College students are still struggling with basic math. Professors blame the pandemic

Colleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. More students are being placed into pre-college math, starting a semester or more behind for their majors, even if they get credit for the lower-level classes.

Colleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.

Kirkkh,

It is 100% the fault of educators. Actual mathematicians have derided the abysmal state of math education for literal decades. But they don’t get to decide how we “educate” children. US educators unabashedly focus exclusively on testing for funding. They don’t give a rats ass if you know the simplest amount of trivial math—they do really really care if you pass a bizarrely arbitrary arithmetic test though. Why do think those mini-viral bullshit PEMDAS/BEMDAS memes track on Reddit. It’s deranged math students that think an order of operations is actually used in real math (real shock: they aren’t, mathematics doesn’t have an order of operations).

OceanSoap,

Math was a big issue for me, and all the colleges in CA were shutting down any math classes lower than college algebra. I barely made it into the beginning and intermediate algebra classes before they shut them down.

What they do now if funnel all the students who don’t test into college algebra into “college math topics” which is an array of real-life mathematics that you’d come scross, like voting types and loans/interest rates. Which is a good thing to have as a class, but wouldn’t have helped me get my degree in drafting.

It’s a real good thing khan academy exsists.

Saneless,

My kids learned these in 6th and 7th grade. But sure, it wasn’t the classes 6-7 years before college, it was only the ones 2-3 years ago…

CmdrShepard,

Yeah the timing doesn’t work out for this to be pandemic related. These students would have been struggling with basic math in the middle of high school before the pandemic even started.

ryathal,

I took a semester off math in college and it was a huge mistake, the year off most kids had resulted in a huge backslide. It’s also important to remember that even pre pandemic the majority of kids weren’t competent in math to start with.

Naura,

I had to student teach secondary mathematics in october of 2020.

My host teacher was very up-to-date on online learning platforms (like pear deck and desmos) so i got to teach while learning these programs and making lessons with someone very knowledgeable with this. We also had 30% IEP students but also had a special education teacher so that helped a lot as well.

But otherwise most of the teachers were unprepared to teach themselves.

If you used manipulatives which i deem necessary to visualize fractions you were out of luck :(

30mag,

At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents.

Don’t they teach fractions in junior high or elementary school? Kids that age during the pandemic aren’t in college yet.

AngryCommieKender,

Fractions and decimals are where the vast majority of Americans start having trouble with math. I don’t remember learning them, but as a student teacher I did notice that the textbooks circa 2000 were teaching decimals and fractions weird. Unfortunately math is one of those things that if you don’t understand one part, you won’t get the rest cause it builds on itself. I left teaching before I even graduated college, for many reasons that have nothing to do with teaching, so I don’t know how to fix the issue. I’m just aware of it, so anyone in my adult life that complains that they just “aren’t good at math,” I will suggest that fractions and decimals are what they don’t understand, and 90% of the time they agree with me, and realize that they don’t actually suck at math.

30mag,

I think people are bad at fractions and decimals because they are bad at division. My brain isn’t “normal” though, so I don’t know if I understand how “normal” people think. I “get” math.

foo,

The question isn’t if fractions are taught. The question is why aren’t people retaining it while they are there.

Treczoks,

I tutored math for a number of people. One of my pupils was a real problem case. He was attending a kind of specialized high school equivalent in my country, basically a vocational training plus ability to attend university later with a subject close to his training. This guy wanted to go into chemistry. If there is one area in STEM where you need fractions day in and day out, it’s chemistry. And this guy had serious problems grasping the very concept of it. Having problems with fractions + chemistry is a dangerous and possible explosive mix. Luckily for humanity, he later went into a different branch of jobs.

flucksy_bango,

And this guy had serious problems grasping the very concept of it.

It’s literally just division. Like, even if you add variables, it’s still just division.

ThatHermanoGuy,

Don’t these colleges have any admissions standards? What’s going on that they’re admitting these idiots?

