Why kids suck at math today

[lifeobry]

They just need to get back to the basics. I remember some of the "new math" for the dumb kids when I was in HS... essentially playing with blocks and shit.

Math is not fun. But you gotta learn enough of it to do well in school. I swear, everything has to be "fun" these days, cue angry old man mode..

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: TehMac
The problem with public schools is not shitty teachers (although there are plenty of them everywhere) or lack of funding from the government. These schools raise tons of money for the sake of "the childrenz"

The problem is that the schools blow money on stupid shit. I remember my grade school used money to rebuild the fucking playground, while my high school used money to buy an HDTV to put in the library that no one would watch, nor could they hear because everyone was talking. The librarian is a fucking retard.

BINGOOOO :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

like those scrolling led signs and shit. and lcd tv's everywhere

 

[HannibalX]

Originally posted by: lifeobry
They just need to get back to the basics. I remember some of the "new math" for the dumb kids when I was in HS... essentially playing with blocks and shit.

Math is not fun. But you gotta learn enough of it to do well in school. I swear, everything has to be "fun" these days, cue angry old man mode..

YES! My high school had this. Fucking blocks. Fucking wooden blocks with bright shiny numbers on them. Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding? This is high school math. These kids should be doing calc & trig and preparing for college!

Again, the schools failed the kids. If these schools were businesses they would be OUT of business. How is it that government schools can get worse each year and get MORE money?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: iFX

Originally posted by: lifeobry
They just need to get back to the basics. I remember some of the "new math" for the dumb kids when I was in HS... essentially playing with blocks and shit.

Math is not fun. But you gotta learn enough of it to do well in school. I swear, everything has to be "fun" these days, cue angry old man mode..

YES! My high school had this. Fucking blocks. Fucking wooden blocks with bright shiny numbers on them. Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding? This is high school math. These kids should be doing calc & trig and preparing for college!

Again, the schools failed the kids. If these schools were businesses they would be OUT of business. How is it that government schools can get worse each year and get MORE money?

"But we threw money at the problem! Didn't that make it go away? What do you mean, we have to actually do work to make the problem go away? Awwww maaaaaaaaan!"



Back in elementary school, we weren't allowed to use calculators until we'd demonstrated that we could do the stuff by hand - things like multiplication tables, division, and so on.
I remember doing timed multiplication tests. I think it was 100 problems, and I don't remember how long we had to do it, but it wasn't more than a few seconds per problem. If you didn't have them memorized for quick recall, you weren't going to finish in time. My biggest problem on those things was just being able to do the writing quick enough. I could do quality or quantity when it came to writing. As speed increased, quality went down with some kind of hyperquantum inverse exponential gradient that defied mathematics of the time.

But dammit, I knew my multiplication tables.

 

[thescreensavers]

I just had my first calculator-less test today, lets just say I felt naked with out one.

 

[videogames101]

Where are your kids going to school? I was in third grade 8 years ago, they took an impact drill to our heads with multiplication tables.

 

[daniel1113]

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/daniel1113/MathStupid.jpg

 

[her209]

That kid ain't Asian.

 

[speg]

I remember when everyone had trouble with the 7s time table but I thought it was so easy because of football.

 

[novasatori]

I could never get my multiplication tables I tried to and we did them a lot in class, I just never could get it memorized.
In my head usually I have to do simpler things like in the first example 7*6, I would have never gotten it instantly off the top of my head, so I would do:
7*5+7 = 42

I can do long division though and I have taken higher level mathematics in college, I am just slow.

 

[JulesMaximus]

1 plus 1 am 3

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Then again I was in the math club, umm, the physics club...oh...and the chess club!

What school actually has these? When I went to school, our club was called "let's go home as fast as possible so we can have fun and do stuff"

In grammar school in 2nd or 3rd grade we had to write out the entire multiplication tables from 1x1 up to 12x12 every day, memorize them and pass an oral quiz on them with no calculator or even scratch paper. We damn well knew it by heart before we were allowed to move up to the next grade.

