Encouraging Students to Drop Mathematics 618
Coryoth writes "The BBC is reporting that students in the UK are being encouraged to drop math at the senior levels. It seems that schools are seeking to boost their standing on league tables by encouraging students not to take 'hard' subjects like mathematics, in favor of easier subjects in which they are assured good grades. The result is Universities being forced to provide remedial math classes for science students who haven't done math for two years. The BBC provides a comparison between Chinese and UK university entrance tests — a comparison that makes the UK look woefully behind."
Glad to see (Score:5, Funny)
It's than the Summary makes out (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the comparison is that fair - there are plenty of easy questions in UK exams, but you can't pass by answering them all, you need to do the harder ones too. The Chinese one looks harder, but it's not, mathematically - it just needs a bit more knowledge of terminology, and a much better grasp of spatial reasoning.
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
So
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:4, Insightful)
This, I believe, is due to the high cost of grading non-multiple choice exams -- which is an illustration of how the English (and US) systems choose cost-savings and absolute metrics over educational quality.
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the question from the first year university course baffles me, since it is unbelievably simple. So, although similar amounts of mathematical knowledge are required, it is definitely true that the Chinese question is of a more appropriate level. I (heading for university in September) could do it in seconds. I am now going to attempt the Chinese one.
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Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Interesting)
No time is given to thought or creation. Everything (Really, everything!) is rote memorization. If Chinese students from the same high school are asked to write an essay on a topic then you get back multiple exact copies of an essay that almost (but not quite) fits the designated title, with varying opening and closing sentences used to shoehorn the text into compliance. Parents and students are often angry and puzzled when I grade such items lowly as the essay is one of the approved ones issued by the schools. Exceptional cases aside the students are usually unable to summarize, explain or answer questions on the essay they have just handed in.
This is not even a matter of bad teachers or bad textbooks. It is a cultural belief that knowledge comes from studying the past. That new is lesser and that all answers can be (must be) learned from the legendary sages of the deep past.
Mathematics is marginally more progressive in that textbooks are updated, but even so the students are given proofs to memorize and regurgitate on the test papers.
I am no longer asked to give training sessions for the English teachers of the local schools ever since I flatly refused to acknowledge any benefit in their efforts to teach students English by giving them phonetic books of (badly written, unattributed, incoherent) English short stories and poems to memorize, interspersed with the recitation of English grammar rules in Chinese.
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Do not worry, since us British instituted the national curriculum a few years ago our schools are moving in this direction too.
I read Physics at Uni and I can say that I was also given long mathematical proofs to memorise. There was precious little emphasis on learning to derive the proofs for yourself unless you were enrolled on the MPhys (Master of Physics, 4 Years). I was only reading for a BSc (Batchelor of Sc
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an analogy: Two history questions: one asks you to write a short essay discussing the rise to power of Queen Elizabeth I, and the cultural impacts those events had, both at the time, and through history; the other asks you to list dates associated with Queen Elizabeth I, and the names of some famous people alive at that time. One of those is actually testing your grasp of history, and the other is mindless regurgitation of facts that will probably soon be forgotten. The difference between those questions is very similar to the difference between the math questions. Both questions require you to know the same "facts" (names and dates), but only one actualy asks you do any history.
Mathematics is more than just facts, it is about logic, and reasoning and abstraction; just as history is not just names and dates, it a is about how those people events tie together and influence each other, and how they influence us. Don't confuse mathematics with facts about mathematics.
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The question is what do you want to test?
I'm assuming that these are standardized timed exams, in which case factual knowledge is more important than the speed at which one can make logical deductions.
The more complex th
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Informative)
*Shrug* I learned the stuff for the Chinese test at 14 in 9th grade geometry class in a US public high school. Your mileage may vary.
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The Chinese question isn't that hard, but they threw a really complex diagram in there to mess with your mind, so you have to be able to realize that you're really only working with triangles, and mostly right triangles to boot, despite the fact that the diagram itself is of a whacked out fiv
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:4, Interesting)
So it's a 1/rt(3)/2 triangle, which is exactly that "30, 60, 90 crap". I actually didn't find a single "unusual" angle in there (aside from the construction in the last question).