ArtieShaw,
ArtieShaw avatar

Actually, many of the regional state universities around here (US Midwest) don't have admission standards aside from "did your check bounce?" It's very much a business, and students are the customers. There's a bit of a symbiotic relationship with local businesses who need competent workers, but the money comes from students and the workplace standards also aren't that high.

Even 15 years ago a common lament among humanities professors was that "these kids are coming out of high school illiterate. We need to send them to remedial classes before they can even start college level work."

Don't worry - the college has phased out most of those majors and core classes (and professors) so now their graduates are extra-literate.

It's nearly as bad when it comes to graduates in the technical degrees. I don't have much cause to socialize with biology, engineering and chemistry professors so I can't pass along their perspectives, but I do get to work with the graduates in a professional setting. Leaving aside their language skills, I was moderately shocked to learn that they lack some very basic math skills. Or understanding of basic scientific concepts like the first or second laws of thermodynamics. Or that mass and density are two different things. Or that Hydrogen is explosive under ambient conditions. These are just a couple of real life examples.

I've had some wild conversations with people trying to figure out and report on why their tests went catastrophically wrong. Nice folks. It's just that nothing in their education gave them an understanding of some of these basic ideas. Lovely person, but "evaporation" means something different than what he thinks it does.

In theory, the schools exist to train workers who can contribute in local industry to the extent that they can follow directions and hopefully not burn the building down. Students pay to be able to meet that bar and if they're lucky their managers are alumni who won't see a problem with their performance.

30mag,

They need money.

neptune,

Well it turns out that the SAT and College Admissions/grades are all on a curve. Hell, even real life is relatively on a curve.

gutternonsense,

So, Idiocracy was a prescient documentary.

vrighter,

the pandemic was three years ago. If these people are getting into college now, they had to have learned that stuff prior to the pandemic

GladiusB,
@GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

The hardest maths are usually in their junior or senior year in high school. It’s reasonable to believe that if they weren’t challenged to make the connections it didn’t stick. Just because they learned the fundamentals doesn’t mean they went and manipulated them in the manner they need to be familiar with for higher learning.

ZodiacSF1969,

But it says they are struggling with fractions and exponents, don’t those get taught earlier on?

GladiusB,
@GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

The don’t say how they are struggling. It could be inside more complex equations. Or conversions.

verdantbanana,
@verdantbanana@lemmy.world avatar

sports and factories ain’t need no math by god! USA! we got to the moon first everyone else gets our sloppy seconds MURICA! Jesus didn’t heal with fractions

living in the us is like watching Rome burning albeit slowly

callouscomic,

I struggled with certain math concepts that I should have learned in high school because my school district had low expectations and failed to prepare me for college math. I also was unprepared for grad school math because undergrad failed to prepare me cause it was so dumbed down. This has been a fundamental issue for a long time. All of this was over a decade ago.

time_lord,

They’re called weedout classes, and they’re designed to be hard.

hark,

They’re blaming the pandemic which caused lockdowns for a couple of years for college students struggling with fractions and exponents? This is math that is supposed to be learned before high school. I don’t think the pandemic is to blame for this.

ArtieShaw,
ArtieShaw avatar

I don’t think the pandemic is to blame for this.

It's not. It has been a problem for years.

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Yeah… I started college back in 2013 and had a roommate that didn’t know order of operations…

I think we’re failing trying to focus too much on quantity over quality. There were tricks I didn’t learn until college that someone should’ve taught me years ago. Things my parents learned that stayed with them for decades nobody ever bothered to tell me, and occasionally either they or someone from their generation would just say something like “9 * something adds up to 9 (e.g. 9 * 5 = 45, 4 + 5 = 9)”, “move the decimal place and multiply by two to calculate the tip”, “i before e except after c.”

