Math Skills Survey Shows U.S. Lags Behind 1528
3l1za writes "The New York Times reports that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has released its results (pdf) for a test of mathematical skills given to 15 year olds in 40 different countries. A few apparent anomalies: The US kids rated 28th of 40 (so in the bottom third) while the Czech Republic, which spends in education 1/3 of what the US spends, ranked in the top 10. Further, only about 1/3 of US kids reported that they did not feel as though they were good at math, whereas about 2/3 of Koreans reported this--and the Koreans ranked in the top three. 'Mr. Schleicher said that students in countries that emphasized theorems and rote learning tended not to do as well as those that emphasized the more practical aspects of mathematics.'"
It's COOL to suck at math (Score:5, Insightful)
Statistically invalid samples (Score:1, Insightful)
Yearly story (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
Very Telling Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps instead of demanding more money, schools should evaluate how they are spending the money they already get.
HINT: I bet Czech schools don't spend millions of dollars (or preferred local currency) on state-of-the-art sports facilities and equipment.
US School System (Score:5, Insightful)
The system is just horseshit. No responsibility, teachers can't teach, kids are a bunch of bastards, and the parents are taking absolutely no responsibility for the kids.
But of course the answer is more money!
You're right its cool to be stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:1, Insightful)
and the US is pretty much unegalitarian in regard to education. Try getting a decent education in an inner-city 90% minority school district.
and look at college. you need a friggin' fortune to go to a halfway decent one. In most countries they're paid for by tax money.
Re:Yearly story (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because the situation is real, hasn't changed and they measure it every year.
Completely unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I have three kids that will be starting school soon (one of them being in Montessori preschool already). Do I want them to feel good about themselves? Sure, as long as it's because they're doing so well in the classes that they're working hard to excel in. If my kid's flunking math because he won't apply himself, then I want her to feel embarrassed about her performance and not proud of the fact that the school would probably advance her to the next grade anyway.
There are some cripplingly serious problems with the American educational system. A severe overemphasis on underserved self esteem is high on that list.
Re:Laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
"'Mr. Schleicher said that students in countries that emphasized theorems and rote learning tended not to do as well as those that emphasized the more practical aspects of mathematics.'"
Exactly. People need to feel that what they're being taught is relevant to them; otherwise, they'll never learn it. I can attest to this, as I'm sure can most people here.
The goal should be to make the children see *relevance* to what they're being taught. That's why I support programs that give kids hands-on reason to use what they learn - for example, ameteur rocketry to get them to learn physics, simple robotics competitions to learn electronics and mechanics, programming competitions to learn computer skills, etc. We need to make being a geek *fun* for kids.
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:2, Insightful)
Cultural Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids, and many of their parents don't care about school or education. They will get what they want. They resist teachers and throw up roadblocks. Many parents simply won't help when a teacher explains that their child needs it. That's what's putting our education system in the toilet.
The only case of education system failure is in misapropriation of money (also a cultural issue). Sometimes a wacko or two in high places decide to fund a pet-project instead of math/reading...
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
BUT THAT WOULDN'T BE FAIR!!!
Ditch those funky calculators!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell ya somthing. ditch those calculators, and you'll solve half of the problem!
PS: In India, calculators are banned from exams/classes till high school. In university exams/classes you're only allowed to use at max non-prgrammable scientific calculators!
Enter the teachers unions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe the issue is family life? Parents who take the time to find a good solution for education are more involved? Who knows, but the point is it DOESNT have to cost more.
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:5, Insightful)
The "East Slobovia"'s of Europe are indeed poor, but they have high standards for educational performance and student behaviour accross the board, not just for the "educational elite". Indeed, in the US, it is financial status which is often the most important factor in determining access to quality education: either you earn enough money to buy a home in a school district with good public schools or you are able to pay for private education. Most countries, even poor ones, have a far superior educational system.
Re:It's COOL to suck at math (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the common thread here? No applied math. Getting docked in pay for continually shorting or overaging the register is a good inducement to do your sums correctly. Figuring out how much money you'll earn if you keep your allowance/paycheck in the bank at X% compounded over time is another good application. Calculating the trajectories of artillery so you can kill Enemy X before they take your position is also a good application for learning math, as you want the commanding officer to be competent in the field. Memorization is good for muliplication tables and not much else, since you'll be looking things up in a book anyways.
