

The education system is falling behind the students - mkr-hn
http://bitoftech.mkronline.com/2011/08/21/the-education-system-is-falling-behind-the-students/

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Homunculiheaded
What a strange article. As someone with a background in the humanities I'm
certainly a fan of more creativity and communication, however it wasn't until
near the end of college (thanks to a math major roommate) that I finally
started to understand the true beauty of mathematics. Still catching up on
what I find to be essential math skills I continually feel that US student are
completely robbed of a decent math education in k-12 (and for the most part
college students as well).

The problem with math, at least in the US, is it tends to be taught by people
who really don't understand it themselves, so it becomes an ugly, mechanized
process. I remember asking one of my early hs math teachers if it was possible
for something infinite to be larger than something else infinite. She just
sort of smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Almost a decade later I learned
about the cardinality of infinite sets and was finally able to answer my
question. The sad thing is that if my hs math teach has said 'well let me show
you something...' it would have taken me far less than a decade to not only
get my answer but also become fascinated with mathematics.

Finally, the more I've learned and studied the more I've come to see that just
about anything interesting you want to do is almost always improved by a solid
mathematical understanding of the world. And not just a superficial
understanding, but a deep meaningful sense of the mathematical principles that
can describe the world around us.

~~~
sp332
I read it differently. I think the author is saying that mathematicians need
to be able to communicate what is interesting and important about mathematics,
otherwise no one will bother to pursue it.

~~~
mkr-hn
Bingo. This thread has helped me identify weaknesses in my own communication
skills. :)

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dman
I have mixed feelings about adding more communication to math textbooks or
trying to make the content more accessible. I have been trying to teach myself
mathematics over the last couple of years. Here are my findings -

a) Math books offered in Borders/Barnes and Nobles invariably have titles like
'Math for dummies', 'Math made easy', "even you can do math' etc. The content
seems excessively shallow and diluted by huge amounts of infographics. b) I
believe the key to writing a good math textbooks is having a good feel for
'pregnant pauses'. Good textbooks have problems and prose that deliberately
make the user confront their doubts and then shove them into the pregnant
pause, out of which the reader emerges joyful at seeing the entire picture. I
believe that writing with such mastery requires experience and skill that is
not common. c) I believe that in specialised subjects you are better off
writing for the benefit of the motivated reader because everyone else will
rarely be applying the contents of the textbook in real life. d) By overly
simplifying things you rob readers of one of the true joys of mathematics -
figuring out a problem that they consider difficult. Unless the reader is
addicted to this joy they will find most meaningful real world problems too
perplexing to solve.

In short I wish we had more concise and thought provoking textbooks.

Here is what Feynman had to say about textbooks:
<http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm>

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sp332
Obligatory link to Vi Hart <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsE2UKkIKXU> This
is what you get when mathematicians learn how to communicate.

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happypeter
I will always applaud for those who say education system sucks.

I think school education keep us away from the real, real enjoyment of beauty,
real work that creates real value for the people we love.

~~~
mkr-hn
I think there's a place for a formal system of education, even if it's not as
centralized as the one we have now. We need common places for people to access
shared knowledge like fundamental physics and math.

Something like Khan Academy with more contributors and formats.

~~~
sp332
When the British empire was at its height, any British officer could walk up
to another and have common ground for a conversation. Even if they were from
opposite sides of the world, they had been given the same education. Some
amount of common education goes a long way in facilitating communication.

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TheCapn
I honestly think the author is full of crap. The students I grew up with were
either school oriented or not. The students who failed to produce coherent
writing in English class weren't excelling in the sciences to say the least.
Kids were either there to learn or they weren't and there was very little in-
between.

So by emphasizing the english portion of education over more sciences we'd
only get more of the same crap at the expense of students who DO want to gain
formal education in the sciences. Kids don't see the connection between the
education and the practical nature of the knowledge they're fed. Stupid is as
stupid does.

