Slashdot Mirror
Encouraging Students to Drop Mathematics
Coryoth writes "The BBC is reporting that students in the UK are being encouraged to drop math at the senior levels. It seems that schools are seeking to boost their standing on league tables by encouraging students not to take 'hard' subjects like mathematics, in favor of easier subjects in which they are assured good grades. The result is Universities being forced to provide remedial math classes for science students who haven't done math for two years. The BBC provides a comparison between Chinese and UK university entrance tests — a comparison that makes the UK look woefully behind."
I can't tell you about schools in the UK, but I know for a fact that this scheme would not work here in Ontario. Universities keep an "unofficial" ranking of the academic standing of high-schools throughout the province. This doesn't mean "this school has a really high average!". This ranking takes into account subject focus and quality of education. For example, a high-school that has a large number of graduates with high averages that go on to study in Engineering, Medicine, Physics, Math etc. are given a high rating for academic subjects. Schools with a large number of graduates that go on to study Music, Literature, Art, etc. are given a high rating for the Arts.
You could almost think of this as a normalizing factor (I like to call it alpha). They multiply each student's graduating average by their school's alpha, and it is this normalized result that they use to rank students for acceptance.
Aikon-
Our system doesn't require you to go through technical schools to study technical subjects. Any kind of degree will do. So you have people with a "humanist" highschool degree who have their foundation in latin, maybe even greek or philosophy, or a "business" highschool that comes along with a lot of bookkeeping, commerce and international correspondence, but can't integrate their way out of a sinus.
In other words, the first year of math is pretty much wasted to get those people on par.
Funny enough, if I wanted to study medicine, I'd have to go through courses for latin first to be "allowed", but they don't have to get their math down to study technical CS.
Yes, appearantly math ain't important. Who cares if they know what a matrix is or whether they expect to be able to fly once they know.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I learnt the knowledge to answer the UK test school at 14. I have not idea how to start the Chinese test.
*Shrug* I learned the stuff for the Chinese test at 14 in 9th grade geometry class in a US public high school. Your mileage may vary.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I have worked through to a solution of the BBC problem from China and my first reaction is Yuck, this is not mathematics but artifical nonsense posing as mathematics. The problem does little to inspire what I call "abstract" reasoning (though it does have a little bit of cleverness in finding triangles with two equal sides and where all the perpendiculars occur). I suspect that the students who do well on this problem have drilled themselves on 100s of variants of this problem until they were deathly sick of it. This is why some characterize the Japanese and Chinese education system as a system designed to suppress creative thought.
I think we have little to fear from the Chinese produced from this education system.
Having said that, Britain does do a fairly poor job in educating their students in mathematics compared to their peers in other European countries.
This whole situation reminds me of Bruce Schneier's observation that when deep quality metrics are unavailable, customers will base their decisions on shallow metrics instead. And then the market will adapt, driving bankrupt anyone who invests in quality that cannot be shallowly measured.
In this example, schools are the manufacturers, students are the products, and parents (i.e. localities) are the customers. The customers demand performance on a shallow metric, and boom, schools adapt to deliver.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I would personally avoid electrician unless you are sure that is what you want to do with your life. My father was an electrician, and being into electronics I made sure to learn the electrical trade as a backup, and it saved me when things got tough, but no longer. Having a very strong electronic and physics background, I can run circles around a lot of the newer electrical engineers, but they have increased the license requirements in my state to levels where I can't work construction again. It is no longer up to the employer to determine your skill level, and your skill level is based solely on the number of DOCUMENTED hours that you have worked under a licensed electrician. Tracing back all the different companies I worked under proved impossible. A lot of construction is short term projects for electricians. Talking to other people, it is getting the same in a lot of states. I have factory certificates that let me completely rebuild 480V electronic motor controls, have wired 2300V gear and motors, and have 10 years of electrical experience, but I am legally not allowed to wire anything in my own house because of the new laws. If I got a job, it would have to be as a helper. I could make better money working a low level retail job with no experience and not being in the weather.
