Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards

thephydes (727739) writes "The maths skills of teenagers in parts of the deep south of the United States are worse than in countries such as Turkey and barely above South American countries such as Chile and Mexico. From the article: '"There is a denial phenomenon," says Prof Peterson. He said the tendency to make internal comparisons between different groups within the US had shielded the country from recognising how much they are being overtaken by international rivals. "The American public has been trained to think about white versus minority, urban versus suburban, rich versus poor," he said.'"

Comments

Re:Professors poor in geography

[bledri]

"South American countries such as...Mexico"

No, the quote from the article did not contain the words "South America," so it's the submitter or editor that is poor at geography. And quoting. And the first sentence was not attributed to the Professor in the article nor in the summary.

Re:math? maths?

[Zembar]

Mathematics

Etymology of Mathematics on Wikipedia

The apparent plural form in English, like the French plural form les mathématiques (and the less commonly used singular derivative la mathématique), goes back to the Latin neuter plural mathematica (Cicero), based on the Greek plural (ta mathmatiká), used by Aristotle (384–322 BC), and meaning roughly "all things mathematical"; although it is plausible that English borrowed only the adjective mathematic(al) and formed the noun mathematics anew, after the pattern of physics and metaphysics, which were inherited from the Greek. In English, the noun mathematics takes singular verb forms. It is often shortened to maths or, in English-speaking North America, math

HTH, HAND

Re:danger will robinson

[ranton]

The same thinking that scares people away from this "new math" is what makes it so hard for people to do arithmetic in their head. It is also the line of thinking that makes people unable to understand higher level math.

The traditional way of doing subtraction of large numbers is a shortcut that is often only useful when the numbers are small and/or you have paper to write on. Both the traditional way and the common core way are valid ways to come up with the answer. And in most cases, when you are doing subtraction in your head you should be using the common core way since it will usually be easier.

Take a better example, like:

  321
- 148.

Doing this in your head the traditional way would be hard. You have to regrouping twice, and you have to remember that you borrowed 10 from the tens place when regrouping the hundreds place. Obviously not impossible, but this is the kind of math that makes people think they can't do it without assistance from paper or a calculator.

But doing 52 + 21 is much easier, and doing 73 + 100 is also quite easy. "Almost" everyone who is good at doing math in their head will do 321 - 148 by adding 52 + 21 + 100 in their head. This is why it is important to teach children this method.

The obstacles here are not the common core curriculum, it is parents and teachers. Parents who complain about this "new" math that they don't understand and aren't willing to learn, and teachers who also don't really understand how this math should be taught. Students should still be taught both methods, and it should be clear on any examinations if the teacher is expecting a certain method to be used. If the student isn't explicitly told to use a certain method, they should not be marked off any points if they get the correct answer. And the students need to be taught the pros and cons of each method, or else the entire purpose of teaching both methods will be lost.