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US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign
bickerd--- writes with news of research out of Texas A&M which found that roughly 70% of middle grades students in the US don't fully understand what the 'equal' sign means. Quoting:
"'The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,' Robert M. Capraro says. 'The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and "less than" and "greater than" signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.' The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes. 'Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,' he explains. 'So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.'"
Didn't they just fool the students with odd / non-standard use of symbols?
I presume that 4+3+2=( )+2 is supposed to mean the same as 4+3+2=x+2.
If they had presented the equation with x, surely (almost) everyone would have solved it?
I'm from the UK, is 4+3+2=( )+2 a commonly used / commonly understood way of presenting the problem in the US?
I have a friend who's a high school teacher. He's been predicting the downfall of society for a few years now, based on the fact the kids he teaches are - for the most part - useless twats. What makes it even worse is they also carry a strong sense of entitlement, as in "even though I can't be bothered to do the work properly or learn a single fucking thing while I'm here, I deserve an A grade from you, and when I graduate I am going to deserve an $80K starting salary somewhere just for showing up and playing FarmVille all day."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I'm going to guess you're home-schooled, both because of your defensiveness and because of your lack of analytical skills (as opposed to memorization).
And you would be incorrect. Which means that I am a social paragon. Actually, just put me under the column of counter-example.
They made a comparison between two subject groups, which you did not address.
They didn't address it either except with some anecdotal evidence. Most of the socially maladjusted people I have met are products of the public school system. So, there is my anecdotal evidence. It cancels out. Care to bring any actual research to the discussion?
In fact, the existence of bullies undermines the argument, since those folks are by definition not socially well-adapted, and furthermore, they tend not to be "cured" by graduation.
In fact, let's roll with their thesis. Fire all the teachers, principals, etc. and just send the kids into a locked building with no adults for 6 hours a day. Of course, we shall expect them to not only master the social graces, but be experts in automobile engineering, medicine, mathematics, literature, composition, business, and pretty much everything else. Why not? They can learn all that stuff on their own, just like they can learn social skills in an unsupervised setting.
Who is lacking the analytical skills? Really?
Math education in America is pathetic. I went through my nephews High School textbook and there wasn't any MATH in it. There were lots of pictures of butterflies and "Why are we learning this?" columns and the whole thing looked like it was designed to be entertaining, rather than educational. The math was an afterthought, with hardly any problems, no explanations of those problems or how to solve them, and no answers. I was stunned, especially when I learned it was written by four math professors.
There is some argument, of course, that this is on purpose, and that we fail our duties to educate our children because an educated populace would be a danger to those in power. I'm not prepared to accept that, but I do think we've completely failed in our duty, and the uneducated masses of today is evidence enough of that.
My father has a saying, "There's no teaching if there's no learning. Until there is learning, you aren't a teacher, you are simply a presenter". I think we have far too many presenters, and not anywhere near enough teachers.