I know that the people working on septic systems in the area have the same problem, you have to have several years of documented work under someone elses license, or you can't even touch your own system. So, I would assume that plumbing is headed the same direction. I understand that it is a good idea to make people get licenses to make sure they know what they are doing, but I think it is a bad idea to assume that someone doesn't know anything, just because they didn't go through an official apprentice program. If you leave a licensed trade for a little while, there is a good chance that you will miss an update to the license requirement and the associated grandfather clause, and never catch back up. Stick with mechanic, welder, or anything that you can get certified but don't have to be licensed and you will have a lot more options in the future.
I only wish academia fulfilled the role you mention, but these days it's nothing more than a corporate drone generation machine as you've mentioned.
I guess at this point I'm still coming to terms with the world's realities, and taking more and more utilitarian/cynical views on many social aspects of existence.
Now, tell me if I need remedial classes in English, but it sounds to me like more pupils are studying maths, i.e. the opposite of fewer. No - your problem is that you are expecting a degree of honesty from the Department of Education and Skills. They think absolutely nothing of a bare-faced lie like this. To give another example, when asked they insist that most maths teachers are in favour of coursework for GCSE maths. If OTOH you ask a group of maths teachers at an examiners' meeting you will almost certainly get 100% opposed to it. The government and some schools are in favour of it because it allows students to cheat and thus artificially inflates grades. Teachers are opposed to it for the same reason. The solution is simple in the eyes of the government department - just lie about it.
In 2004 the pass mark (i.e. the mark for a grade C) in the EdExcel higher level GCSE maths exam was, wait for it... 13.5%. Without the benefit of coursework they would have had to make it even lower to achieve the improvement in passes required by the government.
To do A-level maths you have to study 6 modules. Up until a couple of years ago, these consisted of three pure maths modules (P1, P2 and P3) plus a choice of three applied maths modules (Mechanics (M1, M2), Stats (S1, S2), Decision maths (D1, D2)). The problem is that most students start 4 A-level courses and drop one at the end of a year after their half-way exams. By this point the students have realised the difference between a real A-level like maths and the joke A-levels like Media Studies. The maths involves serious learning and the Media Studies doesn't. They therefore choose maths as the one to drop.
In an attempt to stem the losses, the exam boards did a really blatant bit of dumbing down. They took the three pure maths modules, threw them up in the air, chopped out a few arbitrary bits, and re-assembled them into 4 new pure maths modules (labelled C1, C2, C3 and C4). The requirement to study six modules could now be met with these 4 pure modules and just 2 applied modules - they'd reduced the work by a sixth. "Oh no, it's not dumbing down" - my arse.
As a maths teacher it really makes me sick.
The only bright point that I can see is that universities (or at least, some universities) do know the difference. If you study proper A-levels like maths and further maths, and turn in a couple of As they will value them much more highly than As in the noddy subjects.
In British English (and in Indian English, afaik), mathematics is referred to as maths. In the US, it's referred to as math.
Just a difference in terminology.
No, you'll be modded troll because you are an idiot. For one, you got basic facts wrong in your initial post. Second, you are insulting about 51% of the world's population. Third, being an ass for the sake of staying true to yourself is.... wait for it.... being an ass.
So any troll mods you get - well deserved. And please, stop with the beaten-down hero crap. No one's buying.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"If I could go back in time when I was starting university I for sure would tell my 18 year old self to have fun programming in their spare time, but to train as an electrician, plumber or mechanic, so they will actually have some job security, good working conditions and some actual spare time to have fun programming in."
I have noticed that many educated, professional people tend to glamorize the "skilled trades." As someone with many family members who are electricians and plumbers, I often have to wonder if the people who dream of "job security and a 40 hour work week" have any knowledge of what a tradesman's work day is actually like.
They typically get up extremely early (5:00 am or so) and work very hard all day, often in dangerous conditions. There is virtually no chance of meaningful career advancement. Union shops are typically more concerned with "time in grade" than actual skill or talent, and you will get to watch as the best, highest-paying jobs get assigned to people with inferior skills simply because those particular workers have been around longer. Eventually you will be one of the old-timers who gets to work the slightly higher-paying jobs, and that's pretty much the extent of your prospects of advancement. The job security that you seem to imagine does not actually exist - as a plumber or electrician you can look forward to spending weeks at a time unemployed, then working 80+ hours/week for two consecutive weeks. Often you will have to travel long distances and live away from your family for days at a time in order to be close to the job site.
