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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?"
After a few generations of not taking any math, administrators won't be able to figure out why not taking math increased their average scores in the first place. At that point, they'll re-institute a math program, probably cutting out history, since that's over and done with.
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It was sweet. I went from six classes to four.
Oh... wait... I thought it read "discouraging students from taking meth."
My mistake.
I worked in a lumber yard one summer when I was in college. I worked on the end of line that spit out two by fours cut from logs. The pallets were always of different height, but always the same width - 10 units. At the end, you had to paint the total on the side. So if it was 14 units high, you'd have 140 pieces. Me being "just a kid" wasn't trusted to paint the number. The "senior" person busted out a calculator every fucking time. To multiply a number under 20 (the max) by 10.
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
If you never learned calculus or any higher maths, how do you know that you would have never used them? Math is used for all kinds of research in history: population extrapolations, statistical correlations, dynamic modeling, hypothesis testing, etc.
You're like a blind person who has found ways to cope with what you're missing, but that doesn't mean that you wouldn't benefit from sight.
NCLB does not divert resources away from teaching
Having worked in a school district when NCLB was instituted, I can tell you that it does, indeed, divert resources from teaching.
NCLB requires use of standard tests, which cost a lot of money to administer. In Oregon, those tests are done by computer, and the systems required upgrades to the computer systems and computers. In fact, several schools in the district created computer labs that were only to be used for testing and not for instruction. In addition, new administrative staff have to be hired to handle the workload of ensuring compliance.
In a rural school district with limited resources, the money for all this testing and equipment has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is usually the budget for optional programs, laying off teachers, skimping on resources such as needed new textbooks, and building enhancements.
This is why many school districts claim the NCLB requirements are an unfunded mandate. They have been required by the federal government do to these things yet were not given funds to do it.
On top of that, the testing regime takes about a week of class time out of the year.
So basically NCLB is a big win for companies who sell and administer standard tests. Everyone else pretty much gets screwed. Schools have less money, students get less education, and the country gets dumber.
If you really want to help the US education system, do the following:
* ban sodas and candy and fastfood
* expand the free lunch program to every kid and include breakfast - hungry kids can't learn - and there are too many of them
* go to year-round schooling with longer non-summer seasonal breaks
* make physical education mandatory at every grade level - they need breaks and exercise
* allow merit-based pay/bonuses for teachers who do a good job (using a variety of metrics)
* lower class sizes - a teacher can't manage 38 kids AND teach them
* lower the administrative burden on schools so they can hire more teachers and fewer administrators