But nope, didn’t learn that, instead I “learned” 3 different ways to do the same thing for solving various algebra situations and at 28 remember none of them. I feel very sorry for the common core kids, I expect them to retain even less with common core’s embrace of this approach. Teaching people multiple ways to do something is great, but ultimately the teacher is going to use one, and they’re going to move too fast for you to translate “their way” into “your way” (at least that was my experience in high school math when I tried to do it a way different than what the teacher was teaching).

TropicalDingdong,

Also an entire education system that does its best to be bad at making math interesting.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Yep. I’ve always been bad at math, I still am, but at least college math was interesting even though I didn’t get it very well.

AngryCommieKender,

Go back and really understand fraction and decimal conversion. I’ll bet if you do that, the higher levels will make a lot more sense. That’s where most people get lost.

It also helps to understand that math isn’t just moving numbers around. There’s a lot of that going on, but it is essentially a language that at the higher levels can be used to describe anything, even stuff we haven’t bothered inventing yet. Boole died “knowing” he invented a branch of mathematics that would never have any practical applications in the real world. We based all of computer science on it.

bobman,

Math is fucking boring and we have way more things to do now versus decades ago when solving math problems could be entertaining.

We also have tools to do the computation for us. It makes more sense for people to focus on theory and application over calculations.

emax_gomax,

This is an extremely stupid take. You don’t have to enjoy math to understand fundamental concepts of it and even if you hate it you can’t avoid the need for it in your life.

bobman,

Yeah, you don’t have to enjoy anything to understand it.

I’m talking about the level of math people need in their lives.

emax_gomax,

Basix fractions are needed. Even just to understand ratios, compound interest or to calculate repayment plans.

Kache,

That’d be like trying to learn about basketball strategy without putting in the fundamental time shooting and defending.

Sure, coaches operate on a higher level and don’t have their hands on the ball as often as players do, but they definitely know how to play. Would you hire a coach that didn’t?

bobman,

No, it wouldn’t be. Basketball and mathematics are different. Try to stay on topic instead of resorting to analogies. It just shows that you can’t argue your position effectively, so you have to derail to something that makes more sense to you.

Unfortunately, now we end up debating the accuracy of your analogy instead of the actual topic at hand. Great tactic, but I’m not going to engage in it.

Let me know when you want to stay on topic.

Kache,

It’s not really an analogy b/c I’m referring to how brains learn in general for any subject, whether math or basketball.

Yes, we don’t need to memorize all those old mental math tricks used before calculators were invented, but you still need to understand exponentiation, which follows from multiplication, which follows from putting time in to practice the basic times tables.

bobman,

Yes, but do you need to know how to solve them? I’d say that’s fine stuff for reviewing, as long as you understand the concepts behind them.

For example, it would be totally understandable for STEM college students to not know how to solve 1/4^2/3^ without review. It’s just realistic and doesn’t mean they are ill-prepared. If anything, we should be teaching students that they should get used to reviewing things instead of assuming they already know.

Kache,

I think so, to an academic (not necessarily a professional) level, because how could one reach a conceptual understanding without?

It’s like the professors that allow open book tests. If you’ve practiced solving before, it’ll be quick and easy to recall deep knowledge and expand on it. If you haven’t practiced solving and don’t really understand the concepts, you won’t perform well enough in time.

kogasa,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Try to stay on topic instead of resorting to analogies.

Failure to comprehend abstraction while arguing against math education. Yep, that checks out.

bobman,

🥱

Lol, you completely ignore the “now we end up debating the accuracy of your analogy instead of the actual topic at hand” part of it.

Why are people like you incapable of seeing the bigger picture? Lol.

ArtieShaw,
ArtieShaw avatar

Let's try with a real life (but slightly simplified) math example taken from my mostly innumerate coworkers.

Problem:
2.5 + 2.5 = ?

Many will answer "5"

My coworkers won't type 4 extra keystrokes into their calculator, so they follow the written rounding rules (which shouldn't apply here) and key in 3 + 3 = 6. Six. It's six every time.

