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50 years of math - 12/7/2007 2:20:29 AM

kciDOM

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Joined: 9/1/2007
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Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this?

Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950s:

1. Teaching Math In 1950s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit ?

2. Teaching Math In 1960s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1970s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math In 1980s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 1990s

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok. )

6. Teaching Math In 2007

Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?

Post #: 1

RE: 50 years of math - 12/7/2007 5:31:54 AM

ItalianSMistress

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From: Niagara Region Ontario Canada
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I think you hit that nail right on the head, I would have not been able to help but laugh My ass off at someone that needs a manager to subtract $1.58 from $2.08, but thats just Me, lol
How utterly sad.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/7/2007 8:48:52 AM

slaverosebeauty

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Sad thing is, its wayyyy too common. I have had similar experiences an I just shake my head. I SUCK at math and even I can do basic math.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/7/2007 10:12:33 AM

Decimus

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Joined: 9/17/2007
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Wow the sad thing is I graduated in 2000 and I fully agree with, its how they really were!

5. Teaching Math In 1990s

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok. )

It find it utterly pathetic when people can't even do basic math like that. Hell, in school I had to do multivariable calculus, the least the people in those jobs is add / subtract properly. *sigh* I am bias, my pet peeve has always been stupid people. Sorry for the rant.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 1:11:49 AM

Muttling

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As an engineer who's leaving engineering to become a high school math teacher, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

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Post #: 5

RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 1:21:12 AM

sexyslavegirl4u

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Joined: 12/5/2007
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Maybe we should all share our horror stories :P. I once tried to get a server in subway to put sauce on only 1/3 of the roll... she just looked at me blankly and had no idea what I was talking about. So then I tried 1/2... I am sure you can guess what she did :P. So maybe actual engineers going into teaching math is not a bad thing - now we just need to get some suitably qualified people actually making the decisions about what should be in the syllabus.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 3:16:30 AM

Muttling

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hmmmm........Can I spank 5 halves of your ass?

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 3:44:01 AM

strappie051234

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Hmmm...That is truely sad...and here I am feeling lame because I can't do trig to save my life lol.

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Post #: 8

RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 4:54:44 AM

InkedMaster

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That would be fucking hilarious if it wasn't so true...who am I kidding, it's still fucking hilarious!

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 7:01:43 AM

Termyn8or

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Now you did it !, sent me looking for an article. I read something years ago in the paper about the assignment given to a TWELVE YEAR OLD student in Germany, and I had no clue.

It's no joke that the schools here suck. People think they can afford a $250,000 house on a thousand a month. But that is not the end of it. People who can barely feed themselves get pets, fancy tires on their car and bling.

When I see a MF out there begging who is wearing enough jewelry to bring down an ultralight, I'd like to give them a new piercing. And I don't mean that in a good way.

But on the lighter side, if there is one, where is all this taking us ?

Teaching math in 2020 - Look at the trees, see how there are no trees over there, when you grow up call your congressman and make sure they never cut down any more trees.

In the year 2525,
If Man is still alive,
If Woman can survive,
They may find.........

Teaching math in 2525 - Address your computer and say "Calculate". Take the red pill.

T

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 12:06:21 PM

Saratov

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Joined: 10/22/2005
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Muttling

As an engineer who's leaving engineering to become a high school math teacher, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

You may start to miss your old job soon after you put problems on the board/computer display using the math from the homework last night(do they still do that?), tell the class to put their books and calculators away, get out a pencil and piece of paper copy and to do the equations and turn them in. And find you are looking at a sea of blank faces.

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Post #: 11

RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 8:05:09 PM

LadyLynx

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some people are just extremely bad at math, I am which is why I am NOT a cashier. and never want to be.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 8:34:16 PM

carlie310

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This has been making the rounds of homeschoolers for years. And it's true. Muttling, I know you don't have much choice over the textbooks you'll use, but take a look at Singapore Math. They're top of the heap on the TIMMS tests (battling it out with Korea, usually), their teaching language is English and they have some very reasonably priced books about their methodology. In essence, they teach every concept through real world examples, not through set theory, not through warm fuzzies. It works, because out here in the Real World, we don't get the equations--we get the word problems. They go from the concrete to the concept, instead of the other way around. American math tends to try to teach the concepts first. . .which doesn't work with math.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 9:08:54 PM

JackM1

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Joined: 2/3/2007
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its because they teach us math in a "spiral" method. so, every year you learn something new and then you "swing" back to that same topic to continue learning it a year or more later. it annoyed both me and my fellow students because we would learn the basics of say..alegra one year, and instead of continuing with that algebra for the next year or two so we could all firmly grasp the subject in one shot, they went on to GEOMETRY and trig (which, as many of you know..is just about the antithesis of algebra) so, the students who were shaky with the algebra, or JUST on the tip of getting it but not quite there, were thurst into a different math class that was completely different that what they were learning the year before. then, in another 2 years you went back to a higher level of algebra, BUT, that depended on your grade in geometry, which may or may not have been so good(depending on how much of an algebra person you are....theres this saying at my school "if you excell at algebra, dont expect to do so good in geomtry, and visa versa, because you suck at life) so, even though they kicked ass in algebra 1, some students were actually put into a lower algebra 2 math class because of the geometry grade they got the year before that....teh suk. i ALMOST understand why they do this..so we keep learning different types of math, because you need to know all of these to take the sat's and if you dont take them recently then you probably wont know them for the test, but at the same time theyre creating a generation of math RETARDS because by teaching to a test, they take away valuable time for students to fully grasp the subject thats being taught to them. lovely.

they also do this with science in my school district(i can remember having bio, chem and physics lite before actually getting into taking the REAL classes....i also remember not having learned a thing because it was SO lite, that they taught us almost nothing...)