I suppose it's one of those "the grass is always greener on the other side" things, but the rosy image that most slashdotters seem to have of a tradesman's life is very inaccurate.
But very few comments from anyone in the UK. Let me explain, and hopefully redress the balance slightly.
The way the UK education system works is:
At around age 16, you take exams we call GCSE's. These are, in the big scheme of things, fairly straightforward. Most people will take around 10 subjects at GCSE level.
The next year (around age 17), you take AS-levels. Each AS-level is worth half an A-level. Most people will take about 6 subjects.
The year after, you take A-levels. Most people will take 3, though some will take 2 or 4. You don't choose new subjects - you generally carry on doing the things you did well in at AS-level.
Each A-level pass grade (A-E) gets you a certain number of points - obviously, higher grades=more points. AS-levels are worth half the number of points of their equivalent A-levels.
Universities set entrance requirements based primarily on points achieved at A/AS level. They can also demand you do a particular subject for some courses, but that's by no means certain and varies from university to university. Some of the top universities also demand you take another entrance exam.
All of which is well and good. But what I haven't explained yet is the real fuck-up.
There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever between "amount of work required to get a good grade at GCSE" and "amount of work required to get a good grade at A-level". The gap between the two is absolutely huge.
Seriously. Provided you're of reasonable intelligence, you could mess around for 2 years (as I did) at GCSE level and still get reasonably good grades.
Try doing that at A-level and you will almost certainly screw up with a vengeance. This is particularly true in science-y subjects like Maths and Chemistry.
Thing is, a lot of 16 year olds don't take these things seriously. Your teachers can say "You're going to have to pay more attention at A-level" until they're blue in the face, but a lot of people won't really take that on board until it's far too late. So you either drop that A-level in Maths or you fail it.
Now politics comes into play. No government wants to admit that the schoolchildren of the day are failing. But it's a government body which sets the exams. So every year, the exams are a little bit easier than they were the previous year. Not substantially - as a pupil, you probably wouldn't notice unless you were given an exam from 15 years earlier. The unversities notice, though, and they've taken a number of approaches. Some demand an extra entrance exam, others do remedial courses. Such remedial courses have existed for ages - they're called "foundation" courses and are generally a year long. But they are generally only offered for some degree courses, and they seldom get this level of publicity
I tried to let this pass, to not reply to such an 1890's mindset, but I can't help myself, especially when I see people modding it up.
The line between great goals and being stupid is pretty fine. The guy who builds a set of wings and jumps off a cliff to his doom while flapping *as hard as he can* is still stupid, even if he did the hard work to accomplish his great goals. Let me illustrate, using your examples. When those planes were hijacked, there was a protocol in place, that officials knew and most people were aware of: you comply with the hijacker's demands, and eventually he -- note 'he', coz in every one of your examples it was a *man*, not a woman or girly man, who was killing people recklessly -- gets tired and gives up. That's the way it had been for a very long time, with a few practically unknown exceptions. So, the people on those planes were doing the smart thing -- if they'd started a fight, someone might get killed, and then they'd be worse off, given their reasonable assumptions, than they would have if they just stayed put. As soon as news got to them that this wasn't a standard hijacking, on flight 93, they changed their plan. Both are examples of intelligent behavior: you don't get yourself killed for nothing. Likewise, as much as I hate to say this, the dumbass with a gun at VT. Those athletes, who jumped out windows? Most of them are still alive. The professor who blocked the window? Dead. Yeah, he's a hero, but they're still alive. Not as romantic and ivory-tower as your idyllic world, but a lot more satisfying to each individual not-dead person.
On the subject of women running things: my ex-gf was 13 when she started college, and 23 when she got her first PhD in engineering. Plus she could probably kick your butt in akido and certainly in a bike race, unless you're secretly a CatI USCF. So don't go insulting half the human race unless you can back it up.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
No, no it's true. In fact, I am in Grade 10 right now, and we only briefly reviewed what constitutes the British exam question. We will be doing things similar to the Chinese question in grade 11, and even more in grade 12 and AP Math.