A better route would be to publish a companion math book that a student could keep throughout their K-12 education with all of the math that they'll ever be expected to know, with formulas and tables to calculate everything. That way those who only wish to apply the math will have the tools to do so, and we can free up some space (and end the boredom) of those who wish to take the extra step and prove the math, rather than merely doing them by rote (as they currently do), or applying the formulas and tables out of the back of a book (which is the way most people do it in the real world after a decade or so after their last undergraduate math class.)
Unfortunately, none of my suggestions seem to address the basic problem highlighted by the math skills survey - which is that we're turning out students who can't even do BASIC math. Could this be one instance where we need to stuff kids into a computer lab and chain them to desks until they can do basic math problems?
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:4, Insightful)
You might have gotten a bit more mileage from pointing out that comparing the quality of education per dollar spent is a poor metric due to VERY significant differences in the level of living. It would have been more relevant to do it on the basis of percentage of the GNP (Gross National Product, if you're wondering) or a similar statistic rather than the total cost of the educational system.
Then you might have noticed (I guess) that they spend a larger portion of their budget on education (as opposed to cruise missiles,etc.) and thus can give teachers better salaries than US does (compared to the average salary), etc.
Have fun posting.
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, in the US, education is mostly a state run thing. I wonder if would be more beneficial to rank the US states individually along side of countries that organize their education at the national level.
US Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Accountability should be held on the parents, they should force their children to learn for their own good. Blame decreasing accountability on parents for decreasing academic excellence, don't blame the teachers. While there are a few bad teachers, there are a lot more good teachers.
What ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, there needs to be more emphasis on education in general in our culture. Unfortunately, changing the culture to favor something that requires more brain power and effort from the average citizen is easier said than done.
Re:You're right its cool to be stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's been doing an admirabe job at that. The problem is, a working class in America is now defined less and less as industrial/manufacturing/agricultural based and more an information/knowledge based.
Our primary schools are by design not capable of churning out intellectuals. The intellectuals who make it are either going to private schools or just smart enough to survive public education.
That's right: you don't receive a public education, you survive it.
Re:You're right its cool to be stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at our society's overall fascination with athletics. When a school needs a quarter million to build a new stadium, they find the money. When a school needs five thousand dollars to buy a new set of microscopes, they have to hold a bake sale or something, and kids end up sharing because they only raised half of what they need.
I have nothing personally against athletics. But when it replaces academics as the highest pursuit in our nation's schools, when parents spend their Saturdays watching their kids' football games, but won't bother to take them to the libray or planetarium or the science museum, then there's something wrong with our priorities.
We're becoming a nation of used-car salesmen who dreamed of being pro-sports stars. The rest of the world will eat our lunch.
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
And I suppose we should never blame the school system which soaks up 80% of the kids time and energy but offers little of interest to anyone but the least common denominator...
Ya, kids are really going to spend 6-7 hours a day sitting in class "learning" nothing, then come home and spend 2-3 hours actually studying something new and interesting. Some might, but that's the minority.
Re:Ditch those funky calculators!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
By 9th grade we were having occasional tests which required the use of a Macintosh running Mathematica.
Use of calculators is appropriate for students who are working on high level math. If you make it to 8th grade without being able to do arithmetic something is already terribly wrong. But once the students have moved beyond arithmetic and into real mathematics, there is no reason to keep the calculator away from them.
The best way to make sure they don't get rusty on arithmetic is to put short time limits on the exam. Caculators take too long to use. If you're in a hurry, you will learn to do all but the biggest stuff in your head.
Re:It's COOL to suck at math (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly can't explain this...it might be because some young people see no relevant benefits to an education. The standard-bearers of "success" that they see are extremely wealthy musicians, actors, professional athletes, etc.
Unfortunately, I think our education system is going in the wrong direction; instead of challenging students to excel, the bar is lowered and simply "trying" will earn you a passing grade.
Re:You're right its cool to be stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Take a look at the school vouchers, book banning, attacks on evolution, general denigration of the system ("surviving" public education), school prayers, and systematic budget cuts that conservative politicians have supported. Does that sound like conservatives are behind the idea of universal education?
An ignorant working class means that labor will be cheaper for the wealthy classes. Keeps them poor and hungry enough to work cheap. And they can never earn enough to become rich enough to get off the treadmill. Pay rent until you die.
