Discouraging Students from Taking Math

Coryoth writes "Following on from a previous story about UK schools encouraging students to drop mathematics, an article in The Age accuses Australian schools of much the same. The claim is that Australian schools are actively discouraging students from taking upper level math courses to boost their academic results on school league tables. How widespread is this phenomenon? Are schools taking similar measures in the US and Canada?"

Comments

in college this would make some sense

[wizardforce]

It would make a little more sense if this was college when you have an idea what you want to do with your life and realize it doesn't make sense to take calculus to finish out an art/language major. But really, a student that is not interested in going into the sciences is unlikely to use calculus or higher mathematics much, but that doesn't mean they should drop it just to boost their GPA.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[happyemoticon]

The mistake you're making is looking at this from the perspective of the student. They're not talking about boosting the students, they're talking about boosting the school's ratings. I don't have the full story on Australian/UK educational policy, but the climate sounds like the US's "No Child Left Behind Act" policy, which diverts teaching resources away from actual teaching and focuses on teaching students to perform well on yearly standardized tests.

The net result is overwhelmingly bad. Just as the article describes, by attempting to make your kids appear better statistically, you make them less educated in actuality.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[happyemoticon]

I disagree. Teaching a student so that they perform well in a test and teaching a student so they will eventually perform well in college and life are very different things. I have heard reports of colleges who complain that students are increasingly ill-prepared in terms of reasoning, thinking, researching, and persuasive writing, because these things are hard to test in the standardized testing environment. From what I have heard first-hand from people in teaching credential programs, many kids in charter schools are barely being taught to write. They are being taught to take standardized tests.

I don't mean "Teach this fact, which will be on the test, and not this other fact." I mean teaching only to parrot facts without achieving a depth of understanding. Teaching to bubble in responses rather than write a clear and convincing argument or extracting knowledge from a book unaided.

I know there are a lot of holes in that. I don't have time to really back up my position. However, if you want empirical evidence, testing is not the only way to get it. Testing is just pretty cheap and fast. A far more effective way to get a real sense of the problems in schools would just be to send actually human beings to them to write reports, but it would be very costly and subject to variance and human eccentricity. In fact, I think that our aversion to any type of evidence that doesn't fit in a spreadsheet is part of the problem.

Shhhhhh

[RealityMogul]

The US doesn't do that, we just hide our heads in the sand and ignore the problem: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20205125/site/newsweek /

Re:Shhhhhh

[jc42]

Well, in my high school (a couple decades ago now), they went past ignoring the problem. In my sophomore year, I decided that math was interesting, so in the first month, I read through the entire textbook. Then I started borrowing books from the math teachers. By the end of the year, I'd made it through their college calculus books.

Their response? They finally woke up to what I was up to, and let me know that they wouldn't be loaning me any more math books. I was supposed to learn it in classes, not on my own time. They were all in agreement, and I didn't get another math textbook from them.

However, I did have some good friends at a nearby college. I borrowed math books from them. The high-school teachers didn't learn about it until the next year, when I didn't enrole in any more math classes, and explained why.

What was especially bizarre was that when I finally graduated and went off to college, I passed all their entrance math tests and got the most "advanced placement" that they gave bright students: They let me enroll in second-year calculus. I knew the subject better than the instructor did, which didn't exactly endear me with the instructor. But "That's the rules", and there were no exceptions; I had to have that class to be allowed into more advanced classes.

(Note that I've carefully said nothing that would identify the schools. This is intentional, so you might suspect that it might be schools in your area. ;-)

Math in Canada

[umStefa]

As a former mathematics teacher in Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba if it matters) I can say that there is a worse scenario, it is not uncommon for school principals to put pressure on math teachers to give all students good grades. The logic being that since math courses are mandatory for graduation, failing a student will socially stigmatize them.

As a specific example, I personally had 3 students who did not attempt a single assignment and all of them had attendance rates below 50%. I was told by the principle that if I wanted to be hired on next year I would need to give these students an extra assignment for 'Bonus' marks so that they would pass. I refused and hence am a former math teacher.

Re:Isn't this a good thing?

[Larry Lightbulb]

As there's already a thread about Math/Maths, let me say that in the US METH = Methamphetamine, while in the UK METH = Methylated spirit.

Re:Tinfoil

[p0tat03]

IMHO that's just wishful thinking. How strong are Chinese students in math? I'm one, and I consider myself quite strong mathematically, though most of my Asian peers are even more insane. Of course, I am probably *the* only critical thinker out of the bunch. It's entirely possible to create a bunch of math geniuses without risking exposure to democratic ideas.

Slightly off topic, but what I find most interesting about my Chinese peers is that they haven't been indoctrinated to worship Mao, or any such nonsense. Rather, they've been indoctrinated not to care. Most have a very mild contempt for Mao, and aren't writing rave reviews about their government, but at the same time they fail to see what the fuss is about with democracy, freedom of the press/religion, etc, having been totally trained to believe that politics simply aren't important in a proper person's life. I find it altogether much scarier than a bunch of Mao worshippers, and infinitely more depressing.