Not a bad idea. Multiplying large numbers or doing long division would take hours if you had to manually add numbers over and over again because you didn't know basic single digit multiplication. Just today I had to divide 575 by 1.73 to find a certain voltage and I didn't have my calculator with me. I would be totally screwed if I didn't know how the multiplication table up to 10x10.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Not knowing multiplication tables is the same as being unable to do long division. That's math fail. We had that crap pounded into our heads. I agree though, asking somebody what percentage 15 of 60 is will get a blank stare.

Then again I was in the math club, umm, the physics club...oh...and the chess club!

Is your name Brian Johnson by any chance?

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: TehMac

The second problem is that summers are too long, which means that your average kid is not going to do anything academic in the summer, he's going to fuck around, and the longer he fucks around, the more he is going to forget and the less prepared he will be.

this is a crock of shit. summer breaks are too long? they were 3 god damn months when i was a kid and theyre barely 2 here now. i got all As well into high school (eventually i got crappy teachers, my algebra-foo is weak)

the only kids who had education problems at my school were the lazy motherfuckers who didnt even *try* to learn.

 

[HannibalX]

Originally posted by: novasatori
I could never get my multiplication tables I tried to and we did them a lot in class, I just never could get it memorized.
In my head usually I have to do simpler things like in the first example 7*6, I would have never gotten it instantly off the top of my head, so I would do:
7*5+7 = 42

I can do long division though and I have taken higher level mathematics in college, I am just slow.

Can you memorize a phone number? If so you can memorize multiplication tables. Forget that you're doing math and just think of it as memorizing a sequence of numbers, once you have it you can add meaning to the sequence. Doing them in order helps.

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: iFX

Originally posted by: novasatori
I could never get my multiplication tables I tried to and we did them a lot in class, I just never could get it memorized.
In my head usually I have to do simpler things like in the first example 7*6, I would have never gotten it instantly off the top of my head, so I would do:
7*5+7 = 42

I can do long division though and I have taken higher level mathematics in college, I am just slow.

Can you memorize a phone number? If so you can memorize multiplication tables. Forget that you're doing math and just think of it as memorizing a sequence of numbers, once you have it you can add meaning to the sequence. Doing them in order helps.

you know this is actually a very thought provoking question

the last time i actually tried was in elementary school, maybe I will try to do it again now that I have developed more mentally.

 

[kranky]

A couple years ago I was at a committee meeting at a local high school. In one of the classrooms was a large poster that showed how to count coins.

Imagine 5 pictures of a penny followed by an equals sign followed by a picture of a nickel. Repeat for other combinations of coins.

In high school!

 

[SludgeFactory]

Ha, we weren't allowed to use calculators in elementary school. Period. It's ridiculous that they're letting them get away with that.

Even in high school math, we weren't using them that much, and never on tests. The people who had graphing calculators could use them a little in algebra II and trig, but I really didn't see much of a point, other than to double check what you'd already done. I'm not exactly sure what they do with all the TI graphing calculators that suddenly became required in school over the last 10 years, but to me it seems like a scam by TI.

The end result is people who have *zero* ability to make quick mental guesstimates or do back-of-the-envelope calculations, and it's getting worse. You're a math genius these days if you can estimate a tip in your head. Sigh.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: kranky
A couple years ago I was at a committee meeting at a local high school. In one of the classrooms was a large poster that showed how to count coins.

Imagine 5 pictures of a penny followed by an equals sign followed by a picture of a nickel. Repeat for other combinations of coins.

In high school!

My schools always had posters that were advertisements. There would be something like a y = sin(x) graph on a Texas Instruments TI-82 calculator.

The end result is people who have *zero* ability to make quick mental guesstimates or do back-of-the-envelope calculations, and it's getting worse. You're a math genius these days if you can estimate a tip in your head. Sigh.

Quick, what is 5738 * 0.5^(3.74)?

If you can't answer this question in less than 1 minute, you'll fail the grade 11 physics final.

 

[Tangerines]

Originally posted by: xSauronx

Originally posted by: TehMac

The second problem is that summers are too long, which means that your average kid is not going to do anything academic in the summer, he's going to fuck around, and the longer he fucks around, the more he is going to forget and the less prepared he will be.

this is a crock of shit. summer breaks are too long? they were 3 god damn months when i was a kid and theyre barely 2 here now. i got all As well into high school (eventually i got crappy teachers, my algebra-foo is weak)

the only kids who had education problems at my school were the lazy motherfuckers who didnt even *try* to learn.