Re:US School System (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that you are describing our society in general. We pretend to value our teachers (in word) yet we pay them peanuts. And don't give me that crap about "but they get summers off!". Our society has made it nearly impossible to live on a teachers salary, yet we demand so much of them. You should not have to be a "saint" to be a teacher, but that is what is required. It is no wonder that our teachers are notoriously not up to snuff, we as a society have made it so that they have no reason to teach. Many still do it because they love it, but that should not be the only reason you do a job. Teachers have to worry about being sued at every turn, dealing with overbearing or non-caring parents. Our society has placed such a high importance on wealth, status, and frivolous crap that I am surprised we still have the teachers that we do. I have known several people who have left teaching because they just couldn't take it anymore.
Not to mention that we are a quick-fix society. Why actually LEARN anything when you can just grow up to be Britney Spears and make millions!? It's all about "stuff".
Re:Could you display results in a USA Today graph? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look at the graph on page 94 (page 92 of the PDF) what seems to be happening is that most of the First and Second World countries perform roughly the same. There is a sharp dropoff after Portugal or Italy, where you start seeing more significant movement downards with each successive country.
I'd be curious to see what this would look like if you excluded immigrants - I suspect the US would place a lot higher relative to highly homogenous societies like the ones at the top.
Re:Ditch those funky calculators!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I ask you this-- In my junior and senior engineering courses why in the world should I be forced to work out the time consuming calculus or algebra part by hand when that's not even the concept being taught? It wastes my time, and the instructor's time, and greatly increases the chance of missing an answer due to a mistake somewhere.
Graphic calculators have their place at school, and that is to let you bypass things that are, at that point in your studies, more or less mundane.
Here's the issue with this study (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in high school (and this wasn't in the US), about 80% of the class didn't give a fuck about learning. They've completed their mandatory nine year courses and left the school. About a half of those who stayed really did care about their future and studied really hard for the last two years at least. This allowed them (including yours truly) to enter all kinds of schools in the country, and some of them (including yours truly) graduated with honors from them.
Did this education system succeed? I think it did. Would the average results look good? I think they would not.
Let's face it, you don't need math to flip hamburgers or to do plumbing work. Heck, many programmers in the company where I work are puzzled by the most trivial math formulae. Despite of this they do their jobs fairly well.
I'm not saying that good education is not essential for those who want to achieve things in life (even though "american dream" proves time after time, that you don't have to have any education to make a shitload of money). To the contrary, I feel that people who don't have good education miss out on a lot of things in life.
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
If so much money is spent on sports facilities and equipment then why is obesity such a big (no pun intended) problem? Also, most of the money being spent on these sports facilities is from money raised by sports teams. So don't look down upon athletics like how most of you think athletes look down on "smart people."
Re:No child left behind (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Look beyond that generalization and consider how part of the culture of America is how uncool school is. From stories of our heroes, Presidents and CEOs who dropped out of high school, to the glamorization of the 'cool' kids who cut class we have created the impression that shunning public education as the hip way to start being successful.
We've all sung along to lyrics like "We don't need no Education!" and "School's out for ever!" We've all rooted for Ferris Beuler, the Breakfast Club, and the kids from Saved by the Bell to outwit their bumbling teachers and principals and cut class in the most extreme ways possible. But it's songs and movies like this that has turned education into Enemy #1 for our youth.
If America is to do better academic-wise, it has to do more than just pour money down the public school drain. It has to change the image of education in our culture as something to be respected and appreciated as a necessity and not just an option. For every successful highschool dropout there are a thousand on food stamps and public welfare. For every professional athlete earning millions in the big leauge, there are a hundred thousand earning minimum wage.
Until we impress on young minds the fact that cool or uncool makes no difference when you're grown and penniless these facts will never change. If people want to talk about how the Rich Minority are taking over the country, just look at the uneducated majority and understand why. Sometimes it's not a conspiracy -- sometimes, it's just logic.
Re:Laziness (Score:1, Insightful)
And then you come along, and the first thing out of your mouth is "we are lazy." In other words, the conservatives *love* to moralize because it distracts us from the plan to keep labor cheap, and you rationalize that you're poor because you are immoral. Swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
And I don't need any more proof of that than the first words out of your mouth. "We are lazy".
1) Conservatives push moral issues. If you are moral, everything will be good, the argument goes.
2) Conservatives really want cheap labor, so they screw up the schools. EVERY attack on universal education in the US is coming from the conservatives.
3) So, they will screw up our schools with their funding cuts, their evolution attacks, their denigration.
4) The poor education will make us and keep us poor, cheap laborers. The rich get richer on their great educations (GW Bush, Yale '68)
5) And the reason for our poverty? Go right back to #1 - you rabble are lazy, and it's all your fault.
