The New York Times thinks math is boring. They suggest that most high school students are not planning to pursue STEM fields in university; though this is a questionable measure of the inherent excitement of math, it also seems to have limited use. How many high school students should be planning to pursue STEM majors? Pre-medical and medical degrees are not always included in STEM, nor are students interested in law, business, or the arts. It is not an alarming statistic to say that most high school students are not planning to pursue a law degree. While it is not clear how many students ought to pursue a law degree, it is clear that most people are not lawyers. While STEM is a broad category, given that math- and science-heavy programs like accounting and medicine are not included in STEM, I do not think the number of students planning on majoring in STEM university programs is a measure of the likability of or interest in math in our society.
The NYT piece also references a study that compared American students to international students. In the Program for International Student Assessment, the US consistently ranks in the middle of the analyzed countries, right at the average, since the first assessment in 2003. The National Center for Education Statistics also has results from an assessment called the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which dates back to 1995. Combing the results of the two shows that the US, for about the last twenty years, has been about average compared to other countries. The US may be slipping a little on the TIMSS, but what the meaning of a change of a couple of points is not clear. Basically, despite the strong reaction to these results, the US remains more or less where it has always been - the middle.
I cannot comment on the nature of these rankings directly, but it should be noted that the US has one of the most open education systems in the world. English language learners, the disabled, the poor, and the unmotivated students are all required to be in school, and participate in tests that rank the US against other nations. Some of the other nations test students to allow them to continue their education (excluding unmotivated students). Some nations exclude disabled students. Some nations exclude the poor. If the US can maintain an "average" ranking, while treating, or striving to treat, all students equally, and accordingly, testing them equally, then I do not see the average ranking as an issue.
Beyond the average ranking, the flat trend of the US rank in the world means that the education system is not failing compared to where it once was. This is also reflected in American universities outranking every other post-secondary education system in the world, and the American economy being stronger than any other in the world. Could the average numbers be a "canary in the coal mine"? I suppose, but given that the universities have remained the strongest in the world, despite decades of tests that report supposedly failing American schools, it seems like these tests are unrelated to any measure of successful societies.
More evidence of boring mathematics comes from an Equation for Change study that suggests Americans are not confident when it comes to math. The numbers are presented as ominous; for example: "Although some Americans report positive feelings when they have to do math, like feeling confident (36%), knowledgeable (34%), at ease (30%) and prepared (20%), one in five Americans report that they typically feel frustrated (21%) or anxious (18%) when they have to do math." Apparently the people at Equation for Change are counting on Americans being bad at math! The rhetoric does not reflect that twice as many people report feeling confident while doing math than anxious. The whole analysis is rife with loaded language, but some of the statements allude to a bewildering notion of what "math" actually is. Apparently 35% of Americans have difficulty estimating weight or distance, which is a sign of failing math education, despite 65% of Americans reporting positive abilities in this decidedly unrelated-to-math assessment of mathematics. Is the ability to accurately name the paint swatches at a hardware store art?
The Times claims that teachers are not sufficiently trained in mathematics, so students are not getting the education they deserve. I agree that educators should have more math education, and I do think that it would encourage students to perform better at math if it was unacceptable for their teachers to say, "oh, I'm not so good at math, I've always been better at grammar." However, a huge part of teachers making such statements is not a lack of training in math, but that it is socially acceptable to have these attitudes. I am absolutely confident that my elementary school teachers lacked a developed knowledge of, for example, comma use. Beyond the comma, I do not think the en dash or em dash were ever even mentioned as a topic pertinent to proper grammar in my 13 years in public school. (Yes, I am including an artifact of typeface as grammar, as typeface has been affecting grammar for about 1000 years, longer than the existence of the modern comma.) By this argument, teachers should be getting more education on almost every topic, but when society pays teachers so little, it is hard to convince education students to study hard in anticipation of such low pay.
Motivation in math does not just come from pay. If students were driven only by income, all high school students would want to be petroleum engineers. Students are motivated by emotion, interest, pay, inspiration, and perceived limitations. The TV show 30 Rock dealt with one of these issues when an inner city youth baseball team discusses their dreams. One of them says, "one day, I'll have an office just like this - to clean"! For as much as Americans talk about following dreams, our socioeconomic classes do not offer mobility, and it is a sad but true reality that those 30 Rock little leaguers are not free to dream of being the executive in the office.
