[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday May 23, 2006 at 12:11pm]
Cluttered Math
I wish it weren't true, but King at SCSU Scholars reports that "[of] the 54% of the students who went to college and took a math placement test, 24% had to take remedial math." Reading the linked post, the problem seems obvious enough: too much complexity.
By chance I have a copy of my daughter's Geometry textbook from the late 1990's. When my son took Geometry eight years later, I compared his book to hers. I liked his much better and at first I couldn't figure out why. Then I saw it.
The older book had a constant side chatter going on in the wide margins of the pages showing alternative methods, real life examples, and a smattering of unrelated "economic geography" statistics, graphs, and charts. The newer book did not. It simply plowed the road in a straight line, which I think is particularly helpful in geometry when you continually build on your past work. The extra material easily confuses the student.
It would be easy to speculate that there is a deliberate liberal agenda built into these modern textbooks and teaching methods to facilitate social grade promotion. But I'm more content to think that book buyers are too easily impressed with all the extra material, photographs, and intense use of color contrast. The book buyers are education majors, not engineers, and don't understand how math and science is best learned. Why wouldn't you want all those sidebars like the newspaper has?
If a student doesn't understand it, reading even more confusing sidebars isn't the answer. The teacher is the answer, the one who is supposed to explain it. Isn't that what the class size argument is about, to provide the necessary time for one on one learning when the book or lecture fails?
Bring back flash cards.
By chance I have a copy of my daughter's Geometry textbook from the late 1990's. When my son took Geometry eight years later, I compared his book to hers. I liked his much better and at first I couldn't figure out why. Then I saw it.
The older book had a constant side chatter going on in the wide margins of the pages showing alternative methods, real life examples, and a smattering of unrelated "economic geography" statistics, graphs, and charts. The newer book did not. It simply plowed the road in a straight line, which I think is particularly helpful in geometry when you continually build on your past work. The extra material easily confuses the student.
It would be easy to speculate that there is a deliberate liberal agenda built into these modern textbooks and teaching methods to facilitate social grade promotion. But I'm more content to think that book buyers are too easily impressed with all the extra material, photographs, and intense use of color contrast. The book buyers are education majors, not engineers, and don't understand how math and science is best learned. Why wouldn't you want all those sidebars like the newspaper has?
If a student doesn't understand it, reading even more confusing sidebars isn't the answer. The teacher is the answer, the one who is supposed to explain it. Isn't that what the class size argument is about, to provide the necessary time for one on one learning when the book or lecture fails?
Bring back flash cards.