I was a gung-ho math/science kid. I pulled 95% in my classes of choice and low
60's in the english classes because I refused to participate in the circle-
jerk discussion that was english 30. "Now class can you tell me where the
foreshadowing is?", "what was the _meaning_ of this poem?". I'm certain I
could have pulled out better marks with the effort but I decided my time in
classes was better spent doodling. Having more of my time pushed towards
english courses and away from the sciences I'd be hard pressed to say that I'd
be half the engineer I am today without it. Hell, too much of that 65% crap
and I probably wouldn't have gotten the post-secondary education at all.

Provide the tools children need to make formal decisions about their future
and provide the fundamentals they need to get there. You can tell which kids
are going to be working with their hands or with their heads pretty early so
help them get where they want. Everyone needs a fundamental level of
communication but over-emphasising it instead of something more practical to
the child will only put us full circle to where we are now but with "sciences"
and "english" reversed in the discussion.

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mikeleeorg
I once heard a high school science teacher from the Bay Area tell a group of
new teachers that teaching English isn't the English teacher's job. Teaching
literature is the English teacher's job. Teaching English, such as proper
spelling and grammar, is every teacher's job.

As an example, he talked about how he would deduct points from his students if
they misspelled a science term or forgot a period. Over time, this reinforced
the idea that they need to be concerned with spelling and grammar not just in
their English class, but all the time.

Disclaimer: He teaches in a district with a high population of ESL students,
so communication is a constant topic for them.

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mkr-hn
I posted this as a response to a comment, but it fits here too: I gave the
wrong impression. We still need math, physics, and all the fundamentals, but
being able to communicate those things is important. People like Neil deGrasse
Tyson and Brian Cox are up against a sea of ignorance that's rarely willful.

Making sure all mathematicians and physicists are able to respond to someone
outside their field when challenged will help fix that.

~~~
sshah2
I agree with the crux of your post. However, people hone their communication
skills on a daily basis, simply by interacting with the people around them.
Having a strong pedestal in math and science rely heavily on the educational
system. A solid background in these areas make it much easier to understand
more complex principles, and to think clearly and logically. It's important to
communicate your thoughts coherently, but your ideas, themselves, are more
important.

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dmarquis
"With rare exceptions, people like Bill Gates and the engineers of Silicon
Valley didn’t get their interests from a modern K-12 education."

Yeah, guys like Bill did amazing things compared to those bozos that just took
their highschool's computer programming course in the 1970s.

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jonbischke
The notion that we "don't need to make a thing out of science and math in K-12
because people will be able to explore it on their own" is somewhat myopic. A
significant percentage of Americans, especially those from lower income
brackets, don't have broadband in the home. Many more don't have home
environments conducive to doing what Bill Gates and others did (keep in mind
that Bill Gates grew up in a very wealthy home) as many households may be
sharing a computer between family members, etc. Exposing people to science and
math in school is absolutely critical.

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Astrohacker
> Exposing people to science and math in school is absolutely critical.

I dunno. I'm a physicist, and a lot of people tell me "I hate physics" when I
tell them what I do. I think K-12 is doing more harm than good.

~~~
_delirium
I had that view of physics initially, despite being very interested in
computers and mathematics, because I viewed physics as a really inelegant
memorization-based field, that consisted of filing away in your head a bunch
of special-case equations for things like "how to determine final position
with constant acceleration and constant friction". I disliked it much less
when I took a calculus-based physics course in college, where all those
miscellaneous equations were exposed as special cases of a few more general
relationships.

~~~
barry-cotter
So all the people who are incapable of calculus can't appreciate pysics? That
makes sense. It also restricts appreciation of physics to the top quartile,
conservatively.

~~~
_delirium
I don't really know in general; _I_ personally didn't appreciate physics when
it was presented to me algebraically in high school, despite getting an A in
it. Perhaps it'd be possible with a different way of teaching it; not sure.

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Tycho
I think with formal education no longer being a gatekeeper or exclusive haven
of knowledge, ie. with iTunes U and the Khan Academy etc., to be competitive
in a global market, future students will need to work hard on things like
mathematics and programming in their teens. Not being numerate and having a
high aptitude for problem solving and rapid learning will put you at a
disadvantage similar to what being illiterate was like 80 years ago.

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vrode
This article describes Wolfram-style ego-surfing culture of blog posts on
Hacker News.