It might be less obvious, but the math is basically the same.
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's than the Summary makes out (Score:5, Insightful)
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finally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Even worse, a surprisingly large number of elementary school teachers are these sorts of people, and they teach their hatred and ignorance of mathematics to new generations, crippling their early mathematical development, and repeating the cycle.
This reminds me what happened to me. In sixth grade towards the end of the year the students met with guidance counselors from the junior high to decide on what classes to take and the one I saw said I should take algebra but because I didn't know how to do square roots he couldn't let me take it. From then until tenth grade I took as advanced a math class as I could without taking algebra. Then about 6 weeks after my tenth grade year started because the teacher I had for math took my homework out once he collected it and ripped it up in front of the class I got pissed off. I grabbed all of my books and stuff then went to my guidance counselor and told her I had to get out of that class. She looked at my grades in math then said I should of been taking algebra. I told her what I had been told before, that I couldn't take algebra because I didn't know how to do square roots, but she said you learn to do them in algebra. Again I got so pissed off, if I had been allowed to take algebra in 7th grade I could of taken AP Calculus in high school.
FalconRe:finally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:finally (Score:5, Funny)
But you can put a book describing Riemannian manifolds in front of the bullet.
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So is anything you learn in school....
That point does not only apply to Math.
Unless they teach gun handling at US schools ;-)
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Just a difference in terminology.
Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Interesting)
But I noticed something peculiar in this article, there were no examples of students being encouraged to drop or avoid math as the title of both the Slashdot summary and the BBC's article state.
What I did see was that there were observations of Universities having to implement remedial math. Ok, and also that students were choosing not to take hard courses so their GPA remained high.
So what?
I faced the same choices in the American public education system and I chose the hardest courses I could. The result was that a student who took primarily shop courses graduated with highest honors & I graduated with a 3.0 or something. But I already had 11 credits through advanced placement courses.
If you're shocked that students are getting to college and needing to take remedial math, you fix the problem. the problem may be that your system encourages them to avoid math courses so give them an incentive to take them. A simple incentive is letting them know that any of the engineering sciences are going to be further away from their reach if they avoid the classes early on.
The 4.0 student who took shop as his electives is still in my hometown working on cars possibly missing a finger. I'm working half way across the country on computer systems for probably better pay. Ironically, in the end the only thing that matters is if you're happy.
Again, I didn't see anyone person or school official steering them away from math, just the potential problem of the system. Make the consequences known to them and if the student is your child, show them some encouragement!
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Or the university could just up the ante with the entrance exam.
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If you're shocked that students are getting to college and needing to take remedial math, you fix the problem. the problem may be that your system encourages them to avoid math courses so give them an incentive to take them. A simple incentive is letting them know that any of the engineering sciences are going to be further away from their reach if they avoid the classes early on.
I don't know if this is exactly what you meant, but since (apparently) the problem is being driven by university entrance requirements, and they are also the ones bearing the brunt of the problem, the solution is simple. Change the entrance requirements such that students are required to get decent passes in those subjects.
It shouldn't be the universities' job to make up for deficiencies at secondary school level, although if they're the ones driving the problem, it's obvious that they should be the ones
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the 4.0 student also probably will never work over 40 hours a week, is in no danger of outsourcing, and can set up shop anywhere in the US (hence having the choice of living in places where real estate is not insanely priced). You on the other hand will be squeezed as much as possible by your employer in terms of
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Informative)
I know that the people working on septic systems in the area have the same problem, you have to have several years of documented work under someone elses license, or you can't even touch your own system. So, I would assume that plumbing is headed the same direction. I understand that it is a good idea to make people get licenses to make sure they know what they are doing, but I think it is a bad idea to assume that someone doesn't know anything, just because they didn't go through an official apprentice program. If you leave a licensed trade for a little while, there is a good chance that you will miss an update to the license requirement and the associated grandfather clause, and never catch back up. Stick with mechanic, welder, or anything that you can get certified but don't have to be licensed and you will have a lot more options in the future.
