math/science curricula

[yellowphoton]

There's been several discussions lately concerning high school curricula and what's wrong with current versions (thanks to Caethan for a cool link) and how to fix them. So I've been thinking about this stuff from the perspective of my own schooldays my experiences with tutoring younger kids. Here, in no particular order, are what I consider the

Comments

[robynjade13]

great post-- lots to think about! i only have a little time, but seeing as how the next thing i have to do is fiddle with unpolymerized acrylamide (aka: fun with neurotoxin!), i thought id comment ;) and who doesnt love getting comments? these are all kind of me-centric, but just in the interest of telling you that your experiences are sadly not specific to you

[yellowphoton]

re 7: I think a lot of people feel that way about the usual play-with-parallel-lines-and-angles stuff in Euclidean geometry. However, having taken this one outside the usual school system as well, I think I learned what the actual point of this class is supposed to be: and that's becoming profficient with rigorous proofs. Long after you forget the relationships between arcs and chords, you're supposed to remember the idea of proving thngs from basic principles so that if you really needed to you could derive them.

As far as I can tell, there's no reason not to start teaching algebra at the same time you start teaching arithmetic. Once you know how to add and subtract, there's nothing to prevent you from solving equations that only involve addition and subtraction, and so forth. For the half a year I spent in first grade in Russia this is exactly what they were teaching us. Learning addition meant knowing how to solve x+45=67 as well as knowing how to do 67-45.

"hey, we can move stuff around on either side of an equals sign" its

[tt6681_theresat]

On #1/#2: While to you some construction projects may have seemed a waste of time, what if they succeeded in getting someone's interest who otherwise wouldn't have paid attention to the subject? I used to love artsy-type projects - though I think they should perhaps be more limited to the grade school level and used in more moderation later

[yellowphoton]

I do support some arty-projects at the elementary school level. After all, art and construction is one of those things you're supposed to learn anyhow and since school isn't separated into different classes yet you may as well tie it in to math and science. I just wish that there was more actual science being taught as well and not just the art projects

[yellowphoton]

Oh yeah, and the other thing that bugs me about art & construction (including engineering projects) is that unless everyone is provided with the exact same materials, these projects tend to give an immense advantage to kids whose parents are willing to go and splurge at Michaels or Radioshack or wherever. Yes, a lot of the time you're supposed to be able to work with things found around the house. But imagine all those different projects without little styrofoam balls without a soldering iron without hot-glue guns or battery-holders or alligator clips (I learned the hard way why soldering things directly to batteries is a bad idea). The whole point of public schools is that they're supposed to provide the materials for educating everyone. Half these projects seem to forget that idea...

[robynjade13]

i wonder if there's a middle ground-- of setting a certain level of expectation, and strictly follow that expectation level. so if some kids arent quite keeping up, its up to them to show the initiative to get tutoring, come in after class, whatever. (and of course, if the class isnt moving fast enough for some other kids, its probably good to have something for them to do-- individual projects, that kind of thing.) i dont know if thats feasible in public education-- there seems to be a sense of it being the teacher's duty to educate the student (such that people might get up in arms if you refuse to slow the class's pace to accommodate one or two individuals), rather than it being an active process that *gasp* the student participates in. i dunno, kind of talking out my ass, but its a problem to think about.

[tt6681_theresat]

On this note, I remember at some point (2nd grade, maybe?) having a reading program that was very individually paced - there were booklets, with questions at the end I think, and they had color coded levels for different stories to pick, and you'd move from one to the other. It was good because while you got everyone reading, the kids w/ more advanced skills didn't have to be bored with the simple "see dick run" kind of stuff the kids w/ less advanced skills were reading. I think there was a requirement of doing two a week or something so you couldn't just be lazy and not try, but for kids who were motivated you could do more easily, and not be held up by other kids in the class

[yellowphoton]

I did have a teacher in 5th grade who let me work out of a higher grade math book. Not that it did me any good since at this point several years worth of mathbooks are exactly like each other. But at least I could go at my own pace and I appreciated that. So yeah, I'm all for letting motivated students study on their own if they can go faster and be more productive than the teacher is going. At some point, though, you start wondering - why come to school at all? If you're going to be learning it all on your own anyway, why should you have to put up with all the waste of time in school on top of that? As US schools currently stand, a lot of the things we learn are picked up in just such a fashion - despite of school not because of it. And, in my view, that's a sign of the system being really broken.

[anonymous]

Excellent post. Regarding (10), in russia in many schools this was solved by using letters 9a (best), 9b (ok) ... Sometimes though they would add extra specialization to some other letter (e.g. humanitarian vs. math...), so that other letters don't feel too bad... :)

Anyway here is a fresh joke which illustrates your point 10 very well though:

Классовая ненависть между пролетариатом и буржуазией ничто по сравнению
с классовой ненавистью между 9-а и 9-б.

ups, forgot to log in.

[marknn]

:)

[yellowphoton]

Lol! For the non-Russian-readers here, that's:
"Class hatred between the proletariat and the bourgeousie is nothing compared to class hatred between 9a (honors) and 9b(not)."

Yes there are certain socialization drawbacks from segregating kids like this - I just think they're greatly outweighed by the advantages, at least in the math & science classes. If I recall, correctly though, in the Russian system once you got placed into 1b or whatever you were stuck there through the rest of school. Or maybe I'm misremembering... Anyhow, I definitely think that in order to have any meaning at all such a system has to allow kids to move up in the hierarchy if they've mastered whatever it is the b-level class is teaching.

[marknn]

yes the system in russia was not very transparent. There was no official division by merit (for the same social reasons i guess) as far as i could tell. And for unofficial part: how close your letter to the beginning of the alphabet would not necessary mean something (although it did in my school, but i am vaguely recall that it didn't in 40th school). But there was definitely an attempt to group better students together. And in 36th school they would rebuild (a) class from scratch after 8th grade (perhaps keeping 50% of original (a) class)

[little_ribbit]

I look back fondly on some of the projects I did in school, though I definitely agree with you that there are way too many for just teaching concepts. I liked making the village/town/cathedral/monastery thingie (complete with a full graveyard because it was in the middle of the Plague!), African mask and Japanese fan projects in 7th grad history, and my "mars robot" ping pong ball pusher was kind of a blast to build, but I don't know if they helped me understand the history or science any better. The 8th grade (spring) science project--ie, the plane--was fun, but I don't know if it taught us anything at all about aerodynamics. (Maybe the honors science was better, since I was stuck in the lower level and Mr. Ricks would NOT recommend my honors placement...grrrrr.) I remember everyone laughed at your plane with feathers on the wings (which worked beautifully!), and people looked at my airfoil wings like I was nuts, but it also worked ok. The science projects were much more engineering projects for which we had far too little hard

[yellowphoton]

Alright, so I absolutely HATED the dratted African mask and the mission-carved-out-of-soap and so forth. If it was in an art class I would have just sighed and accepted the fact that I suck at art. But to claim they were teaching us history was just adding insult to injury