[telegraph]

This was somewhat buried in the article, and it deserves repetition:

"In many countries, math has long been recognized as a tough subject that can be mastered through hard work, said Tom Loveless, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who analyzes international math test results and cultural differences. Efforts to make math more fun or dress up textbooks are not the answer, he said."

It's absolutely shocking to me how many educators I've encountered (even and especially at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels) who dismiss a lack of basic mathematical proficiency by saying "Well, I was never good at math either!" If this article is an accurate representation of where American math education is headed, then for once I might feel optimistic about it.

[Shooter]

RE: "Well, I was never good at math either!"

Even more upsetting to me (as a horrible math student in K-12) was: "Well, you'll never really use this in the real world anyway. But you should learn it. Now stop asking 'Why?'"

It is almost impossible to learn something if you have no interest in it, and it's difficult to develop an interest in something very complicated without at least a basic understanding of WHY you should be interested in it. Calculus is incredibly interesting and useful, but not to someone who is having it rammed down their throat via rote memorization without any explanation of the overarching principles or reasons for its existence. "Plug and chug" was the only instructional approach my HS teachers understood.

In high school, I loved science but hated math. I was actually classified as being math-phobic. I learned a bit of statistics for my science projects (Westinghouse, ISEF, etc.) because I needed it, but didn't really learn any other math until I taught myself in my 20s. I just skipped any math that wasn't absolutely mandatory in high school, and even the mandatory classes were very poorly taught. I basically just soaked up enough facts in my short-term memory to pass tests, but I didn't understand how anything related or why you actually did anything. And I didn't worry about it, because not a single teacher I had could ever give me a simple example of why you needed to know any of it or what you could use it for. When I asked what calculus was good for, for example, I was told "passing tests." They said if you became a doctor or an engineer you had to know it, but otherwise you would never use it. I asked why doctors and engineers needed to know it if it was so useless, and they usually just shrugged!

I only became interested enough to actually learn math once I saw practical uses for it in my own life (in finance and programming, mostly.) Self-instruction was a struggle, because I lacked any sort of basic foundation. I almost had to start from scratch. I still have relatively poor math skills, but I can get work done and actually enjoy doing calculations now. A big turnaround from being completely math-phobic. I've easily spent $5K on self-instructional math materials (which sounds ridiculous, I know, but I like video instruction and it's usually expensive.)

I'm angry that I avoided math and was scared of math for a decade because not one teacher I had could provide a reason to open the book beyond "you have to learn it." If I hadn't developed an interest in software and finance, I would probably still be as ignorant of math as I was when I graduated high school.

[telegraph]

I have to respectfully disagree with you. It's true that there is a large group of kids who would be better served if their teachers focused more on applications; however, I think that there's an equally large (if not bigger) group of students for whom learning about applications is not helpful. When I was in public school, my teachers always made an effort to highlight how the math we were learning could be applied to real world problem -- the end result was that often the struggling students would say "You use this to build rocket ships? Well I'm NEVER going to do that... I give up."

The most important thing we can do is change our attitude. It's hard to develop an interest in something that you find difficult when you're receiving mixed messages from all of the adults in your life; when adults will demand you get better grades all while telling you it's okay because "math is for nerds" or "not everyone can do math."

I did well (good grades, but it's not like I was Terence Tao or anything) in math in school, and my teachers in other subjects, my coaches, my friends' parents, etc, acted like I was a freak because of it. You can't give a high five with one hand while you're pointing and laughing with the other. This is the attitude that must change before we can raise a generation who take pride in developing math skills.

[Shooter]

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the mixed signals thing. I definitely experienced that phenomena because of my science pursuits. I can also understand your point about how certain students would develop a "Well I'm NEVER going to do that..." attitude when shown certain specific examples of math. But a more practical applications approach - no matter how poor the examples - should still interest more students than a "I don't know why you have to do it, but just do it" approach.

I think your disagreement with me comes about in part because you are thinking in more concrete, specific terms than I am. You're correct that "You can use this math to build rocket ships" would probably not have helped me if I didn't have an interest in rocket ships. But a teacher wouldn't necessarily use just a single type of example. Beyond that, I'm saying that my teachers never explained the overarching concepts of math and how they were related or explained - in GENERAL terms - what it could be used to do. Each math 'concept' was presented as a discrete type of chore that you completed in order to satisfy some perverse deity for no apparent reason. Math was not presented as a language of logic and reason that could be used to solve practical problems, but as a completely made up busywork exercise. I might as well have spent my time memorizing Klingon grammar rules. I literally didn't realize calculus was the study of change until college, even after having passed a course in it! Maybe you had a better experience with math instructors, and it is just difficult for you to understand how woefully bad some practicing math instructors actually are?

[telegraph]

Re: my experience with math instructors, you're probably right. I do think that there's a certain sort of base level of application information that should be imparted with any given mathematical topic (for instance, that calculus is about change! Wow, I'm sorry you had such awful teachers), I just think that focus on applications is a method that's been tried already and just hasn't seemed to improve math education enough.

[tokenadult]

I've easily spent $5K on self-instructional math materials (which sounds ridiculous, I know

That doesn't sound ridiculous to me, although I don't think I've spent that much on tangible math instruction materials yet for my four homeschooled children. The total budget for my oldest son, including travel expenses to summer math programs and gasoline for travel to local programs, has surely exceeded that by now. I'll open a separate thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633540

on the present value of knowing math well, which I have wished to do for a while.

[xenophanes]

I think that $5K of stuff is nothing compared to what public schools spend to fail to teach math :)

(Per student, but over the course of several years, and taking into account that he was buying stuff just for himself, whereas at a school each video could be shown to 30+ people.)

[lutorm]

There is a strong mindset about math that "you're either good at it or not". It's a nice application of the research by Carol Dweck about people's views of intelligence, popularized in this article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-...