible to tutor our youth in even a small amount of the knowledge base. Do you know what literacy rates were prior to mandatory education? How many of the illiterate learned basic math, much less algebra?
John Dewey was against rote learning (Score:3, Informative)
Let me quote from this page [bgsu.edu]
You can find Dewey's book Democracy and Education at this page [columbia.edu].
The problem in our system is not that Dewey's arguments prevailed, it's that they did not.
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
You miss the point. (Well, IMO anyway, I can't speak for the original poster.) Making algebra skills required in other classes has a fundamental practical advantage -- it makes it harder to get any good (or even passing) grades if you don't know a fundamental skill.
Reading is already this way; students that can't read or have trouble are virtually doomed to low grades, as reading skills are relied upon at increasing sophistication almost as soon as they are taught. It is a very obvious red flag that students are missing something very important.It is very difficult to impart a genuine appreciation for something before someone understands it at some level.While I agree that this approach needs to be much, much more heavily promoted, I also think you need the negative, "look, just learn it" repercussions of an interdependent curriculum, so society can be guaranteed that children emerging from our schools have a known baseline of educational skills.
phil
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
My BS was in Physics, and I'm currently working on my MS in applied Mathematics. I'm still working my way through the paradim shift, but I can empatically state that your comment would raise issues with my professors. Math is most definitely neither about describing things, nor about being useful. To anyone doing abstract work, the suggestion that they are "applied" is considered an insult. They are better than that. They have generalized beyound the mere physical descriptions and are involved in the essence of mathematical logic. Now one can use math to model, yes. But then much work is done to remove from the proofs any hint of that real world model. The "scaffolding must be removed from the cathedral before its presented to the public". The concept that math works "Exactly the same way that a programming language describes the actions that a program performs" sounds alot like the Computational world view. While I lean towards applied and computational maths myself, this is *not* the world view of the majority of math people. There work is more than "purely recreational", they would say, but it isn't "useful" either.
Most math is taught wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey I agree with you Inominate, but in my opinion, algebra is only useful to people who are in the sciences anyhow. When would a normal person ever use algebra? EVER? I dont really think people should learn algebra unless its for a reason, and if its for a reason it should be for a specific field.
Currently the schools dont even teach real math they just teach calculation, they give you a million repetitive drills, and make you practice to memorize useless shit, like your multiplication tables, and other various rules.
This is the problem with how math is taught, the concepts should be taught, put the steps to doing the calculation in a refrence manual end let people look through it when they need to solve a problem.
Honestly only people who are naturally good at math or who like calculations will remember all the little rules, steps, etc, just like with chemistry, what good is it to make people memorize tables when they still dont really know a damn thing about chemistry?
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:2, Funny)
Hmmm let me count the number of times I've needed algebra.....none.
(Cost of dinner) * 0.1 = x
x + x/2 = tip
That's how my grandmother does tips and she "never uses algebra" either.
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you ever solve for an unknown quantity?
How many pizzas do I have to order to keep four programmers working through the night?
That's Algebra in a nutshell.
I use Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry Statistics and yes even Calculus almost every day. Cost curves, margins, product pricing, queuing theory... it's all part of every day business life.
Poor math teaching in school ruins people's lives. I have to teach employees the basic math skills they need to do their jobs, and these are people with college degrees.
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Algebra is taught wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but you have to remember that schoolchildren are schoolchildren... very few high schoolers are ready for jumping into the theoretical beauty of things without a practical background or use. Heck, very few adults are.
One of the greatest rewards in teaching high school Physics, for me, has been hearing the "A-ha. So that's why we learned that in algebra." And this is often -- not always, but often -- followed by a sudden realization that there are other useful things in algebra, other things they already "know" without knowing. And sometimes, that leads to an appreciation for the elegance and universality of math, independent of the particular application.
I teach some of the best and brightest. They take and succeed at some of the more intense math classes, taught by people I believe have real skill. And yet, without that "A-ha" moment, they generally fail to appreciate anything about math.
Keep your eyes on the deep beauty, but start off with the accessible... otherwise, you'll never take that first step.
As Fran Liebowitz says... (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah... gateway... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Yeah... gateway... (Score:2)
I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was blessed here in Tallahassee, FL, with some really great math teachers, as well as the option to take a "real" algebra course as "early" as the 7th grade. And we're not talking "algebraic concepts" here - I was required to derive the quadratic formula w/o completing the square, which is TOUGH when you're 12 or 13.
It disappoints me to see schools lowering their standards to raise average test scores. I'm one of the minority who believes that D should be passing, but that a C truly should be an "average" grade (just like it says on the report card). My H.S. has an average GPA of something like 3.4! That's just silly - there's nothing differentiating the truly exceptional from those who could either kiss a lot of arse or slough through it and do all the extra credit.
I also see a very disturbing trend of schools offering classes that, in essence, "teach the test", be it the SAT, ACT, or the FCAT (in FL's case). Doesn't this skew the results? I'd like to hear some others' opinions on this...
Just my $0.02 worth of incoherent rambling...
Brandon
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:2)
I've had to sit down and teach my daughter some basic stuff and it is starting to get me more and more upset with the system.
BWP
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:2)
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:2, Interesting)
now, about the FCAT. Yes, I have taken the test, and last year was on a panel grading a batch of them. I graded the writing/reading tests from an elementary school and the results were TERRIBLE, which goes to show standardized tests do not improve education.
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:2)
"Class, we are going to have a vote. I am more than willing to grade the class on a curve. But only if it works both ways. If the average for an exam is lower than a C, I will add points to the exam for everyone. If the average is higher than a C, everyone gets points deducted."