Don't take what they are pushing. The cheap labor conservatives want to keep you poor, because you cost too much money. They have to go all the way to India to save money now, but they'd rather give you your old job back at a quarter the salary, with no health benefits.
Re:Laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that people are lazy, that's as profound as saying people are selfish (though accurate).
The problem with this county is that it sees education as elitist. You know the old Hollywood stereotype. Evil genius gets the crap beat out of him by buff super guy using big guns.
We have fox news with o Riley calling Yale alumni pinheads. It's fucking Yale, YALE. Hell, we have fox news, which alone says enough about our problems.
Even on Slashdot we get into these regular retarded arguments about how your code is more important then your college degree. Never mind the good it does for society to have another person that can think outside of their narrow scope. It's this attitude that's the real problem.
Only 27 % if Americans (over 25) have earned college degree in 2002. Is that higher then the past years? Sure. But damn it, we are the richest Country in the word, but more then 2/3 of the people only have (at best) a high school education? That's fucking ridiculous.
Seriously, majority rule and the majority have the education of chimp on tequila binge?
Not cool.
Problems with Methodology (Score:3, Insightful)
One problem is how we count money. $1 in the US is not $1 in the Czech republic. You can get a very nice meal at a restaurant in the Czech republic for under $5 (US) (groceries/rent/etc are much cheaper as well). Trickle this down, and the Czech republic can afford to pay their teachers much less while maintaining a better standard of living than US teachers.
Another issue: it's mandatory for everyone in the US to go to school. Everyone. In other countries, it's voluntary or not strictly enforced. Because it's mandatory, not all parents really care about their kids performance. My mom read to me since I was born, and I learned math skills at home before I ever went to school. I don't think it's purely coincidental I managed a 650 in math on the SATs while going to public schools my entire life.
Lastly, immigrants. The majority come from poorer countries. The proble is that kids who never went to school in Haiti, come over to the US and take this test, aren't going to do so hot. In addition to not having an education, malnourishment is a problem in many poorer counties. Early malnourishment has been scientifically shown to have a stifling and sometimes permanent effect on intellectual capacity. [economist.com]
I like the use of empirical methodology to measure these things, but we have to study the data a bit more thoroughly before making conclusions (even radical things like spending more money on foreign aid to the world's poorest countries instead of more nuclear subs we're never going to use).
Re:out of how many kids, though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's COOL to suck at math (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:US School System (Score:2, Insightful)
US Health Care: 50% government funded, the most expensive in the world, good yet not great results.
LASIK: Almost 0% government funded, gets better and cheaper every year.
Re:Egalitarian? Who are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Barbie said it best (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
If the purpose of the schools was to educate students, then B did.
And besides, if these schools' sports programs were self-sufficient (let alone generate enough revenue for the rest of the school) they wouldn't need taxpayer funding, now would they?
Re:And in contrast, in Korea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Could you display results in a USA Today graph? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, it's all those damn immigrants from Finland, China, Korea, and Japan bringing our scores down! If people from those countries were better at math, our score would be higher!
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
I suspect the US would place a lot higher relative to highly homogenous societies like the ones at the top.
Yes, because Canada (one of the countries at the top) is so "highly homogenous", right?
Re:Laziness (Score:1, Insightful)
It all comes down to the parents. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's up to the parents.
Only the parents can change the outcome.
It is the parent's choice whether to take an active role in their children's education or to abandon them to someone paid by the state to perform that service.
Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of that is supposedly to make us more-informed voters on things such as wars and pollution standards, not necessarily get bigger paychecks. Whether it helps or not is debatable. There is not a lot of research for how early-year school affects decision making 30+ years down the road. Thus, what we have left are tons of pet theories and Holy Wars about what should be taught.
Re:I know the exact moment math became (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming space is Euclidian! What if the wall is rotating at 80% of the speed of light in relation to you?
Go back to school, "geekoid".
Seriously though, that's one of those things that sounds tricky but is obvious in retrospect, although technically you'd need some way to measure a right angle.
I was turned on to math by my engineer Dad. One of the first things that blew my mind about how cool numbers were was the idea of logarithms. In sixth grade I computed the prime numbers up to 1000 for an extra credit project and in doing so realized I only had to check prime factors up to the square root of the number I was checking.
Math normally becomes interesting when it's applied to do useful and interesting stuff, although some freaks like me are attracted to numbers for the sheer beauty and coolness of them.
