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.'"
Laziness (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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.
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.
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:It all comes down to the parents. (Score:5, Informative)
Part of it is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has allegedly endorsed a program that deemphasizes pencil and paper arithmetic to the point that some of the more extreme advocates of this program have proposed banning traditional algorithmic arithmetic until close to fourth grade.
The listed criteria that the school has identified as necessary skills are available at the NCTM website [nctm.org].
This list may look initially acceptable, but the application of it at least in my son's school was to claim that arithmetic is not even a significant part of math, at least not a standard algorithmic understanding of how to do the standardized problems. Instead, an emphasis on "strategies" is supreme to the point that if a problem cannot be done in one's head, it isn't worth doing.
The other issue is the "No Child Gets Ahead Act". It requires teachers to bring up to minimal standard as many students as possible and ignore those students who meet the minimum requirements without trying. This approach discourages advanced work in all too many cases that I have seen.
There are often problems with lazy students, but that is not the whole of the situation, overly rigorous school programs are just as much to blame.
Re:It all comes down to the parents. (Score:5, Interesting)
you should, but that's not really the issue. as another poster mentioned, many americans today see the school system as a free baby sitter program. by sending their kids off to school, they feel they are absolved of any responsibility for their kids' educations. unfortunately, things don't work that way. kids learn from their parents, whether the parents like it or admit it. they learn by emulation and observation. if the parents just see school as a way to not have to worry about their kids while the state educates them, then the kids won't care about doing well in school either. and sending your kid to a private school (in and of itself) won't help your kids either. one of the biggest reasons private schools tend to perform better than public schools is that the parents who are willing to send their kids to private schools are more likely actually care about the education their child is receiving, and impress that upon their children.
my parents are both teachers, and i know a lot of teachers both among friends my age and people who are old enough to have been one of my teachers. in general, students who do well in school are more likely to have parents who take an interest in what is going on in school, and poor students tend to have parents that could care less about what happens to their child from the time they leave for work in the morning until they get home.
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Insightful)
I know the exact moment math became (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was taught that you can tell if a wall is straight with only a measuring tape.
3 foot out make mark
4 foot up. make mark.
mearsure the distance between the marks, should be 5 feet.
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: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.
What it means to be cool (Score:4, Interesting)
An interesting tangent on this -- my wife grew up in Malaysia, and when she was a kid the smartest kids *were* the most popular. No one wanted to hang out with the kids who were doing poorly in their classes, because they weren't cool. Appearance mattered somewhat, too, but was less of a factor. And all the kids she knew *liked* vegetables -- she was totally baffled when she learned about how everyone in the US "knows" that kids just automatically don't like vegetables, need special kids menus with chicken fingers, etc.. None of her friends were like that. Here favorite food growing up was spinach (still is, actually). Yes, I'm totally serious.
Malaysia has problems of their own that seriously hinder education, like blatantly racist policies controlling access to higher education, but the totally different path to "cool" is worth noting. It's NOT automatic that the "nerds" are unpopular (and then never learn proper social skills...), or even that there is some derogatory name for them.
I wish I could follow this up with some good suggestions for fixing this problem... but I'm kind of lost for answers on that one. The first step is at least pointing it out -- then maybe we can work on building better ways for kids to actually use what they learn to do cool stuff; that should help.
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.
Re:Laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy shit, they're right (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, dude - you should know by know that it's two plus two that equals four... no wonder we're behind in math, with this sort of disinformation wandering the internet...
Re:Holy shit, they're right (Score:3, Funny)
for very large values of 2!
Re:Holy shit, they're right (Score:3, Funny)
lol
Re:Holy shit, they're right (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Holy shit, they're right (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Laziness (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Laziness (Score:3, Interesting)
See, in a case like that, the teacher could assign a project to create a CFD program that implements the reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (with the turbulence model of your choice optional). It'd be even better if people were assigned to create an optimal shape for some given purpose using the program, and then everyone's shapes would be fabricated and put in a real-world test.
Now, you may decide that simul
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.
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.
Re:Laziness (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe I should have said.... Laziness is the father of invention.
Could you display results in a USA Today graph? (Score:5, Funny)
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 ha
Yabbut... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yabbut... (Score:4, Funny)
It's COOL to suck at math (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's COOL to suck at math (Score:5, Funny)
Bart Simpson is clearly to blame for this.