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a clue, go work on a car or in a factory for 8 hours and figure out how much spare time you have when you get home for "some fun programming".
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Informative)
I have noticed that many educated, professional people tend to glamorize the "skilled trades." As someone with many family members who are electricians and plumbers, I often have to wonder if the people who dream of "job security and a 40 hour work week" have any knowledge of what a tradesman's work day is actually like.
They typically get up extremely early (5:00 am or so) and work very hard all day, often in dangerous conditions. There is virtually no chance of meaningful career advancement. Union shops are typically more concerned with "time in grade" than actual skill or talent, and you will get to watch as the best, highest-paying jobs get assigned to people with inferior skills simply because those particular workers have been around longer. Eventually you will be one of the old-timers who gets to work the slightly higher-paying jobs, and that's pretty much the extent of your prospects of advancement. The job security that you seem to imagine does not actually exist - as a plumber or electrician you can look forward to spending weeks at a time unemployed, then working 80+ hours/week for two consecutive weeks. Often you will have to travel long distances and live away from your family for days at a time in order to be close to the job site.
I suppose it's one of those "the grass is always greener on the other side" things, but the rosy image that most slashdotters seem to have of a tradesman's life is very inaccurate.
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Funny)
One professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home broke down. He called a plumber. The plumber came on the next day, sealed a few screws and everything was working as before.
The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked.
"This is one third of my monthly salary!" he yelled.
Well, all the same he paid it and then the plumber said to him:
"I understand your position as a professor. Why don't you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you completed only seven elementary classes. They don't like educated people."
So it happened. The professor got a plumber job and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly.
One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber has to go to evening classes to complete the eight grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check students' knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of the circle. The person asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he had forgotten the formula. He started to reason it, he filled the white board with integrals, differentials and other advanced formulas to conclude the result he forgot. As a result he got "minus pi r squared".
He didn't like the minus, so he started all over again. He got the minus again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a minus. He was frustrated. He looked a bit scared at the class and saw all the plumbers whisper:
"Switch the limits of the integral!!"
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps your understanding of the usage of the word "encouraged" is the issue here. It is perfectly normal to say something like, "the entrance requirements for UK universities (which take into account only GPA and not which classes are taken) are encouraging students to drop math classes so they can go to a better school.
My story is very similar. I obtained a 3.8 or something while being the only student in my class to take every AP course offered. The high honors went to other students who took easier courses and they probably had a better choice of schools and scholarships as a result. The one really big difference is that in my state some schools had begun correcting for this issue by crediting AP classes higher than regular classes. Taking the same classes and getting the same scores in a nearby city I would have had a GPA of 4.7 (which I only learned after seeing another person's entrance info listing a higher than 4.0 GPA and trying to figure out what was going on).
Root problem we're really discussing is bureaucracy versus an accurate depiction of a student's abilities. One could argue that the ability to properly manipulate the bureaucracy to have the highest scores is an indication, if that is the kind of intelligence a student is supposed to be demonstrating. The sad truth is, in the world of academia being good on paper is usually a lot more important than being intelligent or competent and both students and parents realize that and make choices that reflect that reality, to the detriment or real learning.
A balanced response? (Score:2)
(:
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, a C in an AP class, counted the same as a B in an Honors class, or like an A in a college prep class. There were no D's so you couldn't get a D in AP and have it work out to an A in a tech prep, but mathematically it was the same.
Now it's arguable as to whether or not that system was truly justified (because if you made made perfect scores on EVERYTHING and had a 100 average in a CP class, you still couldn't compete with B students over in the AP class. Still though, it encouraged anybody who was concerned about their rank to take the hardest version of everything you could.
