Re: Prolems in Mathematics Education

On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:33:25 -0700, "Dave L. Renfro"
<renfr1dl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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:

<snip>

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.

Times certainly change. For one thing, my generation learned our
multiplication tables in primary school, and how to deal with signed
numbers and fractions in Junior High. When I was in High School in
1953 -- 1955 in Rapid City, SD, population 25,000, we could take the
usual sequence of algebra courses, a year of plane geometry (which was
entirely devoted to Euclidean proofs) as a sophomore, a semester or
year of trigonometry (I don't recall which) and a semester of solid
geometry. There were no "honors" courses nor the possibility of
earning a grade point average greater than 4.0 on a 4.0 scale by
taking the "hard" courses. And we could take a year each of Biology,
Chemistry, and Physics, complete with labs. No calculus nor analytic
geometry.

Then as a freshman at SD School of Mines & Tech, *everyone* started
with trigonometry followed by analytic geometry. Calculus was for
sophomores.

This was a bit repetitious with the trigonometry but what we didn't
have in our Sophomore Calculus classes was the endless stream of
questions about the steps the teacher was doing because students in
the class couldn't factor or keep signs and parentheses straight.

Perhaps it's just a romantic view of long ago, but I think we were
better off educationally then than now. As exhibit "A" I present the
many posts we see here from undergraduates who can't properly phrase
their questions, let alone type them with correct use of parentheses.
Not to mention all the remedial algebra courses offered in the
Universities.

--Lynn
.

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