Oh my, that would be so fun. And evil. Opens up so many possibilities for the study of game theory.
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:2)
Class average was 58%. Average should be 70%. Therefore, I will tack 12 points onto everyone's grade.
This is also the form of 'grading on a curve' that most students are familiar with. And given my lack of PhD, those are the people I'd be teaching.
Actually, let me correct myself: once or twice, I have been graded on a real curve. But the only time I remember was in a math class, and the grades were presented as letters. Most of the time, my grades have been numbers.
(But, yes, you are correct. I'm just going by the most common 'curving' method I've come across)
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:2)
That we can't even get HS seniors, with the benefit of a supposed 12 years of education to score decently on the SAT is merely a symptom of how bad the problem is. Seriously, why are we wasting money with remedial education for adults when we should have spent that money when they were still minors?
Re:I'm lucky here in FL... (Score:3, Funny)
"ass" -> Donkey
"arse" -> The Queen wouldn't use it in public, but that's about the extent of its vulgarity.
Errrmmm... SECONDARY school? (Score:2)
So what are they talking about? Linear algebra? I doubt it, I can't see that they have been able to catch up that much. So, errm... what?
Re:Errrmmm... SECONDARY school? (Score:2)
Home School (Score:3, Insightful)
Solution, home school. My wife stays at home and raises our two kids. My 3 year old can count to 20 in English and Spanish (no, I'm not bilingual), do simple sums, and knows her alphabet. I plan on testing her knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem before she hits 10. She will not be rushed, pressured, bullied, or pampered. But we can give her a far better education than some underpaid, overworked teacher afraid to discipline her class for fear of losing her job or his life.
Re:Home School (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Home School (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Home School (Score:2)
But it's difficult to get kids to see people from all walks of life. I've seen kids who were home-schooled and/or private schooled who really miss out on the dregs of society. Hell, they even miss out on the averages of society. They interact only with other elitists, be they 5, 15, or 55 years old. They do comport themselves well, but have clear difficulties reacting with children their own age, and those in different economic brackets.
Then I turn again to the other side of the argument: I attended public school for 10 out of 13 years. I picked up a few friends here and there. But I got most of my friends and social interaction from an after school job, and one after school activity (drama).
BTW, is there a single kindergarten in the country that isn't a den of socialist dogma?
I suppose my point is that much of life is dealing with dopey, moronic products of public schools. Better to learn to deal with it early on.
Re:Home School (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Home School (Score:2)
Re:Home School (Score:2)
Re:Home School (Score:2)
Flying and Algebra (Score:3, Insightful)
I read in the Washington Post that the Maryland schools are putting BS into the standardized tests and calling it "algebra" and then they wonder why Johnny cannot do anything in real life.
Perhaps we can get back to basic R, R, and R one day and not be as worried about people getting their feelings hurt when they need help in the subjects.
DanH
Re:Flying and Algebra (Score:2)
Yes, people need the basics of algebra, but *most* of the crap they teach in schools is "busy work" (at least in my day).
Plus, your experience may not be normal. Does it make sense to teach algebra to 100 students if only 3 will use it later?
It would be more economical to hire a math expert when needed, or those 3 can learn it *when* they need it.
Math is a lot like law in my mind: there is too much to remember, so you hire/pay experts (like lawyers) when needed rather than learn 1000 facts or algorithms when you are 16 and hope they stay in your head (not) just in case you need it someday.
Tradition, yes. Logical? Hell no!
As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me tell you how much of a nightmare solving solutions were.
I also think that algebra is pushed on students before they are cognitively ready. The average middle school student should go as far as evaluating expressions, variable substitutions, (MAYBE) 1 step equations and (MOST importantly) reading an expression (ie. 3x + 4 means three times x plus 4). The rest of their time should be spent brushing up and applying their ARITHMETIC skills, such as working with/reducing fractions. Give me a class of students who know how to substitute and know their arithmetic, and I'll give you a class of all stars.
In this upcoming year, I'm dedicating the first 2-3 weeks to an intensive review of arithmetic and bare bones algebra. Hopefully that will smooth things over as we go on.
I really like the suggestion of merging science with math. I would love to see those two subjects team taught over a double period.
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you fully on that point. I am a university student (in Ontario, Canada) and sometimes I hear tales from the really enthusiastic professors about some of the madness when they taught grade school level math.
For example, one kid did something like this:
Question: 6x + (-5) = 63
Answer: x = 8
Question: 3x - (+12) = 15
Answer: No solution!
Now really try to think about the thought process which would have lead to these (wrong) answers. Can you figure out what the kid thought? I couldn't until the prof explained it to me:
The kid thought that the first question read as "sixty-(what) minus five equals sixty-three" ?
And naturally 68 - 5 = 63
Thus you can figure out how the kid thought there was no answer in the second one.
Yes, you are right, and there are too many kid falling through the cracks and with rising class sizes, you can't help them all get the concepts right.
"The rest of their time should be spent brushing up and applying their ARITHMETIC skills, such as working with/reducing fractions. Give me a class of students who know how to substitute and know their arithmetic, and I'll give you a class of all stars."
Once again I think that you are right on the money. Too many people are afraid of fractions. Back in the 80s in Canada, fractions were a real subject in grade 6-8 and the students came out of it with a real industrial knowledge of how they work. Most people in my generation in Ontario are scared stiff of the same things. (But if you take a kid from Alberta, they know it cold because they do it all in grade 4-5 there.) Fortunately for me, I was blessed with a really bad teacher (?!?) in grade 5 who was terrible at teaching fractions, so I just ignored him and actually figured out on my own how they worked.
