Re: Prolems in Mathematics Education

Dave L. Renfro wrote (in part):

I wonder if I'm the only person here who has never
taken an honors, a gifted, or a talented course in
high school or college, in any subject?

Pubkeybreaker wrote:

I only mentioned it at the end. I would not expect the same
depth in non-honors courses, BUT: Perhaps I expressed
myself badly. I was trying to convey the idea that with good
teachers and motivated students that it is possible to learn
some rigorous mathematics in high school -- even in non-honors
courses. Indeed, I suspect that the difference between students in
honors vs. non-honors courses lies more in motivation than it does
talent. The problem we have today is that

(1) We don't have good teachers (because public schools pay
diddly squat so that good people get jobs elsewhere)

(2) We have too many students who don't CARE.

Both are a result of public and parental apathy.

I wasn't especially commenting on anything you said
as much as I was curious about how many people fall
into my category of never having taken a "special
grouping" type of class, especially among those who
have a graduate degree. In my case, the courses simply
weren't offered at my high school (you were either in
college prep courses, "shop courses", or consumer/home-econ
courses) and I was beyond the level they were offered at
when I got to college (those in math/physics, that is;
in other fields, I wasn't strong enough or interested
enough to take them when I was in college).

As for good (read: subject-matter knowledgeable) teachers
and sufficiently motivated students, you'll get no argument
from me. I've taught high school for 4 years and there have
been several times in which I had excellent students that
I also pushed quite hard. In one post-BC high school calculus
class (where I covered some baby real analysis, an extensive
treatment of sequences and series, some complex variables,
rotation of coordinate systems, solving cubic equations,
partial derivatives, and many other topics, all pitched
at a fairly high level), I had 11 students, all of whom
had (including 3 that were beginning the 11'th grade) SAT
math scores above 700, with over half getting a perfect
800 math SAT or a perfect math ACT (plus, one guy had a
1600 SAT and another guy, one of the Juniors, had a perfect
36 ACT). One wound up attending Caltech, another went to MIT
(who voted me her most influential pre-college teacher, something
students beginning at MIT are asked to name) -- and neither
of these last two were the 1600 SAT or 36 ACT scorers -- another
(the 36 ACT guy) did fairly well on the U.S. Math Olympiad the
following year, and the others went to various other highly
ranked universities. A guy I had taught in two different
classes the two years before this recently got his Ph.D.
in math from Rice University.

On the other hand, I've been in situations that you'd
probably find hard to believe. (Follow the 2'nd and 3'rd
URL's given at the following URL.)

And while I'm here, I may as well toss out these comments
of mine from another post made elsewhere:

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?messageID=4709923

Actually, my experience was that there is a big
disconnect between what one reads in the press
(and in certain internet newsgroups) about the desire
for teachers with strong math backgrounds and
what I actually found when I was looking for a job.
No one seemed to be looking for algebra II or
precalclulus teachers, even if you had an NTE
math speciality score in the top 1%. Instead,
the demand seemed to be for general math and
pre-algebra teachers, especially if you can be
a coach in some sport (which I was, by the way).

Also, in the vast majority of schools I've had
some experience with, in contrast to the schools
most of us probably attended, having a commanding
physical and psychological presence is far more
important than having excellent subject knowledge.
As much as I'd like to think getting retired
engineers and scientists into the classroom is
a good thing, I'm afraid that a large percentage
of them will be eaten alive by the students.
And even if they can get past this, I'd bet most
wouldn't be willing to put in the many years
and/or job changes necessary to land an assignment
that involves teaching the kinds of classes they
actually took when they were in high school. Then
there's spending much of each afternoon after school
on the phone with parents about various things,
following up (i.e. documenting) student discipline
issues and the many other kinds of paperwork
(like daily lesson plans that have to be
turned in), grading (or at least looking at)
daily quizzes and homework, resolving attendance
discrepancies (and once a month resolving your
attendance discrepancy discrepancies for the
principal (and I'm not kidding about this last
one either)), etc.

Dave L. Renfro

.

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