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How US Schools' Culture Stifles Math Achievement
Zarf writes "I'd like to file a bug report on the US educational system. The New York Times reports on a recent study that shows the US fails to encourage academic talent as a culture.'"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."' While we've suspected that the US might be falling behind academically, this study shows that it is actually due to cultural factors that are devaluing the success of our students. I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front from being perceived as valuable. Could anyone suggest a patch for this bug or is this cause for a rewrite?"
Make it financially rewarding to learn and teach math.
That will just make little Johnny feel stupid! So, instead, let's just make everyone stupid and pretend they're not. In no time, we won't even know the difference. Now, where's my Brawndo?
Exactly. When NFL quarterbacks get millions and top-of-the-line math teachers get a few tens of thousands, guess which way a physically fit but also smart student would go.
I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front as valuable
You think? Anybody paying any attention to the current presidential election will see the Republican Party attempting to portray education = bad, ignorant= good. (Dumb) people buy it. It's a serious cultural problem in there here United States.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's unfortunate that even in politics, some group will try to say that if someone is highly educated, they are labeled as "elitist, cause they ain't like us folk."
You never expect irony, do you?
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Homeschooling.
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It already is; people just don't see the connection. Strength in math has done wonders for my career. It has allowed me to take on projects that would not otherwise be available to me.
The problem is related to probability in a way. Success at sports is highly rewarded but difficult to achieve (as defined by a standard of playing in a professional league at a national level). In academics, success (attainment of a graduate degree) is easier (number of people able to reach the goal) to achieve though still a difficult task.
What would promote "stronger" academics would be a pay grade within the academic realm for achievements.
Also, keep in mind that the patent and copyright system were designed to do exactly what you are saying. Promotion of the arts and sciences is why people are supposed to get exclusive rights to "their" idea. It is up to them to profit from it. There is an opportunity for success, but the problem is the link between the success and the academics is missing.
and to rile the anti-MS crowd a bit - Bill Gates is considered by many (of the non-programming crowd) to be the biggest nerd/genius in this respect. That is what a competitive academic environment would entail.
(sorry for my over- and mis-use of parenthesis)... (actually I'm not, but thought I would appologize anyways).
When all else fails, try.
When a math teacher can get millions of people to watch commercials and thousands of people to pay $40 to watch them teach math for 2 hours, then they'll get paid as much as pro athletes.
Some use of mass media might actually make this closer to reality. The best math teachers could teach millions of students using video and the Internet -- with lower-paid local assistants to help one-on-one and answer questions.
But the current union structure of education makes experiments like this impossible. Unions don't want one teacher teaching thousands of students. They want the maximum number of union teachers teaching the minimum number of students. It's not about quality. It's not about productivity. It's not about achievement. It's about expanding the union payroll and nothing else.
For crying out loud - MAKE IT INTERESTING. I remember doing what I referred to as "Math for the sake of Math". Show how it's useful - the easiest way is through teaching Science. And separate the students that have talent from those who don't. It's not about leaving the "dumb" ones behind - having no talent in math/science doesn't make them dumb. These people probably don't care about the subjects anyway. Just don't hold back the ones who could go further.
Do this and you will also be able to attract better teachers. I know multiple would-be teachers that won't teach because of the level of nonsense related to disruptive students that must be dealt with over and over again. Disruptive students are often ones who have become bored because they're studying things they aren't interested in.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
That's too bad - we discussed this where I work (we're all software engineers) and one guy hit it on the head: "American popular culture does not value intelligence." It values the quick wit of a one-line zinger. It values those who can intimidate others. It values quick fixes over long term solutions.
This is a really scary conclusion to come to. Even scarier is that I don't think anyone knows what to do about it.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Our society tells its young what is important by the amount of money you are paid. Look at the salaries that sport and entertainment stars get. Ask many students what they want to be and these occupations are very high (if not at the top) on the list.
Or, if those students were just a little bit more numerate they would realize that for every high-paid star there are 10,000+ burger-flippers who didn't make the cut. Its a lottery mentality at its worst that they can only see the exaggerated success of that 0.01% and not the corresponding failure of the other 99.99%.