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/8/2007 11:07:03 PM

Muttling

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Not trying to turn this into an education gripe, but I will tell you plain and simple what the BIGGEST problem facing today's teachers is...........Functional Illiteracy.   It's so bad that I have had several classes in my masters degree program purely focused on "how to deal with the functionally illiterate student."

Our high schoolers are rock bottom for reading skills among developed nations.   I don't care if it's math, science, english, history, etc, etc.   It really doesn't matter. If you struggle to read and write, you will struggle in high school.

The current standard is to require kids to take a foreign language. How the heck can you expect them to perform in a foreign language when they can't even perform in their native tongue?   This exact same issue confronts English Language Learners as well, but No Child Left Behind totally ignores the problem.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/9/2007 12:37:40 AM

MistressPav

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Joined: 11/14/2007
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Every female math teacher I ever had was a royal bitch. What little bit of math I managed to choke down, I learned from a male teacher.
I fucking HATE math.

Public schools suck. I don't have kids, but by the gods if I ever did, I'd work 4 jobs if I had to...to make sure they never had to set foot in a shitty ass public school.

< Message edited by MistressPav -- 12/9/2007 12:39:33 AM >

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/9/2007 1:43:54 AM

ClosetSinner

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Joined: 3/29/2006
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I went to a private "christian" (try neo-nazi) school. For trigonometry the first semester we took analitical geometry. By the second semester the teacher realized we weren't getting it. Since this was an "honors" program (because every class at that school was honors) he switched to playing Halo, Medal of Honor, Boggle, Sequence and Scrabble. Yes, friends, I passed Trig playing board/video games. Something about teaching us strategies.

Let's just say I took college algebra twice.

They have board games now like Monopoly and Life that use "debit" cards and have calculators on them. I think that is ridiculously lazy!

*edit for spelling...can't do that either*

< Message edited by ClosetSinner -- 12/9/2007 1:57:28 AM >

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/9/2007 1:56:56 AM

Muttling

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MistressPav

Public schools suck. I don't have kids, but by the gods if I ever did, I'd work 4 jobs if I had to...to make sure they never had to set foot in a shitty ass public school.

I used to hold the SAME issues and then I had a child who was a slightly developmentally behind. He's not a LOT behind, but just a little lagging. My ex and I both agreed that he should go to a private school where the student to teacher ratio was far less. A place where he would get more individual attention which we expected to help him catch back up to where he should be academically. In addition, it was a non-demoninational Christian school and we were really impressed with the religious aspects of their teaching program. We THOUGHT we were making a great choice.

A year later, we were really discouraged. He was lagging even further behind and really disliked school. The religious aspects were everything we expected, but everything else was horrible. They had expectations of honor students and were absolutely clueless as to how to help a lagging student.

We moved him to a public school and he caught up to his peers in a matter of 3 months. He is now excelling his peers and loves school. He doesn't get the religious aspects of education that he would have gotten in private school, but that is the ONLY drawback I have seen.

Since beginning my efforts to enter the teaching field and getting to know the realities, I have come to learn that few private schools are equipped to deal with students who are lagging their peers for any reason. They just don't see as many of those types of students as the public schools see and they really aren't prepared to address their needs.

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/9/2007 2:27:04 AM

mons

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greetings

there is a thing i like to called it ( just let them go ahead ) this mean let any child just go right through school knowing they have not one clue about math or reading. i worked at a school with childern who had language and speech problem. i see teacher and this is with english is a second Lang, student let them go. now many of you may think it is just Spanish speaking childern nope it is all who use english as a second Lang. i found it so bad they did not care teacher are not like they use to be caring wanting to see the child win and see the smile of yes i got it now. this is why we have students in high school who can not read. i worked hard with my son. but he is gifted and was tested and still thinks he is smarter then i am lol . but i read to him each night and no cartoons or hours of TV he had to earn this and he did , i am blessed. i seen the looks on parents faces when their child is special needs and i know i could had a child like that and they are the sweetest kids i love working with them so much. i had to retired do to a injure to my head as you see my writing is better and i see My new glasses. but i seen one teach tell us and she had to lose her mind for a moment she said" that child will be just like her mother having baby all over the place" this child was a nd grader. we all stop and just stare at her she said the teacher " oh god what is wrong with me she is a child she caught herself now she should not be teaching at all her mind is already set on how this child is going to be. how sad

mon

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RE: 50 years of math - 12/9/2007 6:35:25 AM

Saratov

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Yep, I went back to school 20 yrs after graduating HS and about 60% of the freshmen were taking 75% of their credits as remedials.

Some for their first two semesters.

A lot of these kids just graduated HS in May, starting college in Aug.

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Post #: 20

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