Even now I see people my age who are half way though a university level engineering program solving laplace transforms and systems of differential equations, and they can't handle fractions within fractions or negative fractional exponents.
I wish you good SKILL in tuning your students into shape. I believe you have your priorities in the right place and know what the real problems are.
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:2)
at a notation and seeing it differently?
Do you think it's sad that you can
concatenate strings with a + in some
computer languages too? Because "+" only
means addition?
There is nothing inherent about the
6x notation that means six times some
unknown quantity. It's convenient, and
this is how it's used, but it doesn't mean
an exercise in seeing 6x differently
is somehow bad.
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, no. What she needed was to retake math, beginning in about 6th grade. Not that she was dumb, but it is almost impossible to do well on a timed test if you're using your calculator to divide by two. All the basic tools the above post talks about were completely foreign to her, although - to her credit - she could FOIL up a storm. Unfortunately, I don't think she knew what factoring actually meant. Forget deriving formulas by common sense or making intelligent guesses to narrow the range of choices. She was convinced that math was difficult and "other", something to be crammed before tests... but nothing she would ever understand. And understanding should be the goal of instruction in any subject (says a future teacher, with her fingers crossed).
Personally, I'm in favor of combining math with anything - science, as above, or music (as one of y'all suggested) - that will help students like mine think of algebra as a helpful tool, or even a "fun puzzle" (our local slang for calc), as opposed to some kind of senseless ordeal.
To be fair, I got an excellent education in public schools (please, Lord, may there be no typos in this boast... err, post), but then, I watch "Square One" and _Donald in Mathmagic Land_ for fun. A good nerdy environment will do wonders.
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:2)
I think a lot could be gained by just having Math and Science teacher cooperate a bit more. It seemed through my time in High School, that often the math classes and science classes where completely disjointed. Simple things like having one assignment/project crossover into more than one class would definate help. (When I finished HS, they where moving to something like this.)
The problems for basic math are a lot more prevalent than you might guess. The local community colleges here have to place a lot of people through basic developmental math before they can start with the higher level subjects. (Developmental math covers basic fractions, percentages, multiplication, division, and factoring.) The scary thing is, a lot of the people in devlopmental math have High School Diplomas. Developmental math is then followed by High School Algebra, which is followed by College Algebra.
I find that a lot of the issue is in the heavy use of calculators. Instead of doing basic operations, and understanding, we have a generation of "use the calculator anyway" students, lacking a firm foundation in math. Punching the buttons to get percentages, etc.. Instead of understanding 3 + 3, they understand the buttons on the calculator.
Taking multiple post-Calculus classes this semester, I'm very happy that the (public) HS and middle school programs where as good as they where. =)
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:2, Insightful)
In elementary school students are taught nothing about mathematics, period. All they are taught is to memorize tables of results of the four major operations. They are taught to apply these operations to larger numbers, but few students will ever grasp why 3x3=9, because they are never taught to understand such concepts, and students who ask are often brushed aside, and frankly this is because few elementary school teachers understand basic mathematics either.
After learning, or more often failing to learn to perform these operations, students then have the rug pulled out from under them... "Oh, by the way, these fraction things are really unsolved divisions, and and the 'equals' sign doesn't really mean 'do some stuff to these things and write the result over there'..."
Furthermore, within the teaching of Algebra and onward, the emphasis is on the memorization of equations and specific cases, with little or no attention paid to the underlying cause of these "facts". I am a firm believer in the not-common-enough practice of "open book" tests or allowed "cheat sheets", which in the proper teaching and testing environment would promote actual learning and understanding as the mind is freed from the need to focus on memorization.
If we actually taught Mathematics from Kindergarten up, rather than teaching counting, then arithmetic, then algebra, we wouldn't have this sudden dramatic drop-off in comprehension at the Algebra level. And if we focused on understanding rather than memorization, we might actually get understanding.
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:5, Insightful)
I also think that algebra is pushed on students before they are cognitively ready. The average middle school student should go as far as evaluating expressions, variable substitutions, (MAYBE) 1 step equations and (MOST importantly) reading an expression (ie. 3x + 4 means three times x plus 4). The rest of their time should be spent brushing up and applying their ARITHMETIC skills, such as working with/reducing fractions. Give me a class of students who know how to substitute and know their arithmetic, and I'll give you a class of all stars.
No way. This is how we end up with a typical math sequence that goes:
And this is for the super-bright kids. Come on! Even the "slowest" kids want to see something new every now and then!
I know how frustrating it is trying to teach people something when they don't really have the prerequisites down cold yet, but that's life; they'll pick that stuff up when they have to, and you can't let it keep you from throwing the new stuff at them too....
--Bruce F.
Re:As a secondary algebra teacher (Score:2, Informative)
I am resposible, at the beginning of the year, for assessing student proficiency and providing remedies for those students who seem to struggle with basics. Coming new into a distict, however, makes that assessment more difficult, because I don't even know where to begin looking for student proficiency with past material. I continue to be responsible, through the year, for doing whatever somersaults I need to do to make sure that all of my students are acheiving.
So there is certainly no buck passing here...
That said, three practical facts apply which impact what I am able to do in the year:
1. I am a finite man with a finite amount of time.
2. My average Algebra I class size is 30, and I have 45 minute periods.
3. I inherent the best and the worst teachings that my students had before me.
Thus, it is not "passing the buck" to prescribe curriculum changes in the grades after mine. The proficiency that my students have 1st day of school will impact the whole year.
math teachers (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, one approach would be to fail the fuckwits that can't hack it, but apparently teachers catch more flak for failing lazy students than passing smart ones.