But then, that lack of numeracy seems to be a real catch-22.
Blaming teacher unions for unsatisfactory results is a kneejerk response. A few months back, the Wall Street Journal had an article on how many American educators are looking to Finland for teaching models, because Finland has remarkably high student achievement across the board. Yet, Finland and its fellow Nordic countries are marked by some of the strongest unions on the planet.
Furthermore, I suspect many individual American teachers, not just the union fatcats you imagine, would prefer teaching classes as small as possible. The best teachers get great pleasure out of directing young people and showing them that learning can be fun. If you have too many students, it's just too impersonal and the emotional contact is lost.
The people that grew up with the moon landings on TV are getting old and replaced by a generation that did not have such great role models. Many of the scientist today were inspired by the astronauts. Today science is not that high profile. We need something like the moon landings to inspire children for a lifetime.
If it was hard to write it should be hard to read.
get involved with your kids school.
I volunteer to coach a Lego robotics team; which was created because another volunteer did it.
My wife volunteers for art programs, and other school activities. She thought the display case should be changed more often to reflect what's going on. She took ownership and gets it done.
She was the president of the PTA last year. She got programs going that brought money into the treasury; which was used to by expensive things for the class rooms.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It costs money and does not generate any revenue (unlike college sports, which the colleges are now so dependent on for income that not even a 12-step program could help them). It makes heroes out of kids who are good at running, jumping, and throwing and catching balls. Yeah, those are skills the world really needs.
Put all the money spent on high school sports into hiring GOOD math and science teachers. The reason math and science teaching sucks is that really bright, charismatic people can find better-paying jobs elsewhere.
If we ban high school sports, college recruiters will go away and college sports scholarships will dry up, because nobody will know who's good at running and jumping. The colleges will have to play with whoever turns up, like they used to in the old days. College sports will be exciting and fun again, instead of being semi-professional. In the meantime, the sports scholarship money can go to recruiting math and science whizzes, who are the people that universities are intended for in the first place -- not runners and jumpers.
Make heroes out of the kids who win the science fair, or the ones who ace the math SATs. Load them down with scholarships. Print their pictures in the newspaper. Send 'em to meet the President. Hire hot models (male and female) to be in pictures with them to give the impression that they're sexy. The message will get out.
I piss off bigots.
Most of our country's math teachers don't understand math well enough to make it interesting. They think it is just memorizing 'math facts' and memorizing cookbook ways to solve problems. They don't see it as understanding the underlying structure of the world or as creative problem solving. They see creativity as something for writing class and understanding as something you get from reading textbooks.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
If you really think this is a problem, put your money into it. I did. So there is now an endowment for the math and sciences at my former high school. Don't whine, actually do something
FWIW, part of the delegation were not teachers at all, though involved in the field of education (and even from anti-union backgrounds). The high performance of certain other countries in education is evident to people from a variety of political perspectives.
Not at all, but if you want to keep great teachers who ensure productivity and achievement, you have to keep them comfortable, otherwise they leave for some other job. This is a basic rule of business.
Imagine the wages they would get without unions. Or having someone to back them when needed. Look at the run of the mill parochial schools versus public schools, where they have teachers that are not unionized. They make diddly squat, have few benefits, and can be fired for stupid things like who they marry or don't marry.
Schools should be for students. They were not originally intended to be run solely for the benefit of teachers. The union doesn't care about the students because the students don't pay union dues.
Why should the rest of society fund an entire institution entirely for the benefit of teachers?
And the individual results aren't so amazing with their students; their high scores are simply because these schools can cherry pick students.
When you get the best results, you don't have to make such excuses.
On the other hand, people involved in high school sports who win the adoration of their peers may yet make good money because they establish very useful people skills. If you are intelligent but can't win people over at all, you aren't going to have as many job opportunities as someone who might be a bit less brainy but who is immensely charismatic. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but I've discovered in going through my high school classmates on Facebook that the supposedly brainless jocks have often become affluent, while some of the nerdiest are working crap jobs and still living at home.
Not at all, but if you want to keep great teachers who ensure productivity and achievement, you have to keep them comfortable, otherwise they leave for some other job. This is a basic rule of business.