Some people point to a sunset or a mountain as evidence that there must be a God. Me? I point to Number Theory. Anyone can heap up rocks or make a planet orbit, but to me, it takes an Omnipotent Creator to achieve the infinite and sublime beauty of numbers.
Re:Laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
Correction: (Score:3, Insightful)
The top-notch products of the US school system hired you to do the work while they rob the company. Sucker.
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:2, Insightful)
I claim that as population size and area of the country grow, expenses for the needed infrastructure for the adequate and uniform education grow faster than linearly. So it is unfair to compare Denmark with USA or Russia, or Korea with Brasil.
Re:Even worse in minority communities (Score:4, Insightful)
I got quite excited by the rap culture and other by gone black artists. When I drilled my black school mate about the subject, he was put off by it and told me that I'm applying a stereo type to him, and he propably was right. He was into science, literature etc. and quite good at them if I remember right. It made me think the whole subject in a new way.
The number of athletes and artists the black community springs forth is amazing. This success, while source of pride to many, might be counter productive to the aspiring scientist of the future, because role models in those fields are invisible hidden in the blaze of the entertainment stars. And number of stars is actually quite small when compared to number of laywers, doctors and engineers.
All cultures have a set of patterns that young people mimic to succeed as adults, here in Finland many dream of a NHL career for their kid and at expense of school work drag their kids to ice morning and night. So often these patterns can be counter productive to the general population. If the tradition in the family is to work at the local mill and TV shows glittering path to fame and glory, many will not think of the third path. My wife who came from blue collar background, would propably never have done a PhD if she hadn't met me and been introduced to circles where practically everybody had a PhD. On this I might be wrong of course...
Re:Could you display results in a USA Today graph? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd be curious to see what this would look like if you excluded immigrants - I suspect the US would place a lot higher relative to highly homogenous societies like the ones at the top.
I would imagine that excluding inner city ghettoes would also have a marked effect on the numbers. But what are you going to do then? Declare East St. Louis a foreign country and bomb it? Good, bad, or indifferent, they are part of us. The only thing that this sort of number crunching is really good for is identifying areas that need more attention.
Re:It's COOL to suck at math (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's EXACTLY it. When you see someone with 10 years of university education (ie, a Ph.D) making less than than a high-school drop out, and the standards of success (as defined by pop culture) are a big house, fast car, and the latest fashions, you can do the mental math. Of course, most of these kids will then go on to work that Wal-Mart and Best Buy, restocking shelves and hussling electronics, and wonder why their credit cards are maxed out all the time.
Personally, I believe that all students should be given the opportunity to work part time in middle-school. There's nothing like working some shitty dead-end job for less than minimum wage (probationary pay), like cleaning floors and emptying wastbaskets as a movie usher, to make you realize the value of a good post-secondary education. After you realize what will happen to you without any skills (and seeing the myriad deductions on your first paycheck are always an eye-opener), you can then set your sights on a trade, or toward college once you hit high school, BEFORE it's too late to get your GPA up, and score well on standardized tests.
Re:Ditch those funky calculators!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because most actual worthwhile problems of junior and senior level classes (at least in physics) are not merely higher-level 'plug-and-chug', so for these worthwhile problems the algebra and calculus shouldn't be the limiting factor. If you're usually too bogged down in algebra/calculus, then you need to work smarter, not harder.
It's the real straightforward plug-and-chug type problems (ie start from this equation and these definitions and those theorems, and then derive this other equation) that the algebra and calculus get repetitive. While in 1st year classes plug-and-chug problems are usually 2-3 lines long, but higher-level plug-and-chugs can easily become pages long. [Example of this could be calculating the Fourier Expansion of a square wave, or solving the Schrodinger's equation of the hydrogen atom] In these cases the problem consists entirely of algebra/calculus, but the entire reason the professor assigned it in the first place is to give you the experience of working through it. There are just some of these problems that you just need to run through at least once in your life. In the hydrogen atom example given previously, after you see how to use Schrodinger's Equation in spherical coordinates and to separate the variables and solve the three differential equations (making use of Bessel functions and Legendre polynomials), you painstakingly wind up with the hydrogenic wavefunctions. You will then use these wavefunctions with confidence for the rest of your undergraduate and graduate quantum mechanics studies.
During my undergraduate years I would usually just barrel through a problem instead of trying to find more clever ways of doing it. Many times I would wind up with ridicululously long complicated algebraic equations, and would then pray I didn't make any mistakes and that most terms would cancel. I would then be amazed that what took me 4 pages to do would take the professor 4 lines in his solution.