Re:math teachers (Score:2)
Bah.
Re:math teachers (Score:2)
Two reasons:
First, teacher competency is frequently based on how many students failed. Because obviously, the teacher is the end-all, be-all for education. The students and the parents have nothing to do with it.
Second, the kids who need to be failed are politicians' kids. After all, how could the jackass that wrote the DMCA and the dumb slut who was ignorant enough to carry his seed possibly mix genes in a manner that would result in a positive IQ? It would throw the theory of entropy right out the window.
Compute this... (Score:2)
Please, original answers only. Lets get the obvious ones out of the way...
1) What does it get you? -1=Offtopic, sucka!
2) pr0n
Re:Compute this... (Score:2)
So what does smoking a gateway drug AND doin' gateway math get you?
3) You can see the equations spinning their beautiful graphical representations, but you can't explain them to anyone including your teacher.
Unless, of course, thats where you got the smoke.
IS NOT! (Score:2)
Re:IS NOT! (Score:2)
Re:IS NOT! (Score:2)
I started coding when I was six years old, in BASIC. At that point, I was in special ed, and remedial everything. Then. my father got me hooked on programming. I learned to read just so I could read the learning BASIC book that came with the computer. I quickly climbed out of special ed. These days, I'm literally a genius, high IQ and whatnot. I was in the 99th percentile according to the SATs and ACTs.
I was thinking about it a few days ago, and I owe everything to computers. With algebra as second nature,... I don't know how to finish this, other than, algebra is definitely a gateway to higher learning.
I'd love to hear similar stories, if anyone has them.
Re:IS TOO! (Score:2)
Re:IS NOT! (Score:2, Interesting)
Bueller, Bueller, Any one any one? (Score:4, Interesting)
Math, science. But also literature, geography, world events. But no couth is one of the biggest problems.
I admin from home. Sit in my underwear, drink beer, do not shave. See me in public like that? Hell no. I go on an interview for a possible client and I look like the man from IBM in the 80's. The orginal Men in Black
I am 32 and not that old(or at least I dont think so). Here is what I know.
Late 80's schools had gotten so horrid they had to administer tests that had to be taken before graduation. Basic skills tests. You might have passed your exams but still had to take this one. I never took it but I saw one and it was frightfully easy. Along the lines of the ASVAB for the military.
Schools dropped physics and trig to go to things like Alebgra 1,2 and geometry and that was it in math.
Anyone have that physics teacher who used the overhead for the notes? And he had written the notes originally back in 63 and over the years had made corrections to them? But sill used them. Probably still teaching.
TENURE - stay here long enough and we will give you a free cushion for your ass.
I went to a boarding school for my formative years and while I did recieve a fair amount of ass whuppins I did get some great teachers who really got me into science and math and literature. We built a Heathkit Hero in the dorm and fiddled with ham radios, and even had a unix box in '83. A DEC. And I owned your ass playing miner 2049er and Lode Runner on the Apple
I then switched to a local school and bam. I saw the wonders of a regular high school. Sure I got girls and booze and had quite a bit of fun, but I did not learn near as much or the teachers did nothing to generate my interest in things. Well, methane soap bubble torches were fun.
Teachers aren't paid enough. Private schools do tend to get the better ones. I graduated in the end from a public school, and had good teachers, but my private school experience was by far superior. And when I choose to lay my eggs I will make the sacrifice and send my little geeks to a private school. For them.
Teachers also need to be recertified every couple of years, just like people in the tech industry. "I had a TRS-80 back in the day so I don't ever need to take a computer class". Teachers get complacent, light a fire under their asses.
Bit of a rant here, but we do need to do something about it. Our world ya know.
And I do not care if you are 18 and can write a script that will control the weather, make Bill Gates give it all to charity, or even make Slashdotters a more level-headed bunch. Education is the the real fucking deal.
Take the time. I had to do it at 32 and it sucks.
Puto
Re:Bueller, Bueller, Any one any one? (Score:2)
I think that HS and Private School teachers are on equal footing in the area of teaching skill.
The difference is that in Private School, the losers, troublemakers, nitwits, idiots, lamers, etc can be kicked out much, MUCH more easily than in public school. Thus the lowest common denominator in private school is way higher than in public school. Thus private school teachers have way more motivation and there is much more potential for enrichment and teaching more exciting and advanced topics in public school.
I took public school the whole while and all of the classes that were non-streamed (i.e. there was no separation in General/Advanced/Enriched difficulty levels) were very lame and I usually couldn't stand them - on the other hand the enriched science and math courses were a blast. The teachers loved teaching them because the people there were there because they chose to be there and really were interested in the subject. In those classes, I learned a ton.
This difference in the lowest common denominator is why private school teachers can do so much 'better' than those in public school on a general basis.
California is PATHETIC! (Score:2, Informative)
The way the indignant parents act about this is the worst of all. If it were up to me, a probability and statistics course on top of trig (including spherical trig) and a C programming course (but not calculus) would be mandatory to graduate high school. The way parents get all huffy about their kids homework, taking their own ignorance personally I suspect, it is unlikely to come to pass.
Are there any other states where it is possible to graduate high school without algebra?
Re:California is PATHETIC! Amen brother! (Score:2)
Seriously, is there a conspiracy to keep students stupid, or do they just not get it?
I'd advocate spending Pre-algebra and the first part of algebra the first year of junior high, and follow through in eighth grade with algebra/algebra2/trig and a good dose of AP Chemistry. Ninth grade, you get trig/pre-calc with AP Physics. Tenth grade, you get AP Bio with statistics. Eleventh grade, you do 2 sememsters of college calculus (AP calc is weak, for get it). Twelfth grade, you take shitloads of standardized tests, and optional linear algebra with multivariable calculus.
Or you could do basic math and continuously flunk, and have to pass remedial math as a senior in order to graduate...
Don't think I'm neglecting history or english either - the AP Language and AP Literature tests are so similar that you might as well do both and get the extra credits. AP US History, US and comparative government, AP Music Theory, etc. My philosophy is you should be prepared for grad school when you do your undergrad, assuming you've got sufficient maturity to do so. No point spending 4 years of your life taking shit courses (most of them weeders) you should have gotten out of the way when you had the chance as a High School student.
Seriously, how can you explore different career choices if they have you doing the same remedial crap everyone else is taking?
Re:California is PATHETIC! (Score:2)
This Al Jebrah sounds like some terrorist group... (Score:4, Funny)
Why, filling our kids heads with islamic math propaganda is the last thing we need right now. Will it help us build bigger bombs? No, I don't think so. Counting to 10 is enough, and if you forget a few numbers in between, that's alright by me. President Bush himself can't count to 10 without his advisors helping, and I bet none of them know al-jebrah either.
Al jebrah is a tool of the devil! It might help when you're trying to decide how many camels to give away to marry off your daughters, and it might even help to figure out how to build those crazy pointy towered mosque thingies. But as americans, what good does that do us?
Besides, they come right out and say it. It leads to godless science, teaching us that we're the grandchildren of monkeys. Yes, cousin Cletis kinda looks like a chimp, but by god he's a good 85% human. Keep your godless atheist algebraic satanic brainwashings out of my kids skulls!
(stupid lameness filter won't even let you do a *** seperator bar)
Dammit. Spent 20 minutes writing one of my best trolls ever, and I can't bring myself to click 'submit'. It wouldn't be a big deal, but I know people like this... ugh. I'm wimping out.
Actually it is al-jabr (Score:5, Funny)
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Actually it is al-jabr (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Actually it is al-jabr (Score:3, Funny)
Thus sayeth the Knuth (Score:2)
In addition to explaining all that (and TAOCP is the only place I've ever seen it explained), Knuth goes on to give the translation: Rules of equating and restoring.
Re:This Al Jebrah sounds like some terrorist group (Score:2)
Gateway (Score:2)
Oh wait...maybe I should read the article...
Ann Landers (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when is Algebra advanced math? That sort of attitude doesn't help this country at all. I was going to write Ann a reply letter, but since she was already dead I didn't bother.
Disclaimer: I'm currently working on a Ph.D. in applied mathematics
it's hard to code without algebra... (Score:2, Insightful)
10 print "I never learned algebra"
20 goto 10
Your code with algebra:
for (i=0; i<10; i++) {
printf("I learned my algebra!!!\n");
}
-tpg
Well shit... (Score:2, Funny)
Right... (Score:2)
Science-Math connection (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading somewhere, and, after much thinking, agreeing with it, that science is currently taught in backward order.
That is, instead of biology-chemistry-physics, we should teach physics-chemistry-biology.
The reason for this is that to really get chemistry, you need a strong grounding in why all those little particles do what they do. To really understand biology, you need to have a strong grasp of chem.
Students today have a very hard time with math - and that's crazy. They shouldn't.
One way to make math more "real" to students is to apply it to science - perhaps if they aren't math-nuts, they'll be science nerds, and the connection will draw them into both.
The problem with this, of course, is that physics is classically taught as a calculus-based course, (although it's perfectly possible to do it with trig and algebra - my AP test 5 can vouch for that)
Chemistry "needs" algebra - at least it works a lot better with it.
Biology (at least at the high- and middle-school level) needs very little math at all.
Therefore, we teach them in reverse order.
As to not teaching algebra, there is no excuse.
I explained the basic principle behind algebra to a bunch of fifth-graders and had them doing "x+59 = 226" in about fifteen minutes.
Everything else is derivitive of that - if the textbooks can't get that across, blame them.
(Note - I would not suggest blaming teachers in the slightest - teaching from books works, even bad books, and teachers, at least in my district, are required to teach from a book - they were good teachers with bad material)
So damn the torpedoes and shut down Houghton-Mifflin!
~Mac~
Re:Bio-Chem-Physics (Score:2)
While I sort of agree with this, and certainly once people are at the University level, there's a big reason why we don't: familiarity.
Most any kid can picture his dog (biology). He can maybe think about what happens when the dog eats (chemistry). There's almost no way he can conceive of what the food is made of, on a level so small it has to be described only with mathematics (physics). Even when talking about classical physics, I don't care how much of a science geek you are - balls rolling down planes are NOT exciting. Physics tends to be either highly math focussed (and a lot of memorization), or so abstract that most people don't even grasp the basics (quantum physics, anyone?).
Biology is an easy course to teach, because it deals with every day occurences. Sure, adding vinegar to baking soda looks cool, but without the biological effects, try explaining to a 10 year old why this should be important to him/her. Why there are so many mosquitoes during rainy years is a lot more relevant, and approachable, to the average student.
Personally, I think we really need to return to a more traditional "Science" type of course, with less division between the fields. I'll never forget the day in chem lab when it occured to me that everything we talked about in physics and bio were all connected - it was an epiphany I'll never be able to top. Yet all through school, it was never really explained that all of this stuff is not only related, but basically THE SAME THING.
Same goes for math (esp. algebra). You simply cannot do physics without it, nor chem, nor bio (unless we're talking the ubiquitous worm disection that really teaches nothing). The worst mistake we ever make in school is the old "this isn't english class, so you can't deduct marks for spelling mistakes". I've seen people get away with horrendous mathematical errors (even in University) because "this isn't a math course".
Abstract concepts like algebra are simply too fundamental for darn near everything, most peope don't even realize they're using it almost every day. Unfortunately, testing understanding of abstracts isn't as easy as checking memorization and regurgitation skills - hence those dozens and hundreds of formulae that almost no one remembers 5 minutes after the final exam.
As a teacher (Score:3, Insightful)
x^2 +6x +8 =0 but (x+1)/2 = 4 and they were lost. All the blame can't be laid on the jr/sr high some of it also falls before they get there.
The problem isn't that the teachers are aiming low (Score:2, Insightful)
Some may point to Special Education and/or Gifted programs as alleviating this, but they are typically under funded, help only the lower/upper 3-10%, and don't have any set way to help, instead focusing on the main weaknesses/strengths of the bottom/top 2-3 individuals.
Example: my HS gifted program was essentially a quiz bowl team. Why? It wasn't because we learned a lot(we didn't), but because we had 3 people who were really good. Everyone else was perfectly happy, because going to the events meant they could hang out with their friends and usually get free food. For them, it was just a bonus to watch the top 3 do so well sometimes.
Why hasn't a solution been found and used? Quite simple: parents don't want their kids labeled negatively, and quite often kids don't want to be labeled positively by teachers because it leads to more negative labels from their peers. Having multiple classes, each for a certain level of performer, and you will have complaints, and lots of them.
In other words, don't necessarily blame the teachers or the buereaucrats for the problems of the system--blame our culture for being too Politically Correct.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All Messed Up (Score:2)
This is a very good topic, and point. Teaching and education is all messed up.
Why does the blame immediately fall there? Here's a clue for all the parents or wanna-be moms and dads out there: Your Johnny many not turn out to be all that bright a boy! In fact, nearly 50% of the population is going to have below average intelligence. While you'd like to assume it'll be the Smiths next door that raise the moron, you'll do your own kid a bigger favor if you assume the coin flip is not in your favor and thus actively participate in their education.
The problem I always had growing up and learning from teachers was inconsistency. I hated it then, and I hate it now.
Clue time for the young student now: teachers aren't high holy men (and women) with any ultimate truth to offer up. At best, they're just guides along the path and you need to get up off your ass and do the walking yourself. Socrates gave perhaps the best phrase regarding education I can think of: "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
I finally got through school by deciding to tune out the teachers entirely, buying my own text-books (after online research), and doing all my homework and papers in class while the teacher was lecturing.
Now that is a worthy solution. Keep it up and you'll end up doing well in life. But don't go expecting everyone in your class to be so motivated, and then don't go blaming the teacher because some who coasted through their first 18 years ends up hating the rest of their life. You learned the lessons of learning early; some never learn to learn. Sucks to be them!
A Primer on "Fuzzy Math" or the "New New Math" (Score:5, Informative)
In an effort to overcome our country's mathematics woes, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) [nctm.org] put together a monumental group of standards and principles [nctm.org] revolutionizing the way that Mathematics is taught at the High School level.
The NCTM-based curriculum [mathematicallysane.com] is different. Some teachers and college professors [mathematic...orrect.com] believe it to be weak on mathematics because it doesn't look like the curriculum they grew up with. Traditional curriculum (teacher does a couple examples, students practice solving 30+ problems similar) has not been good enough though.
The new curriculum, based on psychology and education research from the latter half of this century, focuses on understanding in addition to the traditional acquisition of skills. It is mathematics rich with connections to other areas, and deep in content. Students start in 6th grade learning basic algebraic concepts, number theory, geometry, probability, etc. Obviously mastery of all these concepts does not happen in a single year. In fact, the curriculum spirals around the same concepts, building new understanding and making new connections with each pass so that, ideally, when students graduate their skills AND understanding will be better than that of previous generations.
Sometimes this math is called "Fuzzy Math" or the "New 'New Math'". Some educators, professionals, parents, and children feel the curriculum is weak on "real math." My concerns were similar before I started teaching the Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP) [mathimp.org].
Between 9th and 10th grade, students master basic algebra, learn the basics of the trig functions, work with standard deviation and the chi-squared measure, build and solve and maximum profit linear programming (something most math majors don't do until grad school), derive and prove the pythagorean theorem, work with exponential and logarithmic functions, do all sorts of number-theory related problems, and so much more. Still IMP and other standards-based curricula have their problems. In my opinion, although there's plenty of problem-solving and understanding-based activities, there needs to be more traditional skill work. I supplement my lessons with such work where appropriate. Any teacher worth their stuff would do the same. Additionally, the curricula is very wordy, which is fine for middle-class suburbanites, but when you're teaching in a city where 25% of the students don't speak english as their first language, and 75% are in poverty (typically correlated with smaller vocab and weaker reading/writing skills), a wordy curriculum is just one more thing making it tough to teach/learn math. In sum, there's a lot of hostility from the non-math-teacher world toward this new curriculum because it's so different. But, with the abismal performance of American mathematics when compared internationally, it can't be business as usual. The curriculum is already working well in the classes I've seen. And the research points to positive improvements after curriculum implementation (no large study has been completed as far as I'm aware). NCTM-based curricula is no panacea, but it's a definite improvement over the more archaic traditional curricula.
Is it just coincidence...? (Score:2)
Re:Is it just coincidence...? (Score:2)
i don't know what is better... (Score:3, Interesting)
can not grading homework WORK for a middle school student? or will they all just not do homework and fail?
i have always hated the learning process in math for that very reason...
k-6 == elementary ; 7-12 == Secondary (Score:2)
Fortunately I had good 7th -9th math instruction. 7th = "Algebra 1/2", 8th = Algebra 1, 9th = Advanced Algebra 2.
Advanced Alg 2 was probably the hardest math class at my high school (considering that only 9th graders took it). In pre-Calc you could immediately tell the difference between the normal Alg2 and the Advanced class. Basically, Precalc was redundant for us, but it was pre-req to take Calc.
Left behind..... (Score:2)
However, by the time I reached the second half of Middle School, it was painfully obvious I needed some extra help. I simply couldn't do most of the Math course work.
Nobody really seemed to care. They only funded Special Ed classes for the violent kids in my school, and the teacher was highly disinterested in helping me out. She was too damn busy teaching almost the entire school single-handedly.
I arrived in High School with a serious math deficiency. By that point, most people had blown past me. But I was still a whiz at all the other subjects....right?
Wrong.
Other than English, History and Art courses I found myself falling further and further behind. As you progress in school, Math becomes such an intregal part of most courses, that a deficency in it can be catastrophic.
And that is exactly what happened.
Falling behind early on was like a ticking time bomb. It left me helpless in later years, and tore to shreds my dreams of becoming an Architect.
There needs to be an intense focus on Math in schools from the earliest years, but not just for the kids who do well at it (as was the case in my school system). Throwing advanced class after advanced class at those who have no problem with it, while ignoring those who do poorly creates a situation that will seriously affect the lives of students for the rest of their lives.
first article (Score:2)
So who wants to karma whore and post a link to the first article?
Slightly OT school rant (Score:2)
Here's a short version of the usual education process:
Take 30 kids, and force them to listen to a series of variably competent teachers, then give them tests and assignments to grade them and then leave the kids to completely forget about what they learned.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
The problem is: sometimes it doesn't, and its a sometimes that comes around much too often.
I personally think that kids should have more controll over their own education. Grownups are the ones that know what the kids need to know, but the individual kids know what they actually learned and what they need to get explained to them again.
I was forced to sit through endless hours of incredibly boring explanations of things I already knew or understood, and was then not given the time I needed to understand or learn the bits I missed when I was snoozing (from all the previous boredom...teachers go from mind-numbing crap to important stuff without any warning, the sneaky bastards). Once I had a physics teacher that actually let me do my homework in the class while he explained "f=ma" over and over and over to that slow witted girl. Guess what, that was the class where I got the best grade I ever had in science, simply because the teacher decided to let me learn on my own.
There are teachers that want the kids to listen to their every word as if they were our god for 50 minutes 3 times a week (or whatever schedule they have), I had terrible grades in those classes. I've had one of those teachers claim that an experiment we were gonna do HAD to be done in teams of 2 or 3 because it was physically impossible to do it alone, even AFTER I had shown her that I could do it by myself. Now, seriously, you expect rebelious teenagers to listen piously to someone who makes grossly false claims like that?
Granted, she was a skinny bitch, so she wasn't strong enough to do it alone, but I was, and I did not appreciate being lied to about what is physically impossible by a science teacher.
I have been to "alternative" schools and to a good ol' catholic school, and they both had their good and bad sides. But I think that the one thing that made a difference was the teachers. I've had terrible teachers and great ones in either systems, and I wish I could have been taken seriously when I told my parents or my principal thart my teacher was insane and I was suddently getting bad grades because the problem was him, not me. (How many doors must he break before they believe a kid when he says the teach is nuts? The guy threw chairs and desks for crying out loud!)
Weak Algebra? (Score:2, Funny)
In general, speaking of education... (Score:2)
or studying for tests - read
this article [guardian.co.uk].
Fire hordes of unionized teachers, find and hire
people like these for six-digit salaries!
The state of education today is pretty depressing (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the prospects of me being able to give my children (if / when I get married / have kids) is virtually non-existant: at $25k - $30k a year, I was utterly privileged to have had such an education. And while some public schools are actually quite good, most stories I hear aren't encouraging, either in terms of the curriculum or the student environment. As such, I'm actually quite afraid of what the future holds for the coming generations.......... is a proper education doomed to be the demesne of the affluent?
math more linear= more chance of getting derailed (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a bad teacher for 7th grade English, you may never quite be the greatest at diagramming sentence grammar, but the chances are high that you can overcome that shortcoming and still learn to compose good essays, read literature for more than just content, and so on. Other subjects also have the potential to recover from a bad teacher or missed material.
But mathematics has much more of a reliance on prerequisite material. If you have a bad instructor and don't develop good algebra skills, you will struggle and have a great deal of difficulty in algebra 2, trig, etc. When people find out that I do research in mathematics, (a casual conversation-killer if there ever was one) they often have a story, something like "I was always good at math until Mrs. Crabapple in 10th grade" or something like that. One bad experience leads to poor understanding in that subject, and, unfortunately, is rarely overcome and years of struggle result.
I've seen people get derailed at all levels and it really is a problem that needs addressing. At the undergraduate level, sometimes it is particularly painful to witness when a student passes a class (such as first-semester calculus) without learning the material. This can put them into a hopeless limbo- they have no chance of passing the next class, and will probably fail it a few times, but they cannot take the preceding class since they already passed it (sometimes even with a reasonable grade.)
There is a unfortunate stigma to taking something a second time, and that stigma undermines healthy mathematical learning. Sometimes it takes seeing things more than once, or from more than one teacher, before it makes sense. Passing students who just barely have a grasp of the material does them little good and may doom them to years of floundering.
Until there is more recognition of this fundamental aspect of mathematical learning, there will be way too many people who grow up dreading "story problems" and "meaningless algebra"
algebra the key to abstraction (Score:5, Informative)
Even if algebra problems per se never occur in whatever "real life" people end up having, the ability to think quantitatively is essential for an reasonable person. Thinking more abstractly about problems of many kinds is essential- for developing efficient code, for having a reasonable business plan, for managing one's person finances, for voting in a responsible way, and basically for being a productive member of society. The evidence for poor critical/mathematical thinking is everywhere- people falling for Ponzi schemes, short-sided economic policy, unwise credit-card debt, bad laws, ridiculous jury decisions, and the list goes on. The proper perspective about mathematical reasoning is that it is fundamental for most productive people, and essential for all citizens.
Unfortunately, this perspective is usually not instilled by our current generation of underpaid, frequently under-qualified (more than half of the math and science teachers in CA have "emergency certification", which can be extended indefinitely since there is no adequate supply of properly trained and willing math and science teachers.) Instead, students are often exposed to math teachers, who, to be honest, don't actually like math or understand its central role as a foundation for science and modern reasoning. Kids are smart- if a teacher doesn't like math and is just going through the motions, they pick up on that. And given the sympathy that students get from parents, teachers, etc for the horror of "word problems" it isn't a surprise that mathematical reasoning skills are a consistent weak point of students at all levels in the US.
Everyone agrees that more resources should be directed at education, but people have been agreeing on that for at least 30 years with much of the same problems enduring. Good education is more expensive an investment than many decision-making bodies are willing to undertake, and that shows in the wide disparity in education between the "haves" and the "have nots". Until there is a significant change in how much energy and money people are willing to invest in education, it seems that these phenomena will continue.
Algebra Teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
Students need to understand that "the future is now." This is part of a runup to calculus in college (if not sooner), and that what you can or cannot do in math can and will shape your future. If you do not know algebra II and trigonometry, you are going nowhere in Physics I. No Physics I, no engineering, no chemistry, likely no computer science, etc.
Second, we have to face the fact that many students in math want to get through the class with a decent grade, but have no ambitions to actual understanding. They WANT to be trained monkeys. Their parents often have uncritical aspirations too, and will be happy with trained monkeys.
Thus, they do not want to understand the associative and distributive properties. A trained monkey type of student can solve problems while not fully grasping the properties. A student who understands these properties will have an important intellectual tool available. The idea that certain types things can or can't be related in certain well-defined ways is an important idea.
To those who want to teach math only in the context of solving science problems I say: foo. Mathematical training needs to be broader than the known scientific problems to be solved or you encourage inside-the-box thinking. Where in a physic experiment does someone like Godel become relevant? What about Fermat's last theorem?
Gear the teaching to allow the best to be the best. The crank-churners who don't want to excel will find a way to get a B or C on the test. That's why they call average grades "mediocre." The system has to tolerate the mediocre accepting their lot, but it doesn't have to discourage virtuosity in doing so.
Re:No Responsibility (Score:2)
All these idiotic standards movements have done is make sure children spend all their time preparing themselves for tests. Of course they do better at the tests, but they don't learn anything else.
Re:the problem is... (Score:2, Insightful)
I fear that we have brought this sorry state on ourselves by how poorly we have regarded and rewarded teachers. Unless we can find a way to reward the highly skilled people who would make good math teachers, and give them at least the same quality of living that the engineers they had as students enjoy, we are not going to see any improvement.
But then again, if many people cannot even do simple addition and subtraction (i.e. bookkeeping) and many major league companies are now having to re-state their profits because they did not properly add their income and expenses, perhaps there is far more is wrong with our educational system than was mentioned in the original article.
Re:the problem is... (Score:2)
That wasn't because of lousy math instruction, that was because of lousy ethics instruction.
Re:problem is...ALGEBRA IS BORING! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bah! I failed freshman HS Algebra, now its my j (Score:2)
I think that this is a bigger problem than most people realize. Most math teachers in Jr. High and up (I leave out Elementary, because they're generalists) tend to have strong math backgrounds (or so I hope). Thus, it's second nature to them. I have problems helping my kids with their math, because I look at their problems (basic arithmetic) and just know the answer.
Luckily, I am well aware of my limitations, and know that "I don't understand why you don't understand!".
Think about it. Who would you rather have as your basketball coach? Michael Jordan or Kurt Rambis? Me, I'd prefer Rambis... It's too easy for Jordan. I bet he couldn't even explain how or why he does some stuff. Rambis, on the other hand, while talented, wasn't quite as much a "natural" as Jordan, and had to work at it and learn it.
Re:Start teaching it earlier? (Score:2)
Ouch. We were doing trig by then, moving on to elementary calculus at 15/16. Mind you, things have got a lot more dumbed-down on the other side of the Atlantic too since I did my secondary education. Procrustes, and all that...
Not algebra, not arithmatic - geometry (Score:2)
I've never heard of studies in which Math in any way was used to benefit musicians, though it would be nice. My personal theory is that strengthening spacial or temporal reasoning either way will help both music and Mathematics.