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The 4.0 student who took shop as his electives is still in my hometown working on cars possibly missing a finger. I'm working half way across the country on computer systems for probably better pay. Iron
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interestingly Enough, No Examples Provided (Score:5, Informative)
This whole situation reminds me of Bruce Schneier's observation [slashdot.org] that when deep quality metrics are unavailable, customers will base their decisions on shallow metrics instead. And then the market will adapt, driving bankrupt anyone who invests in quality that cannot be shallowly measured.
In this example, schools are the manufacturers, students are the products, and parents (i.e. localities) are the customers. The customers demand performance on a shallow metric, and boom, schools adapt to deliver.
The most depressing part? (Score:2, Insightful)
It *is* that depressing here, unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK, the standards-based approach has been bad for education. This is the view of people I know involved in staff recruitment (I work in software dev). It is also the view of people I know involved in the university scene (I live in Cambridge, UK, and many of my friends are staff or postgrad researchers at the university). And it is most certainly the view of people I know involved in teaching at school age (those that haven't simply left the profession in disgust, that is).
The argument about standards-based testing would have merit if the approach worked in practice, but unfortunately, we can clearly see now that school league tables have not had the desired effect. Instead of motivating schools to teach to higher standards, what they have actually done is motivate schools to play the system.
Today, schools will encourage weaker students to take subjects where they are likely to get better grades rather than more difficult subjects, as with mathematics in the case of TFA. Similar things hold for sciences, modern languages, etc. This is caused, in no small part, by giving all subjects equal weight in the statistics (give or take special statistics for things like English and maths, which they play around with every couple of years).
Today, schools will focus on teaching pupils to pass their exams with as high a grade as possible, not on teaching pupils their subject and letting exams simply be a measure of how well the pupils have learned. Revision is all about exam strategy now.
Today, schools will actively discourage pupils from taking courses where they may pass but without gaining a high grade. No grade at all damages the averages less than a D or E grade, and so doesn't corrupt the school's precious "percentage of examinations taken that were passed at grades A*-C" type statistics.
The bottom line is that instead of teaching pupils real understanding in key subjects, and playing a role in their personal and social development along the way, today's schools are simply machines geared to generating exam passes, and today's pupils are simply fuel for the machine. Consequently, you can get straight-A students who don't know their subjects. You get universities inventing their own entrance examinations and/or stating bluntly that they will ignore certain A-level subjects entirely when considering applications, simply because otherwise everyone applying is a straight-A student and the admissions tutors can't distinguish between them. And you get people applying for jobs with great qualifications on paper, who can't do now with an A-level in a subject what someone twenty years older could do after gaining an O-level.
This isn't education, it's product marketing for the New Labour administration. And like much of marketing, most of it is simply lying with statistics, and finding excuses to deny a reality that is self-evident to any qualified observer who takes the time to look.
And as for firing teachers, consider this: so many old-school, teach-the-subject veterans are now leaving the profession (often through early retirement deals because they are much more expensive to employ as teachers than green youngsters fresh from university) that all the accumulated wisdom of generations of teachers is rapidly disappearing. We are being left only with youngsters who have found trendy new methods like synthetic phonics to increase results (no, wait, that one's decades old!) and think they're very clever. Unfortunately, the ones who are very clever rapidly get disillusioned and leave the profession, as several highly qualified and very smart friends who graduated in my university generation all did within two years of starting work as teachers. You don't have to fire anyone in this scheme, because the good people — young and old alike — have already left in disgust.
That's only because... (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, I didn't take any math in school, and it hasn't impaired my reasoning at all!
Crow T. Trollbot
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After all, why make billions when you can make... millions?
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Insensitive comment alert (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the catch?
Re:Insensitive comment alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Your earning potential in the modern world is largely dependant on your Math and Language skills; regardless on whether you think you are wasting your time because you "suck" at these subjects, you need to learn the material for your own good.