The key is to find tricks to make your work easier. With integrals try to exploit symmetry as often as possible to reduce your work. Eg, quantum mechanics requires lots of integrals, but these quite often integrate to zero, and you can immediately discount certain integrals if you know the proper symmetry. Same with Fourier transforms. And in algebra, it gets MUCH easier if you can constantly find clever ways to rename variables, or especially groups of variables. In linear algebra try to put matrices into block-diagonal forms, etc.
Also during my undergrad, any integrals that weren't simple exponentials or algebraics I went right to Mathematica to solve. I quickly found out, though, that I then became unable to do any more difficult integral without Mathematica if I needed it. In grad school I instead calculated most integrals by hand, and quickly found out that most integrals on the homeworks weren't so difficult once I got used to it.
But more importantly is that the professors realize they are not asking you calculus questions. If you're doing reasonable physics or engineering, then algebra and calculus are essential skills that you will undoubtedly need for any future research (less so if you're strictly an experimentalist). But usually most credit is assigned if you've done the problem right, and only made small algebraic/calculus mistakes.
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, that excuse doesn't wash when you compare with, say, North Slobovia [www.gc.ca], or South Slobovia [www.gov.au].
Did you look at the results? It's other industrialized nations with mandatory universal public schooling that are beating the States, not isolated private academies in third world countries.
Note to other posters: Cry me a river about the impact of those damn illegal Mexican immigrants. They represent less than three percent of the total population; even if they all scored zero on the testing, dropping them from the scores wouldn't nudge the U.S. up more than a couple places in the rankings. I note that Mexico's students on average scored about 80% as well as their U.S. counterparts, too.
Meanwhile Canada admits far more immigrants per capita than the United States, and they're sitting twenty-one places ahead of the U.S. in these rankings.
Re:With Bush in office its no surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
A theory is not a theory because it has been proven to "every inch forward and backward". (It would be a fact then).
Rather, what makes a theory is that it is possible to falsify it. A fantasy like the creationist garbage can not be falsified because it relies on fantastic assumptions. It is therefore definitely not a theory.
Re:Laziness (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the problem.
15-year-olds may be immature, but they're old enough to see what's going on around them and have a basic understanding of society. They can see that engineers and physicists don't have a glamorous life, or even an employed one in many cases, while all their rich friends' parents are all lawyers and businesspeople.
With a society that places the most value on screwing people out of their money, rather than creating new things, why would anyone expect the children of this society to have any interest at all in math and science? You don't need these things to succeed in business or law. Heck, with the current economy, realty is a very rewarding profession, and you don't need to know anything at all to do that--most realtors couldn't even change the locks on a house if they had to!
Honestly, I'm surprised we did as well as we did in this math skills survey.
keep an eye on your local mathematics curriculum (Score:5, Insightful)
In this curriculum, the kids learn by discovering the rules of math on their own, but this is absolutely ridiculous -- the whole point of passing knowledge through civilization is that we don't have to relearn like cavemen from birth. They spend time playing with blocks to count numbers, all the way up to 4th grade. These children are going to be severely hurt. Part of the problem is that teaching math at home has failed many of them, plus the teachers aren't qualified to teach math, so they grasp any curriculum that seems to make the subject more "fun" at the expense of real learning. An annoying part of the curriculum is that it also inserts a very touchy-feely agenda into the textbooks, and while I'm quite liberal about educating kids on history, etc., this has no useful place in math class.
Also, some people suspect that the test scores are rising because we're dumbing down the tests themselves -- which is outrageous. See here [washingtonpost.com] for example.
You may not think that these questions affect you, but they do. When we have a large fraction of the population unable to do basic math, we all will suffer. From things like being unable to hire competent workers, to the person serving you at a restaurant or a store unable to compute change, to your kid having access to only the most basic math education because the rest of the kids are so far behind they have to be specially taught, taking away resources for the higher achievers...(part of the No Child Left Behind = No Gifted Child Gets Ahead program) read this report [nationdeceived.org] on how gifted children are done given the shaft in the US..
Re:Problems with Methodology (Score:3, Insightful)
"One problem is how we count money. $1 in the US is not $1 in the Czech republic. "
If you had even glanced at the report, you might have noticed that it counts spending as percentage of GDP, so it's not a dollar to dollar comparison.
Also, school IS mandatory in all of the countries tested. And pretty rigorously enforced across the board. In most cases much more rigerously than in the US.
