Re: Why do so many people hate or have trouble with math? Your input is needed!


The poster formerly known as Colleyville Alan wrote:
"Arturo Magidin" <magidin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

Many adults who hated math as kids still possess basic
arithmetic skills but not basic algebra skills. Would it not be
worthwhile
to try and find ways of teaching algebra so that they had basic algebra
skills years later?

Certainly. I just don't think that this is possible so long as algebra
is being viewed the way Latin and Greek were once upon a time, a sign
of education or a part of what "any educated person should know." If
they knew what algebra is for (if the people teaching it knew what
algebra was for) and used it on a regular basis, their algebraic skills
would no doubt be about the same as their arithmetic ones. Then perhaps
they could figure out what the gas mileage on their car actually is,
how many gallons they can buy if they only have 20%, how much to leave
for a tip when the service was good and you'd like to leave 18% instead
of the usual 15%, and the like.

I am certainly not saying math is being taught ->well<- now. But I
think part of the problem is an erroneous view of ->why<- math is being
taught in the first place, and what the objective of that instruction
should be.

I think we are tripping over each other in the use of "is" vs. "should be".
I think algebra "is" being taught as part of a general education "this is
what an educated person should know" philosophy. If you say that is should
not be taught because of that, then you have one argument, but you have a
very different argument if you are saying that it *is* not being taught for
that reason. I think, for the most part, that algebra *is* taught for
"educational" rather than practical reasons.

I agree with you. And part of my argument is that the problem is that
this is how it is being taught. Yes, I think it should not be taught
because of that.

The problem I find with "we should make math fun" is partly because of
that. If you begin with the premise that this is something they
"should" know, for "educational" reasons, then certainly you want to
motivate them to want to learn it, and perhaps making it "fun" is the
way to go. I'm all for making Shakespeare "fun" if that makes people
more eager to read (or watch) the plays.

The math that is taught, at least up to grade 9, though, should be math
that is taught for practical reasons, the same way we teach reading and
writing and comprehension for practical reasons at those levels. The
goal of teaching them algebra should not be to make them better
educated people, but rather to give them tools to use.

Yes, the world can go on without algebra. The world got along with the
vast majority of the population not knowing how to read and write, even
in "advanced" countries. In one major civilization, reading and writing
were so uncommon that the notion of cryptography never arose because
simply writing something down made it almost unintelligible to pretty
much eveyrone (China). And yet it "functioned". Surely the world
doesn't ->need<- people to know algebra to get along. And people don't
->need<- to know algebra to survive. But anyway, that's a different
argument, I think.

We are still teaching trig as a "basic skill". Why? Honestly, why? One
could perhaps excuse it when the farmer needed to be able to do some
measuring and surveying; but today, why do we spend a year teaching
everyone trig (at least, we spent a year teaching trig in Mexico in 8th
grade, if I recall the grade correctly; if not, it was 9th)? That time
would definitely be better spent ignoring trig completely and teaching
basic descriptive stats and basic probability. Instead of hoping for
every high school graduate to remember "SohCahToa", how about having
them remember that the odds of rolling a 6 with a single die, having
just rolled a six, is still just 1 in 6?


I agree that basic probability and stats would serve most people well. In
my intro stats book some 30 years ago, I read that "...the average person
uses statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than
illumination".

That's very good! I'm afraid I'm going to have to steal it. (-:

Arturo Magidin

.

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