And they will argue it to the fucking death.

This is the depth of the problem. They have the tools to avoid doing math "in their head" and use their amazing modern tools but no conceptual understanding of the fundamental principles that will bring them from "2.5 is the same as 3 because I learned rounding!" to "there's a fundamental difference between 2.5 and 3 if you're trying to add them." They just never came to that breakthrough understanding because no one taught them.

bobman,

Sounds like a very specific case that I don’t see in the real world.

Not saying it doesn’t happen, but just because it happened to you doesn’t mean it’s a widespread problem.

Everyone I know, especially in a work setting, wouldn’t ‘round because they don’t want to type.’ Lol. That sounds like a shitty employee who has bigger problems than math.

jatone,

you’re missing the forest due to the single example being given; kind of like their coworker missing the point about rounding. the lack of the fundamental understanding of mathematics is leading to this person making a mistake repeatedly and their insistence that they followed the rules (which they don’t actually understand don’t apply here) leads to confidently incorrect answers. these types of behaviors will show up repeatedly in many contexts.

bobman,

Lol. I’m tired of explaining things to ya’ll.

Keep living in your own, neurodivergent bubble. You were going to anyways.

jatone,

its amusing how you can’t realize you’re demonstrating the same behavior as the coworker.

bobman,

It’s amazing how you don’t understand survivor bias, lol.

satans_crackpipe,

Doing accurate math in embedded systems is very important.

bobman,

Sure but, what if you’re not working in embedded systems?

That’s what these people fail to grasp. Just because higher level math is relevant to them, therefore it should be relevant to everyone else.

Lol. I’m glad I rose above the ‘math is super important’ rhetoric and learned to think for myself. It’s a shame most of you didn’t.

Feathercrown,

I kind of feel bad for thinking this way, but regardless of whose fault it is, if you don’t understand fractions you should not be pursuing a STEM degree.

bobman,

What constitutes ‘understanding fractions’ in your mind?

Feathercrown,

Not “struggling to grasp” them, as the article (or at least the summary) phrases it.

keet,
keet avatar

HS math teacher here. A lot of these problems existed prior to the pandemic. Parents making excuses for kids. Teachers making excuses for kids to keep parents and admin off their backs. Kids too reliant on calculators to develop "number-sense". Parents perpetuating the myth of the "math gene" they don't have because they failed at the "new math " of the 1970s, etc. The list goes on and on. The whole thing where ELA/Social Studies/History/etc. teachers are struggling with AI like ChatGPT? We went through that when Photomath and the like were released. The shortcuts you take in math WILL catch up with you.

That being said, maturity plays a HUGE part. A dedicated math student will struggle, but won't take shortcuts. They are better for it. The only thing that has changed is that shortcuts are much easier to take and are much more readily available. I cannot count how many shortcuts I took as a teenager, only to realize later that I F$#@! up long-term with my learning journey. Just look at any community college. Students that were "bad at math" suddenly have the realization that if they put in the effort, then the intellectual and/or GPA dividends will pay off in spades.

specfreq,

You can say “fuck” here, it’s ok.

Alto,
Alto avatar

I'm a firm believer that a not insignificant portion of people had one or two really shit math teachers at some point, decided that they're bad at math because of it, and then proceeded to just give up. Very often it was specifically related to fractions.

The math professors at my uni were fantastic, and I saw many friends who always thought they were bad at math have lightbulb moments where something finally clicks.

keet,
keet avatar

I can completely understand that perspective. However, some students are just not mature enough to handle every type of math thrown at them when it is. One "bad" teacher can ruin any subject. Some students just aren't "ready" when the curriculum (or other powers that be) decides that they should be.

Alto,
Alto avatar

Most subjects also don't build off of the last class anywhere near to the same degree as math. You have a shitty teacher in geography, that's not really going to be putting you at anywhere near as much of a disadvantage when you take world history.

