Most Americans are unhappy with the math taught in classrooms, new survey shows
autside.substack.com
A recent USA Today article attempted to explain why most Americans are unhappy with the maths taught in classrooms. As usual for USA Today, they got it wrong.
Viewing it, as I do, from my own Geometry classroom, I don’t see the issue as being about “the way math is taught across the nation's classrooms.” No. Not at all. The authors of the piece miss the point in its entirety.
As I’ve noted previously here, teachers aren’t teaching anymore … they’re facilitating. I got a negative comment in an observation by an administrator for providing students with direct instruction (aka, teaching) when the curriculum called for students to engage in “productive struggle.” “Productive struggle” is all the rage these days. But it ignores the fact that post-COVID, there are severe learning gaps. Many 9th grade US students had their cameras off during remote sessions, and we off playing video games whilst teachers were presenting lessons in division to black screens. There’s a generation of students who don’t know how to divide. Thus, if they’re asked work on fractions, ratios, and so forth (division), they can’t. You can’t struggle and solve something for which the baseline knowledge is absent. You just can’t.
Until / unless folks start asking the right questions, we’ll continue to get “the market” to sell the government the latest shiny thing. Meanwhile, kids will fall farther and farther behind.
As for me, I tutor kids for an hour before school M-F. I’m not standing by whilst the oligarchs argue over the spoils of the budgetary process.
Most Americans are unhappy with the math taught in classrooms, new survey shows
Most Americans are unhappy with the math taught in classrooms, new survey shows
Most Americans are unhappy with the math taught in classrooms, new survey shows
A recent USA Today article attempted to explain why most Americans are unhappy with the maths taught in classrooms. As usual for USA Today, they got it wrong.
Viewing it, as I do, from my own Geometry classroom, I don’t see the issue as being about “the way math is taught across the nation's classrooms.” No. Not at all. The authors of the piece miss the point in its entirety.
As I’ve noted previously here, teachers aren’t teaching anymore … they’re facilitating. I got a negative comment in an observation by an administrator for providing students with direct instruction (aka, teaching) when the curriculum called for students to engage in “productive struggle.” “Productive struggle” is all the rage these days. But it ignores the fact that post-COVID, there are severe learning gaps. Many 9th grade US students had their cameras off during remote sessions, and we off playing video games whilst teachers were presenting lessons in division to black screens. There’s a generation of students who don’t know how to divide. Thus, if they’re asked work on fractions, ratios, and so forth (division), they can’t. You can’t struggle and solve something for which the baseline knowledge is absent. You just can’t.
Until / unless folks start asking the right questions, we’ll continue to get “the market” to sell the government the latest shiny thing. Meanwhile, kids will fall farther and farther behind.
As for me, I tutor kids for an hour before school M-F. I’m not standing by whilst the oligarchs argue over the spoils of the budgetary process.