Thursday, August 25, 2011

How to fix math education in the U.S.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/how-to-fix-our-math-education.html?_r=4 So this is an article about how to fix the math education in the U.S. I am torn about the article. Things I agree with:
1. Students definitely learn better and retain more if the material is pertinent to them.
2. Whenever I have assigned real world problems (such as figuring out the difference between a 15 and 30 year mortgage) students definitely enjoy them.
3. Students definitely have difficulty applying abstract ideas of math to real world experience. For example, I have taught "math for cosmetologists" and "math for nurses" very applied math classes for those specific professions. The students have learned most of the material previously, however, they still have difficulty with the subject matter. And teaching more applied math (don't get me wrong applied math is very difficult as a field and not just for the ordinary person, believe me I would never minimize it as secondary to theoretical math) would definitely help the ordinary person understand how to utilize math and be more socially responsible.

things that maybe I don't agree with:
1. Math has been trying to teach math with word problems their whole life, don't you remember how much almost everyone in the class hates word problems?
2. If the students don't have a basic understanding of how to do the operations (which you learn in the "plug and chug" and theory part of math learning) you can't carry out applied math. Of course all the theory and properties aren't necessary to learn how to plug in an exponential function (for interest, for example) in your calculator, but if you spend no time teaching only for a specific problem with no attention to theory, the regular person will not be able to be creative and have the skills to translate from one problem to the next problem. They have enough difficulty with just changing coefficients of the exact same problem.
3. I do think that by default when you learn how to identify a problem, think of the possible ways to solve it, carry out a plan, and then check your answer you are learning problem solving. Of course you can learn problem solving in other disciplines, but with math it is always problem solving... you can't be passive in your problem solving skills and do well in a math class.

I have thought about allotting more class time to these real world problems (instead of assigning them as work outside of class), but I am always torn on the material that needs to be covered in the number of classes we have in a semester. Anyways, any thoughts would be appreciated.