Iteria,

The maybe rheu shouldn’t advance and be failed? Like to me if you’re bad at a subject, you should be required to take it until you pass it, not push along to the next harder version of it. Kids don’t get left back or failed now. That is the problem. If you’re not ready fine, but you can’t take algebra until you pass pre-algebra.

I’m speaking as someone who didn’t learn to read until 3 grade and still graduated on time and went to a good college. Failing classes is fine as long as you can also catch up if you rapidly learn the material as well.

someguy3,

The maybe rheu shouldn’t advance and be failed

Most people can fake their way enough to pass the test without having a true understanding of the concepts behind it.

bobman,

Yeah, but math isn’t really relevant for most people past the elementary school level.

It’d be pretty messed up to fail them for something they aren’t going to use in the real world. Lots of people who justifiably ‘don’t care about math’ would be held back for no good reason, except maybe to stroke the ego of people who do.

callouscomic,

I hate these takes. Math isn’t about relevance of specific concepts and whether you’ll use them in day to day life. It’s about learning to think critically and problem solve in general. We need more of society to be better at that.

Being good at solving lots of complex math you never use in every day life CAN be beneficial in nearly all situations which require critical thinking, problem solving, logic, following instructions, etc.

bobman,

You have a good point, but it’s not something most people would be interested and for good reason.

They need pragmatic ways to care about the problem at hand. If you can’t offer them that, you’re just focusing on theory which may or may not be relevant. Lo’ and behold, people care more about what’s actually relevant than what may be relevant.

It’s about learning to think critically and problem solve in general.

To be fair, that’s not specific to mathematics at all.

Iteria,

You have a good point, but it’s not something most people would be interested and for good reason.

We’re talking about children here. People who would let their teeth rot away if no one constantly fussed at them about brushing. People who don’t understand why they shouldn’t do a great many things that will actually kill them.

We don’t actually care about what children want to learn. This article is talking about math that is taught before puberty. That’s the math that people are struggling with. That’s everyday math. We’re not talking about calculus here.

You’re saying that there’s no pragmatic way to teach things, but really that’s not the problem of children and you know it. Kids get word problems and whatnot to tell them how math can be relevant, but just like English and history and basically all of school, they don’t want to do it. Math is weird because it actually builds on itself and you need to understand every part. It’s not something where if you forgot or never learned you can bullshit your way through.

I’m speaking as someone who went to a top engineering college and my English 101 class had to check for literacy. I was the literal only student out of like 20 who got to skip the exam. Several of my peers were functionally illiterate from reading their essays and whatnot.

It’s not just math. It’s everything and it’s the failure of the system that we do not fail children when they don’t achieve. If they don’t like it they can drop out at 16 get a GED or be known as the uneducated people they are.

I guarantee you that if we went back to failing kids they’d learn more. My sister failed a whole grade and the embarrassment from it and the pressure from my parents was a fantastic motivator.

Alto,
Alto avatar

There's a weird amount of accepted anti intellectualism that specifically applied to math, and I've never understood it.

Most people have a hard time grasping concepts as simple as compounding interests, which is an incredibly important concept if you want to either save money or not go into ridiculous amounts of credit card debt. You use algebra every single day, doing thing as simple as shopping. People just don't realize it.

schzztl,

One of my high school teachers, when asked what the relevance of some maths concept was to the real world, threw a literal tantrum about how all of school is bullshit and you don’t need to read Shakespeare to get a job so how dare you ask that? He would also yell at us when he made a mistake on the whiteboard and nobody noticed. I don’t know what compelled this washed up boomer with the emotional maturity of a toddler to teach.

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

So, like personally, all of my math teachers taught math as a goal in itself. Which is incredibly un-interesting. It’s taught like a chore.