Summer breaks are too long. In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he describes an inner city school program called KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) that achieved extraordinary success by simply spending more time teaching than a traditional US school. A ton of other countries have significantly shorter summer breaks that the US's (a lot of European countries, Japan). That accounts for much of the gap in learning.

Honestly, there's no real reason to have a long summer break anymore. Summer break was intended so that children could help with manual labor at home with farming and such. However, it's evolved into a three month screw off period where kids do a whole lot of nothing. The main reason summer break is still around is mostly sentimental.

 

[bunker]

Originally posted by: Tangerines

Honestly, there's no real reason to have a long summer break anymore. Summer break was intended so that children could help with manual labor at home with farming and such. However, it's evolved into a three month screw off period where kids do a whole lot of nothing. The main reason summer break is still around is mostly sentimental.

I'm of the opinion the main reason is lazy ass teachers who want the time off and their unions that fight to keep it that way.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: TangerinesA ton of other countries have significantly shorter summer breaks that the US's (a lot of European countries, Japan). That accounts for much of the gap in learning.

US schools get 2 weeks off for Christmas, 1 week in spring, and 2 months in summer. Total of about 11 weeks.
UK school gets 1 week in October, 2 weeks for Christmas, 1 week in spring, 2 weeks for Easter, 1 week in June, 1 month in summer. Total of about 11 weeks.
French school is basically the same as the US. School starts at the beginninig of September and goes to the end of June, early July. 2 months summer vacation.
German school - "There are typically 12 weeks of holidays in addition to public holidays."

US school isn't shorter.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I was just helping my daughter with pre-algebra, and realized she doesn't have her multiplication tables memorized. They allow kids to use calculators for everything now, so they don't have to memorize these things. When asked to multiply 7x6, she went "uhhhhhhhh....." and had to write it out.

When "I" was a kid, we had cool gadgets like The Little Professor to make sure that stuff was drilled into our heads. Today's kids don't have cool toys like this, and I think it's hurting them.

The day I got a 10/10 on level 4 division on that thing, I got all excited and showed my mom and dad my score, and they got me ice cream

I remember when I was 4 or 5 in pre school I had to stand in front of the class with my hands out so the teacher could swipe my hand with her ruler if I messed up reciting the multiplication table. It was quite an effective method (I don't recall ever getting hit). This was in Korea.

 

[thecrecarc]

I never really "memorized" the multiplication tables. Like if you ask 7x4 I would not know it from instinct. Of course, I can easily figure it out within seconds, but it was not "memorized".

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: iFX
YES! My high school had this. Fucking blocks. Fucking wooden blocks with bright shiny numbers on them. Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding? This is high school math. These kids should be doing calc & trig and preparing for college!

Again, the schools failed the kids. If these schools were businesses they would be OUT of business. How is it that government schools can get worse each year and get MORE money?

Because the government schools have to educate everyone. Then, you have feel-good legislation like No Child Left Behind.

The federal gov't says "you're doing a bad job, because only 12% of special ed kids like Billy & 14% of the inner city minorities are passing your state exams. You better fix this, or else! Oh, but we're not taking control - you still get to set your own standards. If we don't see that a higher percent of kids pass next year, we're going to spank your state.

The next year, the test gets dumbed down so that 13% of the special ed kids can pass. The following year, 14% pass...

Meanwhile, kids are no longer expected to pay attention for 40 or so minutes in a class. Uh oh! They must have attention deficit disorder! God forbid they have to put down the xbox controller during their 12 hour marathon session on Saturday.

Then, as far as math skills go, there are those damn calculators. Arguably, much of math is based on pattern recognition. Using calculators significantly decreases that acquisition. Ask an average intelligence adult what 5 * 34 * 2 is. Then, ask an average teenager. I use that as an example, because I actually had that problem up on the board today during physics class. Without turning around, I could hear the <click click click> of calculators & had to tell them to "put those stupid things down and think for a change."