There has been some argument from countries with a high number of immigrants like Germany, France and the US that the number of immigrants in classes have some impact, especially on the reading comprehension scores, but that still doesn't explain why two countries with high level of immigration (Australia and Canada) do extremely well in this study. The reason is definitely that these two countries make a strong effort to support immigrants, for example by offering free language classes and early integration into the school system.
By the way, first and second generation immigrant children, especially from Asia and Europe score a lot better in the US than the ones that have been here a while.
Re:Ditch those funky calculators!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that if you have no idea what the shape of the function should look like in the first place, then you won't know if you've cocked up entering the problem into the calculator and it's given you a curve that's wildly wrong... Basic math and calculus skills shouls be a prerequisite before you get let loose on the higher stuff... you should always be able to get a rough estimate of what your figure should be so that if you misplace a decimal comma, it stands out as the result is too large or too small. Same with graphing functions. You should know that certain functions have certain characteristics like inflections and maxima and minima.... There have been several cases of deaths resulting from mis-dispensed drugs for people where the nurse or doctor making the dose calculation has misplaced a decimal point and given a massive overdose of a powerful drug... some basic numeracy skills instead of blind faith in the calculator being right would have picked the error up.
It might be useful to note that I got through my schooling with a twelve inch slide rule and a book of log tables. Calculators did exist then, but they were banned from the exam hall... mostly because they required plugging into the mains!!! and so few people had access to them either considering that the first one my father had back in 1973 cost two weeks wages... now you can get something vastly more powerful in a Christmas cracker...
Re:I know the exact moment math became (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure. They do that in Croatia all right. 8% of population has university diploma.
It goes like this. Primary and high school are OK, and very small percent has problems with them.
University is a world on its own. On about half of them (science,law,medicine etc.) there is drop-out rate of 70% on the first year alone!
On my college first year started with 90 students of EE. Little less then 30 managed to get to second year. Moreover, on the ship-building study, about 100 students entered the first year. About 5 got their diplomas after 4 (or even more) years. That's really devastating to yourself if you know that you are not in that top bracket. Did I mention that average number of studying is more than 7 years?
Most of the profs say something like this: "You obviously can't solve this (say math) problem. You are better off shoveling new roads or something like that." And they tell it straight in your face with 30+ people watching. At the same time minister of science claims on TV that we have to get more students with university education. He fails to mention that no matter how many students you have on the first year, there is about the const number of diplomas waiting for const number of students.
And that isn't fair.
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a degree of truth to this. Also, if you divided up the US like you divide up Europe, then it would be far more fair. The North east would match the best that any country had to offer, and the deep south would be ghastly. Lump all of Europe or all of Asia together, and then do a comparison, see how that one goes. I also might add that the blue states absolutely carry the red states in this matter, by a huge margin.
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the same everywhere else, you know
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
"Fair" as in "just" or "fair" as in "equal"?
It would certainly not be equal, by the very definition of equal.
As far as the justice of your proposal, I won't offend everyone's sensibilities by offering an inflammatory comment, but will curtail my comments with the statement that, as a former teacher of mine liked to say, "Fair [as in just] does not always mean 'equal'."
Re:Could you display results in a USA Today graph? (Score:1, Insightful)
You are aware all white people in the US are immigrants? So the US statistic would consist entirely of Native Americans and Inuit? And the mods find you insightful? Either your white and racist or just an idiot.
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:3, Insightful)
There are no simple problems, and by extension no simple answers when it comes to society-large problems like "education." I'm sure that in your mind Things Were Better In The Olden Days (tm), spare the rod/spoil the child and all that, but that isn't Interesting or Insightful, its trite bullshit.
You want a short list of the things that give the US problems with education? Here you go: property owners that don't want to pay adequate property taxes to fund solid educational infrastructure, teachers unions that resist any effots to hold teachers to a high standard, parents that have three-letter babysitters (ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, etc.), and students that are surrounded by role-models who are subpar academically and intellectually such as basically every sports star and politician. The system was not designed to provide a high standard of academic excellence to begin with, just good mill workers, and now its had over a hundred years to atrophy and degrade.
Want to have a great school? Have a community that is willing to pay for it, hire good teachers with that money and don't let them get complacent in tenure, and have parents be involved with their kids' lives. With those three things, most any other educational barrier can be overcome other than outright stupidity in the child, which is rare compared to the organizational/infrastructural ills enumerated above.
Re:Laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Creating new things is what makes a society worth having, or historically worth studying. Ancient societies that created great works of art and literature are remembered now, thousands of years later, and these works are still remembered and studied.