And in contrast, in Korea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And in contrast, in Korea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And in contrast, in Korea... (Score:3, Informative)
And you wonder why the US is behind in math and other assorted subjects?
Even worse in minority communities (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine being a nerdy black kid. I was. The black kids sometimes though that I was "trying to be white" because I was good at math. The white kids often resented that I was "showing off" that I was good at math.
LK
Re:Even worse in minority communities (Score:5, Interesting)
As another nerdy black kid, I have had plenty of time coming to terms with that phenomena. The problem is race perception.
Many very well-meaning people unknowingly sterotype the intelligence and preferences of others. They reserve their limited use the latest "street slang" for you, even if you usually converse with them in near perfect english. They comment that the music at the party sucks and they'd much rather rap hoping to strike a cord. They are nice people, but that attitude is very dangerous when that person needs to interview you for a job or somehow otherwise assess your capabilities.
The sad thing is that after a while people begin to lean towards what is expected of them.
I highly, highly recommend Da Capo Best Music Writing 2004 [amazon.com] . The essays in this book cover race and other socio-economic factors affecting pop culture and race perception, amongst over things. Coves all the new trends, eg. What does the Bohemian movement and modern rap have in common? This was a mind-opening book, the best I've read all year.
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: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: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.
Barbie said it best (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Barbie said it best (Score:5, Funny)
My wife's studying to be a math teacher - she loves that one.
Re:Barbie said it best (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Barbie said it best (Score:4, Funny)
Lea
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.
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
BUT THAT WOULDN'T BE FAIR!!!
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:4, Informative)
And it most definitely isn't fair not to have universal education. The government has a duty to provide the best conditions possible for the happiness and welfare of the people, and a way to do this is to provide education for everyone. In fact, the responsibility to do everything possible for happiness and welfare is a moral imperative. Governments that would ignore the education needs of the people would be exactly like a father that ignores the education needs of his children. A father that raises his children in ignorance isn't any kind of man at all, and a government that doesn't provide for the basic education needs of the people is morally deficient.
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
*** WARNING: Blog Pimping Ahead ***
Bingo! I live in DC and see this crap first hand. The students routinely score at the bottom of the national average, the drop out and truancy rates are staggering, and some of the schools, when not falling over from sever neglect, are borderline war zones (and I wish I was exaggerating about this).
Interestingly enough, though, DC public schools are well
Re:Very Telling Indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
Try this math problem.
School 'A' spends $5 million dollars to put in a state of the art arena with an expected income of $1.2 million in ticket sales annually, side line advertising, and vending sales. School 'B' spends $5 million dollars on a state of the art Math department that will regain $100,000 a year in tuition. School 'A' gets larger attendance and educates far more people, School 'B' sees a 5% increase in Math scores but a decline in attendance. Which school made the bett
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?
With Bush in office its no surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:With Bush in office its no surprise (Score:3, Informative)
I thought the actual quote was "is our children learning?".
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!
More money is not the answer... (Score:5, Funny)
--
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph Wiggum
Re:US School System (Score:3, Informative)
Now it might be possible there is more to the story but I have heard a lot like this coming from many different people all across the U.S.
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".
Top Heavy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:US School System (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, quite a bit of the problem rests on the parents. My mom teaches 3rd grade in an inner-city public school, just outside of NYC. There's a strong correlation between the problem kids and the parents.
This is most notable at the parent-teacher conferences. The kids that do well in the class usually have parents that come to the
Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Toddler math (Score:5, Funny)
Um, according to these figures the average age of these "children" in each country was barely five months old (15/40 =
I have a .375 year old... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Outsourcing - or - Do you want fries with that? (Score:3, Informative)
The engineers from outside the US were able to do the job. Only the top notch products of the US school system could cope.
It was very sad.
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.
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...
No child left behind (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No child left behind (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not an anomalie (Score:5, Informative)
It's not an anomalie, eastern european countries have great education systems, even if "cheap". I live in Portugal and we get a load of imigrants from Ukrania an several other countries of the area, trying to earn some money. They mostly end up in the construction business, but they're all college graduates, management, economy, engineering. And they're well-formed people.