This assumes the result of "productivity and achievement". That result is not in evidence in much of the educational system. That's why change is in order. If the system were already great then you might have a point. But it is not.
No change can happen though. It is disallowed by the union.
A little respect for people who are tasked with doing what is essentially AN IMPOSSIBLE JOB is due.
It's such an impossible job that every country in the world is just a big a failure as the US in teaching math??
If it is an impossible job then why do we bother spending tax payer money even trying? Seriously, why in the world would we as a society spend so much money to try and make something impossible happen?
I guess it being an impossible job has nothing to do with the fact that teachers in CA don't even work full 8 hour days and have teaching in-service days to make back any extra overtime hours that they might have accidentally worked?
I guess it being impossible has nothing to do with the schools paying people based on seniority rather than performance so that there is little incentive to try to improve upon the status quo.
We MUST do better by our kids. We must do better by kids of all ability levels. Why do we have special education on one end of the intelligence scale and not on the other end?? Exceptionally gifted kids are roughly 1/1000. Which means that most schools would have several, yet virtually no schools do anything to help these kids.
An example: my school district has a math/science magnet high school, but so many kids qualify that they have a lottery to give kids spots. This is because the standard is that kids have a C-average and be in the top 70% of standardized testing. This, in my view, makes the magnet essentially a scam to get gifted education funds from the state rather than an honest effort to help gifted kids. I could make similar points about most school districts in CA about their magnets and their GATE programs.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
"Reason" isn't a boolean value. All living human beings, atheists and theists included, have certain areas of their life where their thoughts and beliefs are rational, and other areas where they are irrational.
The original poster's attitude of "people who don't agree with me are wrong and don't deserve to be treated with respect" is indistinguishable from the theist version, and is equally as terrifying to me. His claim that eliminating religion would somehow greatly increase the value of intelligence is laughable.
FWIW pro Athletes are paid so damn much because of a ruling long ago which decided that they are entertainers, and should be paid as such(too lazy to look it up, google it). Think about them as being well-paid actors in a weekly movie series. The prestige lies not in the money or physicality so much as the Hollywood-ality of it.
I think it's simple as how many people are interested in watching, the movie, tv-series, sporting event or the math battle(?). And how much people are willing to pay, simple as that. If nobody is willing to watch or pay for it then the athletes and performers would not receive that huge paycheck.
If it was hard to write it should be hard to read.
It's not malicious. It's what unions are. Unions prevent change that might, in any way, be a negative to their members or the hierarchy or the size of the union. They also promote change to benefit the members of the union.
They do not exist to help children learn. That is simply not the reason the union exists.
Ah yes. I remember in the third grade when I got bored of doing simple addition and subtraction, and started looking into multiplication. This, of course, upset the teacher. Not because I was doing bad, mind you, but because I wasn't paying attention to her. She tried to convince my parents that it would be best for my education to drug me (Ritalin or the like) because I wasn't paying attention in class.
I'd say you did your kid a great service. Kudos.
For crying out loud - MAKE IT INTERESTING. I remember doing what I referred to as "Math for the sake of Math". Show how it's useful - the easiest way is through teaching Science.
At least for me, you've hit the nail on the head there. I figured this out back in high school when I had the exact same problem with math - it was math just for the sake of math. Then one day I took a physics class and I noticed something... this is the exact same math I was doing in trig and algebra 2, except it's easy now, because there are real world things for me to relate it to instead of just a bunch of numbers that someone came up with.
Dude, talking about schools not teaching enough, go back and take an econ class.
pro Athletes get paid a lot because they are a product that can be sold for lots of money, not because of some esoteric ruling somewhere. They top guys make millions because they are actually really good, the same general wage pyramid is found in most markets. Usually the guys who get paid the most are the ones who are best because there is a little supply of them and lots of demand.
You have the same thing with math, it's just in the US people have a value system that encourages leaving school to make money instead of hanging on as ivory intellectuals. You can't really fix that, since in the eyes of most Americans its not broken.
This is true, and I would like to add my $0.02 regarding the school system.