Yet, the world needs janitors, not only executives. This should not be determined by one's parents, but the student him/herself. P-Tech, the high school in the Times piece, is inspiring students to study enough math to be technicians, not necessarily presidents. Blue-collar dreams are attainable if the students learn mathematics, but is a traditional math education what holds the students back? Does math need to be made relevant to be not boring? My uncle once told me that when he took geometry he did not bother to learn the theorems, but as a carpenter, deduced the Pythagorean theorem. While an instructor may have been able to reach him more effectively by applying a different teaching style, some of the onus should stay on the student, shouldn't it?
I am not sure that I have ever seen an extended piece about how boring it is to learn a language. The Rosetta Stone software advertises that it is not boring, but I do not think major news papers publish many op-eds about how foreign language education needs to be made relevant and fun. It is boring, though. I have never taken the time to learn to speak Spanish. I have taken some classes, I have the Rosetta Stone, I study endless vocabulary, and I memorize numbers and the alphabet. It is boring. Many days while studying Spanish I long to do something exciting like read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, but I soldier on through vocabulary. Why do this boring task? Because when I wander around Barcelona and find a vegan-friendly cafe, I can ask if everything is vegan, and I can order one black doughnut and one pink doughnut well enough that I get a flirty smile from the girl behind the counter. That is why learning Spanish warrants my time and attention, but I have to know that the ability is worth it to find the motivation to do so.
According to the Times, one of the most important aspects of math education is pre-school level math education. (Interestingly, the "problem" with math education is elementary and secondary school math teachers, not the parents who are not enrolling the children in preschool.) Valuing and understanding math must be a societal and parental imperative in order to instill the drive to achieve. Most high school students do not have the luxury of motivating to learn through personal experience. High schoolers, and to a larger degree elementary students, must rely on the advice of their mentors. How do you make math important to these mentors? That may well be the $64,000 question.
I think better teacher pay is part of the equation. I think being realistic about educating people according to their needs and abilities is also important; rather than comparing and berating them with arbitrary international tests. Most important of all, though, is a shift in the perception. As long as the New York Times Editorial Board is empowering people to be bad at "boring" math, they will be.
The NYT piece also references a study that compared American students to international students. In the Program for International Student Assessment, the US consistently ranks in the middle of the analyzed countries, right at the average, since the first assessment in 2003. The National Center for Education Statistics also has results from an assessment called the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which dates back to 1995. Combing the results of the two shows that the US, for about the last twenty years, has been about average compared to other countries. The US may be slipping a little on the TIMSS, but what the meaning of a change of a couple of points is not clear. Basically, despite the strong reaction to these results, the US remains more or less where it has always been - the middle.
I cannot comment on the nature of these rankings directly, but it should be noted that the US has one of the most open education systems in the world. English language learners, the disabled, the poor, and the unmotivated students are all required to be in school, and participate in tests that rank the US against other nations. Some of the other nations test students to allow them to continue their education (excluding unmotivated students). Some nations exclude disabled students. Some nations exclude the poor. If the US can maintain an "average" ranking, while treating, or striving to treat, all students equally, and accordingly, testing them equally, then I do not see the average ranking as an issue.
Beyond the average ranking, the flat trend of the US rank in the world means that the education system is not failing compared to where it once was. This is also reflected in American universities outranking every other post-secondary education system in the world, and the American economy being stronger than any other in the world. Could the average numbers be a "canary in the coal mine"? I suppose, but given that the universities have remained the strongest in the world, despite decades of tests that report supposedly failing American schools, it seems like these tests are unrelated to any measure of successful societies.