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!
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.
My elementary school (Score:5, Interesting)
Someday, maybe I'll tell you all about our phys. ed., art, and music programs. =)
Quiz of the day: a third of fourty is.... (Score:3, Funny)
And you would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those damn SlashDot readers!
US Education (Score:5, Insightful)
What ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bang for the Buck (Score:3, Interesting)
Sample Word Problem (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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).
Canada ranked third (Score:4, Interesting)
And to improve the actual performance of Americans, it's not out of 40 but out of 41 countries. And in the news paper I read this morning, it said US ranked 24th not 28th, except I couldn't confirm with the OECD's site.
Reasons... (Score:3, Funny)
A tap broke in the flat of a professor of maths. He called a plumber. The plumber arrived, in 15 replaced a pipe and charged the professor 1/4 his monthly salary.
"My god! So much? But it didn't look difficult at all! You must earn quite a bit more than I do!"
"Sure, just become a plumber and you'll earn as much as me. No, seriously, there is demand, and the job isn't really hard..."
So the professor became a plumber. He started repairing leaking taps etc, earning a lot of money for very little work. And it lasted until one day when the union decided all the plumbers need to know at least basics of maths, so there will be a training...
So, the training starts, the maths is extremely simple, just like for kids. And then the teacher calls our professor to the blackboard and asks him to write the formula for the field of circle.
And professor, in terror realizes, he forgot.
"Okay, no panic. I'm a math professor, I don't remember the formula but I can derive it."
So he starts calculating the formula, splitting the circle into infinitely many pieces, filling whole blackboard with calculations, integrals, derivatives... finally comes up with minus pi r squared.
"No, that's wrong. Field can't be negative. There must be a mistake somewhere." So he checks his calculations once, twice, can't find the error. And whisper arises in the classroom filled with a crowd of plumbers. Finally he starts recognising the words in the whisper, and everyone in the room whispers "Exchange limits of the integral! Exchange limits of the integral!"
Putting it in a personal context (Score:4, Interesting)
Last year, he took a Quantum Mechanics class. At the course's beginning, the prof said the pace would be harsh but he figured most students would cope. Mid-terms showed otherwise. My son earned a 75% on the mid-term. He was depressed until he found out the class average was in the 40's. That made him feel better until he found out that his house mates aced the test. His house mates are from Singapore and Taiwan.
When he asked them how they had managed to ace the mid term, they all shrugged their shoulders and said they'd seen the material in high school. They had seen the material in high school for multiple reasons. [greenes.com] The typical Taiwanese goes to school 220 days out of a year instead of 180 here in California. The school days are longer, typically 8-5 instead of 8:30 to 2:30 here. The elementary teachers have strong math skills as opposed to our elemetary teachers. Parents in Asia expect more from their children than American parents do and the end results are Asian children have been trouncing American children academically for the past 20 years.
In case you're wondering about the source of all the facts cited above, here are the citations. [greenes.com]
The story isn't completely grim however. The United States is nothing if not adaptable. The alternative school movement in the U.S. has made an opening for schools like this one [whitneyhs.net], this one [pacificcollegiate.com] and KIPP schools [kipp.org] to function. As the existence and efficacy of these kinds of options becomes more commonly recognized, American education will shift.
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:Yearly story (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because the situation is real, hasn't changed and they measure it every year.
Re:Statistically invalid samples (Score:5, Funny)
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:Statistically invalid samples (Score:4, Interesting)
Egalitarian? Who are you kidding? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Egalitarian? Who are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Egalitarian? Who are you kidding? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes there is, and do you want to know why? Because of people like you saying things like:
When you try to eliminate "stratification" by using the government to decide on how to educate people, you just make things much worse. The government tries to set stan
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:Statistically invalid samples (Score:5, Informative)
BTW Trust me that all the schools are tested, not just the top rated. I am product of one of the special math school in Czech Republic and what we had in math in high school is more than you get from frist two years of community college here in US. If they took survey in just the elite math schools, it would leave everyone trailing way behind.
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.
Don't worry about it. (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks*
Re:First Post (Score:3, Funny)
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 fr
Re:out of how many kids, though? (Score:5, Insightful)