Part of the problem with our educational system is that we don't reward outstanding performance as we once did. I am told by a parent of a young child in a local school that they have an award ceremony where they now have the cut-off for rewards around an average of 70 and up. During the ceremony, at least 3/4ths of the class receives awards.
Anymore, there is simply no need to perform exceptionally well when most of the class is going to wind up with the same recognition. School officials are reluctant to recognize the students who perform better than--for example--98% of the rest of the class because doing so would be considered unfair to the others. Such "de-stratification" doesn't exist at the college level (yet) and as a result, many new high school graduates are dumbfounded to discover that they are no longer pushed through the system with the relative ease they've grown to expect.
The same thing has happened in mathematics. When a student merely needs to perform just well enough to make the grade, there's no motive to excel. We've stripped rewards and recognition for those who perform truly outstanding work in comparison to their peers simply on the basis of fearing for the self-esteem of the former. In short, we reap what we sow.
So, there you have it. Our society has fallen so far behind because we cherish mediocrity over bringing harm to the self-esteem of others. Yet, for professional sports, competition among athletes is encouraged; competition among students is increasingly discouraged. Is it any wonder why few children see a need to rise above their peers and become someone exceptional?
He who has no
I grew up in the Apollo era. Geeks and nerds were even less popular then than they are now. Uber-nerd Bill Gates has actually done a lot to boost the status of geeks.
My student athletes have people skills all up and down the spectrum. Some of them do learn valuable lessons from sports such as how to take a loss and learn from it, how to work on a team, how to lead others to pursue a goal. Others are just playing a sport so they can hit people. Or else they learn above all an us-them mentality in which they always deserve to win, regardless of which team played better. I don't think your theory is correct that playing sports corresponds to having useful people skills.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
As a European who emigrated to the US, its very obvious how here in the US there is a damaging culture of PCness where it is unacceptable to speak ill or criticise anything or anyone else, no matter how bad they or it is. Consequently morbidly fat people get away with calling themselves 'large' and the bar for academic and other success is made so low that it doesn't represent any challenge just so that everyone can feel like they're a winner.
In fact just because I'm suggesting the US isn't perfect I expect some American with mod points will exactly prove my point by modding this down as a troll, even though I'm trying to be observational and insightful.
They do not exist to help children learn. That is simply not the reason the union exists.
This is true, but it's beside the point. The idea that unions exist to serve the interests of teachers isn't particularly problematic, because teacher satisfaction hardly precludes student success, in fact, it's rather dependent on it.
Not to mention that it's completely orthogonal to unions -- if teacher's interests were inherently at odds with genuine education, the problem really wouldn't be unions, it'd be teachers, and the remaining option would be non-professional educators...
Tweet, tweet.
My mom left the teaching profession because she was tired of fighting with the unions. Teachers with seniority got to choose what they taught first, even if they were grossly unsuited. Teachers with seniority got paid more, even if they were blisteringly incompetent. If there were budget cuts, and someone had to be fired, guess who it was? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't the teachers with seniority.
Start teaching at a school early on, and relax! Once you've been there for three years you'll just never be fired, no matter how awful of a teacher you are.
The teaching unions are a blight upon the country.
Now, I'm not blaming them for all the problems. You're right - the painful lack of funding is an issue also. But I find it hard to believe the situation would be *worse* without them, given what I heard about what it was like with them.
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My father was a college level teacher for over 50 years. Tenure and unions are very important aspects of college career. Here's why:
During the civil rights movement, my [white] father held on to his job while being able to protest blacks *not* being allowed into university. If it wasn't for the tenure, he would certainly have been let go.
You see, universities teach science, philosophy, and other disciplines which frequently go against the cultural fad of the day. It is important for freedom of thought to be part of education; without it, teachers would live under constant fear of being fired for simply expressing non-PC views. Think of the number of nuts who want creationism taught as "science" in school.
Universities are turning more and more to private enterprise for funding. This is dangerous, because it lets pointy haired MBAs treat education like a for profit enterprise, which it shouldn't be. Education funding should only be given by the state, federal and individual. Special interests need to stay out. If you think I'm wrong, just look at our congress.
There is another factor - $$ in college are allocated disproportionately to sports programs. Just take a look at the budgets of university sports programs in comparison to other departments. That's where your tuition goes - not to the pittance salary your professor gets.