Re:Insensitive comment alert (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Insensitive comment alert (Score:4, Insightful)
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Math is less about using calculus in 'daily life' (although you can argue that you do; compound interest, for one) and more about learning reasoning skills necessary for critical thinking. Euclidean geometry won't necessarily make you a better architect (although it's a great advantage), but it'll help your mind train in the process of logical reasoning.
That is why math is important.
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I think the royal society is 100% right to bring this up. When I started my Chemistry Deg
And this is how... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooner or later, they will realize that they don't need the US to manage them, and will proceed to cut us out of the loop and leave us with a bunch of middle-manager types that don't produce anything besides TPS reports.
Note: I know that the article was about the UK, but things aren't any better over here in the colonies. Our school system needs reform, and I don't mean the "No Child Gets Ahead" act.
Re:And this is how... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now US schools are churing out corporate zombies that are discouraged from taking "uncool" and "too hard" classes like math and science. The Chineese and Indians are slowly surpassing Americans in talent and ability, while US schools are focusing on turing out MBAs.
Only if you think "school", which is only loosely correlated with "education", is the key to a successful future.
Sooner or later, they will realize that they don't need the US to manage them, and will proceed to cut us out of the loop and leave us with a bunch of middle-manager types that don't produce anything besides TPS reports.
I don't know about you, but the biggest drones I've ever known have been the types get the straight As and live to regurgitate information on school tests. Every decade we have stories like this about other countries that are going to surpass the United States because of how much better they can cough up answers on tests (the stories have been happening since AT LEAST the early 70s in my memory). And yet, it never seems to happen.
Why? I'll tell you why. And apologies in advance for this generalization. I know there are exceptions, but here is where the kernel of truth lies:
F-C students are the drones of the world. The A students are the ones good at memorizing, yet become drones when they get into the real world, because memorization only takes you so far. The B-B+ students tends to be the ones that are cruising through on their way to somewhere else. They don't care enough about school to get As, but are smart enough to get Bs without working hard.
It's in the middle where you have the smart AND creative people. They are the ones that move the world. Say what you want about the United States, but the one thing we do well is breed independence. You can't teach that, it's cultural. It has to be bred early.
Re:And this is how... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think attitudes like yours are a serious detriment to modern education. Students shouldn't be trying to get a B, they should be pushing to get the A. I've never heard of anyone in the workforce telling me to give 80% to 85% effort, why should school be different? And if the schoolwork really is too simple for your beautiful mind, then you should be getting the A's and doing extracurricular projects with ease. These half assed attitudes toward education are exactly the problem.
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Just the way they did for the past 50+ years while their school system kept on getting lower and lower standards.
It's the way USA still keeps afloat (and will keep afloat a while longer).
And to think they go "boo, immigrants, stealing our jobs". Heh.
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Speaking about non-higher education (equivalent K-12 education), in europe, asia, etc. when your age is in the single digits (US's grade school) you get a standardized test to see if the state is willing to spend resources to continue to educate you academically or
To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
How many people outside of fields like engineering and other math-specialty careers even need to be able to do much beyond the basic four functions anyway? Sure, it'd be nice to have a general populace well-versed in all subjects, but at this point in time I think that's little more than wishful thinkin
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I no longer use math beyond what I learned in
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For instance, lately most of the questions have been over car and house payments, interest, and trying to basically handle finances. This is not simple four function math, and it's very relavant
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I guess at this point I'm still coming to terms with the world's realities, and taking more and more utilitarian/cynical views on many social aspects of existence.
School Ranking (Score:4, Informative)
I can't tell you about schools in the UK, but I know for a fact that this scheme would not work here in Ontario. Universities keep an "unofficial" ranking of the academic standing of high-schools throughout the province. This doesn't mean "this school has a really high average!". This ranking takes into account subject focus and quality of education. For example, a high-school that has a large number of graduates with high averages that go on to study in Engineering, Medicine, Physics, Math etc. are given a high rating for academic subjects. Schools with a large number of graduates that go on to study Music, Literature, Art, etc. are given a high rating for the Arts.
You could almost think of this as a normalizing factor (I like to call it alpha). They multiply each student's graduating average by their school's alpha, and it is this normalized result that they use to rank students for acceptance.
Aikon-
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Additionally, at least when I went through the system, Ontario universities didn't look at a straight GPA. Depending on the program, they'd use the best two university-entrance-level maths, the best two university-entrance-level sciences, and the best two of the remaining university-entrance-level courses you'd taken, or something similar. So, you needed a high GPA, but it had to be in relevant courses.
E.
I know what this leads to (Score:4, Informative)
In other words, the first year of math is pretty much wasted to get those people on par.
Funny enough, if I wanted to study medicine, I'd have to go through courses for latin first to be "allowed", but they don't have to get their math down to study technical CS.
Yes, appearantly math ain't important. Who cares if they know what a matrix is or whether they expect to be able to fly once they know.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
It's surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
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Entrance Exam Comparison Highly Flawed (Score:2, Insightful)
The given entry tests don't mean anything (Score:2)
Dumbing Down Our Kids (OT) (Score:4, Insightful)
Rule 1: Life is not fair; get used to it.
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will not make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you screw up, it's not your parents' fault so don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way by paying your bills, cleaning your room, and listening to you tell how idealistic you are. So before you save the rain forest from the bloodsucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
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Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen
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Why do people keep leaving out the last three?
Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.
#14.
On the contrary, I'm only now just beginning to enjoy myself in college. School was BS most the way. Stupid people all around living their sitcom lives whining because our math teacher gave them a fork and knife instead of zooming the spoon with baby food towards their mouths ("open up!!!" \(^_^).
For once I'm being challenged with something so difficult I'm struggling for my life just to make C's [at Georgia Tech]. I'm not smart, anything but really; I'm closer to D's than I am B's. It's just primary a
Obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing... (Score:2)
The hysterical claim being made (in this case that comparing a single question from one exam to a single question from another exam, with no context as to who takes the test or how students do on those questions) always demonstrates utter innumeracy far more clearly than it denounces it.
And I'm missing where the submitter got the whole "Encouraging Students to Drop Mathematics" thing from.
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And I'm missing where the submitter got the whole "Encouraging Students to Drop Mathematics" thing from.
The headline and content of the first linked BBC article? You know this one [bbc.co.uk] titled " Pupils 'are urged to drop maths'". I freely admit that, ultimately, this is simply a claim being made by the Royal Society of Chemistry, but I am simply rephrasing the headline of the linked article itself.
Law on Unintended Consequences (Score:2)
I see people often chastise others about thinking about this law before altering incentive systems. But are effects like this really that reasonable to anticipate?
"Look?" WTF? (Score:2)
It isn't much better here (Score:2)
It was "If y=3x and 3x=12 what is y?". They both kept insisting y=4 no matter how many times I said no, would you like to try again. Finally I explained why y=12 and they both said "yeah, but that's math".
For background info: they were both female, one was in her early 50s and educated in Saskatchewan (finished High School), the other was in high school (age 14-17?) and had sp
From the actual article... (Score:2)
Pupils are being discouraged from taking A-level maths as schools in England chase higher places in the league tables, scientists have claimed.
[...]
The Department for Education and Skills said more pupils were studying maths.
Now, tell me if I need remedial classes in English, but it sounds to me like more pupils are studying maths, i.e. the opposite of fewer.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Department for Education and Skills said more pupils were studying maths.
Now, tell me if I need remedial classes in English, but it sounds to me like more pupils are studying maths, i.e. the opposite of fewer.
No - your problem is that you are expecting a degree of honesty from the Department of Education and Skills. They think absolutely nothing of a bare-faced lie like this. To give another example, when asked they insist that most maths teachers are in favour of coursework for GCSE maths. If OTOH you ask a group of maths teachers at an examiners' meeting you will almost certainly get 100% opposed to it. The government and some schools are in favour of it because it allows students to cheat and thus artifi
And? (Score:2)
This isn't ideal, obviously, but it's been this way (in England & Wales: the Scottish and Northern Irish education systems are quite different, and I don't know how popular Higher Maths is in Scotland) for at least 15 years, probably longer.
Chinese vs. British math tests (Score:2, Informative)
I have worked through to a solution of the BBC problem from China and my first reaction is Yuck, this is not mathematics but artifical nonsense posing as mathematics. The problem does little to inspire what I call "abstract" reasoning (though it does have a little bit of cleverness in finding triangles wit
Why is it harder? That is the question. (Score:5, Interesting)
When we all got to be 11-14 we stopped caring about school as much...not all of us of course, but many of us start to think about all the other things. From which clothes to wear to sex. School becomes and after thought for many. Then when we get to high school and need to start focusing we've already screwed ourselves.
Part of this I think is to the inadequacy of 1st thru 7th grades. We learn basic arthimetic, how to spell ( I didn't do so hot ), and some stupid life sciences. It is so general and does nothign to prepare us for the harder stuff.
Would it be so hard in the first grade when we propose _ + 7 = 11...fill in the blank to instead say X + 7 = 11. What should X be. When the kid says 4 why not then show them 4 = 11 - 7...x = 11 - 7. Basic algebra is not that much harder then the math we learn in the first and second grades, but we wait till the 7th grades when most boys are getting boners looking at their teachers.
Even the act of calling these classes harder is creating the problem. Why is algebra harder...it really isn't if presented right. Calculas is a bit tricky I'll admit, but I think if kids had a better foundation it wouldn't be that hard.
The same is true with science. I don't remember a dang thing I learned in the 7th grade about science. I think the teacher was boring me with the scientific method or something. Looking back to the thrid grade I don't even think science was on the menu. Shouldn't we have diagrams of atoms on the class and tell kids this is what everything is made of. Our minds where like sponges and we where being hand fead.
The importance of younger and younger education is becoming appartent...if you don't like to learn by the time you hit 10th grade and don't have parents pushing you to anyways you probably are not going to make it. Instead of testing kids we need to determine how much they are enjoying class.
Don't get me started on the A-F grading system
I'm a mathematician, and I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless, as a mathematician, I think that the Chinese problem looks "complicated" but not especially interesting. Sure, it seems more impressive than the British one, but they both require nothing more than basic geometry and a bit of trig -- the main difference is that the Chinese problem involves a significant amount of "grinding out" calculations, but it doesn't really require any insight or understanding. It's really not much different than doing page after page of long division, or working out a nasty Sudoku puzzle. It's much more interesting to prove something surprising about a basic geometric figure than to prove something boring about a complicated geometric figure -- that is, unless your sole interest is in cranking out engineers to do "worker bee" calculations like this, rather than trying to learn more about reality and how to calculate unknown things.
Cheers,
IT
Re:I'm a mathematician, and I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Heinlein on Math (Score:5, Insightful)
R. A. Heinlein
Lots of comments here from US slashdotters (Score:4, Informative)
The way the UK education system works is:
At around age 16, you take exams we call GCSE's. These are, in the big scheme of things, fairly straightforward. Most people will take around 10 subjects at GCSE level.
The next year (around age 17), you take AS-levels. Each AS-level is worth half an A-level. Most people will take about 6 subjects.
The year after, you take A-levels. Most people will take 3, though some will take 2 or 4. You don't choose new subjects - you generally carry on doing the things you did well in at AS-level.
Each A-level pass grade (A-E) gets you a certain number of points - obviously, higher grades=more points. AS-levels are worth half the number of points of their equivalent A-levels.
Universities set entrance requirements based primarily on points achieved at A/AS level. They can also demand you do a particular subject for some courses, but that's by no means certain and varies from university to university. Some of the top universities also demand you take another entrance exam.
All of which is well and good. But what I haven't explained yet is the real fuck-up.
There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever between "amount of work required to get a good grade at GCSE" and "amount of work required to get a good grade at A-level". The gap between the two is absolutely huge.
Seriously. Provided you're of reasonable intelligence, you could mess around for 2 years (as I did) at GCSE level and still get reasonably good grades.
Try doing that at A-level and you will almost certainly screw up with a vengeance. This is particularly true in science-y subjects like Maths and Chemistry.
Thing is, a lot of 16 year olds don't take these things seriously. Your teachers can say "You're going to have to pay more attention at A-level" until they're blue in the face, but a lot of people won't really take that on board until it's far too late. So you either drop that A-level in Maths or you fail it.
Now politics comes into play. No government wants to admit that the schoolchildren of the day are failing. But it's a government body which sets the exams. So every year, the exams are a little bit easier than they were the previous year. Not substantially - as a pupil, you probably wouldn't notice unless you were given an exam from 15 years earlier. The unversities notice, though, and they've taken a number of approaches. Some demand an extra entrance exam, others do remedial courses. Such remedial courses have existed for ages - they're called "foundation" courses and are generally a year long. But they are generally only offered for some degree courses, and they seldom get this level of publicity
Grade inflation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Students here in the US are being encouraged to take fewer, lower-level courses than are offered at their schools because "an A in standard math looks better to colleges than a C in higher-level math." Sadly, this is mostly true.
This is mostly due to the grade-point-average system and due to grade inflation. Colleges often summary-reject students with a GPA lower than e.g. 3.0, without looking at what classes they took. This leads to the common scenario in U.S. education:
In many US high schools, A no longer means a student is extremely bright and talented. As are average. A C is nearly failing. Students who aren't getting As complain to their teachers (and engage their parents to complain) as though they're failing the class.
This problem is compounded by the difference in a class's difficulty depending on teacher, school, and date taken. At my school, "IB Calculus I" is taught by three teachers. One doesn't teach well and gives amazingly hard tests. His students tend to have Cs and not know what they're doing (through no fault of their own). One teaches well and is a total hard-ass. His students are probably the most well-versed, but they also have Cs. One teacher gives open-note, multiple-choice tests. His students are generally clueless and have As.
A college has *no way* to tell which students are which, since the class is the same on transcripts. This Is Broken.
Colleges need to take a closer look at what classes a student took and other methods of aptitude testing before they accept or reject students.
The big difference that everyone will ignore... (Score:5, Insightful)
But please ignore this, and proceed being alarmed. It's certainly easier than thinking.
Unis per citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
Difficulty of an entrance exam is meaningless (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes more sense is to compare qualification exams -- what you need to get out of secondary school. Alternatively, if one exam covers fields of knowledge that another doesn't, that probably means something. If the Chinese exam includes calculus and the British does not, that would tell you something.
Finally, you have to look at the body of students being tested. For years we had conniptions in the US over declining college entrance exams - despite the fact that the tests were deliberately recalibrated every year with full knowledge of the likely statistical result. The reason for the falling scores was that a much larger percentage of students were going on to college. Every year, more and more lower scoring students were making the attempt.
This is not say Chinese education might not be better than UK education. But we can't even conclude, just by looking at the tests, whether it is any different.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The maths knowledge required for both tests is the same, the chinese one just merely requires more application know-how
No, the difference that matters is that the Chinese question requires you to use the knowledge in a chain of logical deduction (and to reproduce tht chain of reasoning explicitly to answer question), while the UK question simply requires the student to regurgitate facts. In other words, the Chinese question actually requires the student to understand, and do mathematics, while the UK question requires students to be able to recite arbitrary facts about mathematics. One requires some modicum of understandin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The line between great goals and being stupid is pretty fine. The guy who builds a set of wings and jumps off a cliff to his doom while flapping *as hard as he can* is still stupid, even if he did the hard work to accomplish his great goals. Let me illustrate, using your examples. When those planes were hijacked, there was a protocol in place, that officials knew and most
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So any troll mods you get - well deserved. And please, stop with the beaten-down hero crap. No one's buying.