More evidence of boring mathematics comes from an Equation for Change study that suggests Americans are not confident when it comes to math. The numbers are presented as ominous; for example: "Although some Americans report positive feelings when they have to do math, like feeling confident (36%), knowledgeable (34%), at ease (30%) and prepared (20%), one in five Americans report that they typically feel frustrated (21%) or anxious (18%) when they have to do math." Apparently the people at Equation for Change are counting on Americans being bad at math! The rhetoric does not reflect that twice as many people report feeling confident while doing math than anxious. The whole analysis is rife with loaded language, but some of the statements allude to a bewildering notion of what "math" actually is. Apparently 35% of Americans have difficulty estimating weight or distance, which is a sign of failing math education, despite 65% of Americans reporting positive abilities in this decidedly unrelated-to-math assessment of mathematics. Is the ability to accurately name the paint swatches at a hardware store art?
The Times claims that teachers are not sufficiently trained in mathematics, so students are not getting the education they deserve. I agree that educators should have more math education, and I do think that it would encourage students to perform better at math if it was unacceptable for their teachers to say, "oh, I'm not so good at math, I've always been better at grammar." However, a huge part of teachers making such statements is not a lack of training in math, but that it is socially acceptable to have these attitudes. I am absolutely confident that my elementary school teachers lacked a developed knowledge of, for example, comma use. Beyond the comma, I do not think the en dash or em dash were ever even mentioned as a topic pertinent to proper grammar in my 13 years in public school. (Yes, I am including an artifact of typeface as grammar, as typeface has been affecting grammar for about 1000 years, longer than the existence of the modern comma.) By this argument, teachers should be getting more education on almost every topic, but when society pays teachers so little, it is hard to convince education students to study hard in anticipation of such low pay.
Motivation in math does not just come from pay. If students were driven only by income, all high school students would want to be petroleum engineers. Students are motivated by emotion, interest, pay, inspiration, and perceived limitations. The TV show 30 Rock dealt with one of these issues when an inner city youth baseball team discusses their dreams. One of them says, "one day, I'll have an office just like this - to clean"! For as much as Americans talk about following dreams, our socioeconomic classes do not offer mobility, and it is a sad but true reality that those 30 Rock little leaguers are not free to dream of being the executive in the office.
Yet, the world needs janitors, not only executives. This should not be determined by one's parents, but the student him/herself. P-Tech, the high school in the Times piece, is inspiring students to study enough math to be technicians, not necessarily presidents. Blue-collar dreams are attainable if the students learn mathematics, but is a traditional math education what holds the students back? Does math need to be made relevant to be not boring? My uncle once told me that when he took geometry he did not bother to learn the theorems, but as a carpenter, deduced the Pythagorean theorem. While an instructor may have been able to reach him more effectively by applying a different teaching style, some of the onus should stay on the student, shouldn't it?
I am not sure that I have ever seen an extended piece about how boring it is to learn a language. The Rosetta Stone software advertises that it is not boring, but I do not think major news papers publish many op-eds about how foreign language education needs to be made relevant and fun. It is boring, though. I have never taken the time to learn to speak Spanish. I have taken some classes, I have the Rosetta Stone, I study endless vocabulary, and I memorize numbers and the alphabet. It is boring. Many days while studying Spanish I long to do something exciting like read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, but I soldier on through vocabulary. Why do this boring task? Because when I wander around Barcelona and find a vegan-friendly cafe, I can ask if everything is vegan, and I can order one black doughnut and one pink doughnut well enough that I get a flirty smile from the girl behind the counter. That is why learning Spanish warrants my time and attention, but I have to know that the ability is worth it to find the motivation to do so.
According to the Times, one of the most important aspects of math education is pre-school level math education. (Interestingly, the "problem" with math education is elementary and secondary school math teachers, not the parents who are not enrolling the children in preschool.) Valuing and understanding math must be a societal and parental imperative in order to instill the drive to achieve. Most high school students do not have the luxury of motivating to learn through personal experience. High schoolers, and to a larger degree elementary students, must rely on the advice of their mentors. How do you make math important to these mentors? That may well be the $64,000 question.
I think better teacher pay is part of the equation. I think being realistic about educating people according to their needs and abilities is also important; rather than comparing and berating them with arbitrary international tests. Most important of all, though, is a shift in the perception. As long as the New York Times Editorial Board is empowering people to be bad at "boring" math, they will be.
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