As far as your other union related comments - I kind-of laugh and flinch at the same time. It's very vogue right now to look down on unions, to think that your "sheer skills" will somehow catapult you above all your peers, and that anyone who is in a union is a slacker.
To some extent, this may be true. However, unions, social security, and other social programs came about because of one very important factor: greed. It's the same greed you see today in Wall Street. Prior to the advent of unions, people suffered tremendously at the hands of companies. Do your homework - read up on why they came about. Time changes little - today in the US system companies would love you to be slave labor (read: WalMart). What do you think WalMart would pay its employees if the federal or state minimum wage wasn't in effect?
In the end, extremes encourage strife. Government, business and people need to live in constant tension, and in balance. There should always be a tug of war happening between all three, with government erring on the side of its people whenever possible.
Pay the Teachers enough to make more Science and Math majors WANT to be teachers (in other words support the union).
The Union wouldn't allow that. Part of supporting all members is that history and english teachers (which there are too many applicants for) make the same as math and science teachers (who there are usually not enough of). The seniority based pay scale the teachers unions insist on hurts as well, a teacher makes decent money in most states if they stick with it long enough, but how many people who just graduated college (and probably have major debt) are going to want to take a job that doesn't pay anything in the short term? A flatter wage will get you more teachers, even if there's more churn. (not necessarily a better situation).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
It's simple supply and demand. Top-quality athletes have a much smaller supply than teachers.
Hogwash. Top-quality teachers are probably just as hard if not harder to find than top-quality athletes.
The difference is that amazing athletic ability is something that something like 90% of the population will gladly pay to see, or will at least sit and watch so that someone else can sell advertising on their eye-ball time.
Great teachers have a harder time drumming up those kind of audiences. There simply aren't as many consumers interested in the product they are offering.
So, it's all about supply and demand, yes, but you picked the wrong side of that equation. The supplies aren't that different. It's the difference in demand for watching athletes jump up and down vs demand for listening to educational lectures from skilled teachers.
This is counterbalanced by the 20 or 30 other athletes competing for the same prize, mostly working as McDonald's staff, security guards, etc. Sports salaries are a lottery: you have to factor in all the losing tickets people buy to make a sound investment in it. You also have to factor in the risks of becoming drug-addicted, getting your limbs mangled in a sports injury that destroys your career, and giving up the best years of your life to a generally very hard and strenuous lifestyle.
But that would mean understanding math.
Public education IS a profit industry, but the profits are long-to-very-long-term, which is why it doesn't get enough money attention in nations that adopt the "maximize medium-to-short term profit" even at the expense of the long-term health and wealth of the nation itself.
Paradoxically, those same nations see no problem in spending trillions of dollars into the military, which is not exactly what one would call a 'profit industry' by any means ...
'nuff said.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
You make it sound like you get any say in it at all.
Millions of people enjoy watching sports on TV and voluntarily shell out big bucks buying tickets to sporting events. Because people love spending money on it, it only makes sense that people involved with professional sports would make a lot of money.
Now look at education. People value it so little that many people eschew the very idea of paying for it themselves, and want other people (aka the government) to buy it for them. Big surprise that people doing jobs nobody wants to pay for won't make very much money. People don't mind paying for "higher education", and you rarely hear college professors bitching about their pay. The funny thing is, if you wanted to pay a teacher more, you probably couldn't - it's all controlled by the government and teachers unions.
Don't take it personally, but your opinion doesn't matter. The majority of people just don't think education is very valuable.
Maybe not
Wow...where do you live that math teachers (any teachers) make $100K a year?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think that you have a slightly revisionist view of tenure. The "intellectual life" used to include more than just your narrow field of research, and indeed taking a moral stand against abhorrent aspects of society was at least implied as a tenure right. (Notice that sometimes they intersect; for example the Tuskegee airmen experiment. What sense would it make to protest that in a researcher's capacity, and ignore racism elsewhere?)
Nowadays, education is industrialized and with it comes a narrowing view of tenure. I think Vernor Vinge was right; in the near-future, the research class will be replaced by neuro-engineered savants-on-demand.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky