Colleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. More students are being placed into pre-college math, starting a semester or more behind for their majors, even if they get credit for the lower-level classes.
Colleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.
I’m a firm believer that a not insignificant portion of people had one or two really shit math teachers at some point, decided that they’re bad at math because of it, and then proceeded to just give up. Very often it was specifically related to fractions.
The math professors at my uni were fantastic, and I saw many friends who always thought they were bad at math have lightbulb moments where something finally clicks.
So, like personally, all of my math teachers taught math as a goal in itself. Which is incredibly un-interesting. It’s taught like a chore.
Which is an incredible disservice.
Yes. I liked algebra initially, I hated geometry, I loved trigonometry initially, and through college the only math I fell in love with was linear algebra
Apparently, it was because I was taught “this is for optimization. Look at how you can balance cost, performance, and reliability to find the optimal network hardware based on your needs”. It was like magic, it took a problem I thought would be unsolvable and have no definite answer, and a few hand waves later there you do
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized oh, I actually really like math. I just need a reason to want learn it
I can completely understand that perspective. However, some students are just not mature enough to handle every type of math thrown at them when it is. One “bad” teacher can ruin any subject. Some students just aren’t “ready” when the curriculum (or other powers that be) decides that they should be.
Most subjects also don’t build off of the last class anywhere near to the same degree as math. You have a shitty teacher in geography, that’s not really going to be putting you at anywhere near as much of a disadvantage when you take world history.
The maybe rheu shouldn’t advance and be failed? Like to me if you’re bad at a subject, you should be required to take it until you pass it, not push along to the next harder version of it. Kids don’t get left back or failed now. That is the problem. If you’re not ready fine, but you can’t take algebra until you pass pre-algebra.
I’m speaking as someone who didn’t learn to read until 3 grade and still graduated on time and went to a good college. Failing classes is fine as long as you can also catch up if you rapidly learn the material as well.
Most people can fake their way enough to pass the test without having a true understanding of the concepts behind it.
Yeah, but math isn’t really relevant for most people past the elementary school level.
It’d be pretty messed up to fail them for something they aren’t going to use in the real world. Lots of people who justifiably ‘don’t care about math’ would be held back for no good reason, except maybe to stroke the ego of people who do.
I hate these takes. Math isn’t about relevance of specific concepts and whether you’ll use them in day to day life. It’s about learning to think critically and problem solve in general. We need more of society to be better at that.
Being good at solving lots of complex math you never use in every day life CAN be beneficial in nearly all situations which require critical thinking, problem solving, logic, following instructions, etc.
There’s a weird amount of accepted anti intellectualism that specifically applied to math, and I’ve never understood it.
Most people have a hard time grasping concepts as simple as compounding interests, which is an incredibly important concept if you want to either save money or not go into ridiculous amounts of credit card debt. You use algebra every single day, doing thing as simple as shopping. People just don’t realize it.
You have a good point, but it’s not something most people would be interested and for good reason.
They need pragmatic ways to care about the problem at hand. If you can’t offer them that, you’re just focusing on theory which may or may not be relevant. Lo’ and behold, people care more about what’s actually relevant than what may be relevant.
To be fair, that’s not specific to mathematics at all.
We’re talking about children here. People who would let their teeth rot away if no one constantly fussed at them about brushing. People who don’t understand why they shouldn’t do a great many things that will actually kill them.
We don’t actually care about what children want to learn. This article is talking about math that is taught before puberty. That’s the math that people are struggling with. That’s everyday math. We’re not talking about calculus here.
You’re saying that there’s no pragmatic way to teach things, but really that’s not the problem of children and you know it. Kids get word problems and whatnot to tell them how math can be relevant, but just like English and history and basically all of school, they don’t want to do it. Math is weird because it actually builds on itself and you need to understand every part. It’s not something where if you forgot or never learned you can bullshit your way through.
I’m speaking as someone who went to a top engineering college and my English 101 class had to check for literacy. I was the literal only student out of like 20 who got to skip the exam. Several of my peers were functionally illiterate from reading their essays and whatnot.
It’s not just math. It’s everything and it’s the failure of the system that we do not fail children when they don’t achieve. If they don’t like it they can drop out at 16 get a GED or be known as the uneducated people they are.
I guarantee you that if we went back to failing kids they’d learn more. My sister failed a whole grade and the embarrassment from it and the pressure from my parents was a fantastic motivator.
One of my high school teachers, when asked what the relevance of some maths concept was to the real world, threw a literal tantrum about how all of school is bullshit and you don’t need to read Shakespeare to get a job so how dare you ask that? He would also yell at us when he made a mistake on the whiteboard and nobody noticed. I don’t know what compelled this washed up boomer with the emotional maturity of a toddler to teach.
Do you ever think a lot of people just don’t care about math because it isn’t relevant to their every day lives?
Math is kind of this thing that we patronizingly tell children is so important and force them to learn. Many of them then go home and realize math, unlike reading, doesn’t actually matter for most people past the elementary school level. It really doesn’t.
Except it does, which is why so many people are so bad with money.
I could agree with criticisms of outdated teaching methodologies or uninteresting course material, but saying math is irrelevant is totally misguided.
I said past the elementary level.
Even understanding things like compound interest don’t require you to be able to do the computation itself.
Being bad with money is a complicated subject. It goes way beyond an understanding of math, hence why there are plenty of people who are good at arithmetic but still spend like idiots.
That’s fair, on the second point, but I can only partially agree with the other.
There’s no “shortcut” to real learning (i.e. developing an intuition, understanding, etc) besides practice, the closest maybe being cleverly developing new ways to teach.
We definitely don’t need to teach those old mental math tricks anymore, but brains learn via practice (i.e. manual computation) to gain the fundamental understanding needed before using tools to skip those steps.
The only way I can imagine really not needing for normal life is if you can afford to pay someone you trust to understand it for you.
Again, beyond the elementary school level. So, how do all the poor people without higher level math skills survive?
You’re being very patronizing right now. Probably because you, personally, rely a lot of math skills that the vast majority of people somehow manage to do without.
I hope you can realize that.
It does though, understanding what interest is and how it works is pretty relevant. Understanding percentages and fractions is important for things like cooking too. Ever tried to build something without using any math? It’s everywhere, it literally describes our world in a language that allows us to predict things as well.
you have a recipe that serves 5. You only need to cook for two. That’s a fraction right there
Yeah. The vast majority of amateurs who build things don’t use advanced math. Most people don’t build anything significant at all, and that’s okay.
I get it. If you’re looking for a career that requires math, great. Learn it. Most people aren’t and don’t need it.
Math people just don’t understand this. Or they do and they don’t want to admit it.
Whatever makes them think what they learned is better than what other people learned, I guess.
And here we find the poor problem solvers in life who lack critical thinking skills.
Nice personal attack. Did you make it just cause you have no real argument?
Problem solving and critical thinking are skills developed by math education
Right. They’re also developed by many other things.
Math isn’t a requirement to develop those skills, lol.
Why is this so difficult for you to understand? I’m thinking you must be trolling at this point.