Notice that when I said "creating new things", I didn't specify only technological works. The fact that you've assumed this shows that you have some sort of agenda to push.
As for realtors, it sounds like I may have touched a nerve. I'm sorry, but almost all the realtors I've met are complete morons who are nearly incapable of keeping themselves afloat financially. I only used the lock thing as an analogy; maybe I should have said something like "I'm surprised most realtors have enough sense to drive a vehicle to the house they're selling." There's a test to be passed to get a driver's license too, but look how poor most drivers are.
Not all realtors are morons; my last realtor that I bought my house through was excellent. He not only knew all the business stuff, but also came over after I moved in and helped fix a few minor issues in my attic that the inspector had noted.
there is more to life than technology. I feel the US is so completely entrenched in technology for technology's sake that we are doomed. Life itself has become a commodity in service of new technology. Ask anyone today if they would sacrifice a (anonymous) human life for some grand new technology. The answer will be a definite "yes."
WTF? You're talking about the USA, right? The country where kids' math skills are on par with those of Afghanistan, and a majority of the population thinks the earth is 6000 years old? The one where all the engineering jobs are being sent to India?
The US is not a uber-technological country. You're thinking of Japan or maybe Germany. The US is two things: a land where people are extremely greedy and lazy, and will screw over anyone for a buck, and a land where religious zealots run amok.
You really need to get out some.
Hogwash, piffle and balderdash (Score:3, Insightful)
You've just outlined precisely the attitude that spells out why the U.S. is languishing in maths, and countries like Australia (where I teach) are doing quite well. The purpose of any education system is most certainly not to churn out 'a few geniuses', leaving everyone else to languish in uneducated stupor. Societies composed of the majority being of acceptable skill are far more productive and desirable than the scenario you describe. The occasional exceptionally gifted individual is certainly desirable, but we should not exaggerate their overall usefulness to society to demigodlike proportions.
Also, as adults, we recognise the value of learning. Children, unsuprisingly due to their limited life experience, may not immediately recognise this value (i.e. they may not 'want' to learn). It is our role as parents and educators to motivate and instill a love of learning consistently throughout schooling, and provide learning experiences that are enjoyable and likely to encourage students of the value of lifelong learning.
The scenario of giving up on every student who doesn't display orgasmic joy at the thought of doing algebra condemns a society to mediocrity - so given your nation's current maths education status, it seems that many of your countrymen agree with your philosophy.
Let's face it, you don't need math to flip hamburgers or to do plumbing work. Heck, many programmers in the company where I work are puzzled by the most trivial math formulae. Despite of this they do their jobs fairly well.
Yes, you do - you need maths for all of that stuff, and you use it too. Jeez, even a burger-flipper needs to be able to count how many burgers he's flipping, and how many patties he needs to make X burgers. Plumbers use maths constantly - do you think pipes just miraculously appear at the correct size? Plumbers are highly skilled professionals, and they and other trades are too frequently disdained by those of us with a University education - the amount of knowledge they need and apply daily is considerable. There are also a lot fewer unemployed plumbers than computer programmers around ATM, so maybe that's telling you something too? Who contributes more to the society in which they live - these maths 'geniuses', or the plumbers whose level of knowledge you scorn?
The thing with this kind of math usage is that since people do it 'without feeling it', people who don't know better assume that no mathematics usage is taking place. In fact, frequently, this is precisely the way that most maths in put into practice on a daily basis, but somehow this kind of arithmetic is viewed as unworthy because it doesn't involve formulae and 'higher maths'.
99% of the maths that people do in their daily lives falls into the categories you have just described as 'mathsless'.
Re:Could you display results in a USA Today graph? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is one statistical measure that gives it credence, however:
Repeatability.
The fact is, we're never in the top 20. This has been seen in study after study after study, each conducted by a different group. Don't you think, that after the nth time, we should come to realize that maybe -- just maybe -- we really aren't in the top 20, as opposed to living in denial from lack of error bars?
- sm
Re:Hogwash, piffle and balderdash (Score:2, Insightful)
People rarely recognize when their poor math skills jump up and bite them in the butt. I'm a physics BA who put himself through college dealing cards at a casino. The most overlooked field of mathematics that would benefit most people these days is definitely statistics. Casinos and lotteries are a tax preying on the innumeracy of the majority of the US citizenry. We'll know that we're getting better at teaching mathematics when revenue from the lotto and casinos begin to dry up...