Which is an incredible disservice.

theneverfox,
@theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

Yes. I liked algebra initially, I hated geometry, I loved trigonometry initially, and through college the only math I fell in love with was linear algebra

Apparently, it was because I was taught “this is for optimization. Look at how you can balance cost, performance, and reliability to find the optimal network hardware based on your needs”. It was like magic, it took a problem I thought would be unsolvable and have no definite answer, and a few hand waves later there you do

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized oh, I actually really like math. I just need a reason to want learn it

bobman,

Do you ever think a lot of people just don’t care about math because it isn’t relevant to their every day lives?

Math is kind of this thing that we patronizingly tell children is so important and force them to learn. Many of them then go home and realize math, unlike reading, doesn’t actually matter for most people past the elementary school level. It really doesn’t.

callouscomic,

And here we find the poor problem solvers in life who lack critical thinking skills.

bobman,

Nice personal attack. Did you make it just cause you have no real argument?

kogasa,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Problem solving and critical thinking are skills developed by math education

bobman,

Right. They’re also developed by many other things.

Math isn’t a requirement to develop those skills, lol.

Why is this so difficult for you to understand? I’m thinking you must be trolling at this point.

Kache,

Except it does, which is why so many people are so bad with money.

I could agree with criticisms of outdated teaching methodologies or uninteresting course material, but saying math is irrelevant is totally misguided.

bobman,

I said past the elementary level.

Even understanding things like compound interest don’t require you to be able to do the computation itself.

Being bad with money is a complicated subject. It goes way beyond an understanding of math, hence why there are plenty of people who are good at arithmetic but still spend like idiots.

Kache, (edited )

That’s fair, on the second point, but I can only partially agree with the other.

There’s no “shortcut” to real learning (i.e. developing an intuition, understanding, etc) besides practice, the closest maybe being cleverly developing new ways to teach.

We definitely don’t need to teach those old mental math tricks anymore, but brains learn via practice (i.e. manual computation) to gain the fundamental understanding needed before using tools to skip those steps.

The only way I can imagine really not needing for normal life is if you can afford to pay someone you trust to understand it for you.

bobman,

The only way I can imagine really not needing for normal life is if you can afford to pay someone you trust to understand it for you.

Again, beyond the elementary school level. So, how do all the poor people without higher level math skills survive?

You’re being very patronizing right now. Probably because you, personally, rely a lot of math skills that the vast majority of people somehow manage to do without.

I hope you can realize that.

Crazypartypony,

It does though, understanding what interest is and how it works is pretty relevant. Understanding percentages and fractions is important for things like cooking too. Ever tried to build something without using any math? It’s everywhere, it literally describes our world in a language that allows us to predict things as well.

vrighter,

you have a recipe that serves 5. You only need to cook for two. That’s a fraction right there

bobman,

Yeah. The vast majority of amateurs who build things don’t use advanced math. Most people don’t build anything significant at all, and that’s okay.

I get it. If you’re looking for a career that requires math, great. Learn it. Most people aren’t and don’t need it.

Math people just don’t understand this. Or they do and they don’t want to admit it.

Whatever makes them think what they learned is better than what other people learned, I guess.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Parents perpetuating the myth of the “math gene” they don’t have because they failed at the "new math " of the 1970s, etc.

This is a huge reason why I’ve never been able to help my daughter with her math homework. I learned to do things a totally different way from the way they teach now.

PsychedSy,

I recognize the way they do math now as very similar to how I do it in my head. I still couldn’t help my niece. The rules were so fucky to me.

Arthur_Leywin,

I still continue to cheat/take shortcuts because I need to ensure I pass because if I don’t, I wasted thousands of dollars. If I had the luxury of actually learning rather than performing well on tests, I could have been a better student.

emax_gomax,

That’s not really your fault but i hope you’ve planned what the long term means for you. We live in a society that expects higher education for any meaningful kind of occupation but simultaneously gate keeps it and pressures kids into lifetimes work of debt to keep forcing them through the system.

keet,
keet avatar

Long-term, shortcuts will still hamper learning. However, there is still a lot to be said about the over-reliance on testing in education in general. It, unfortunately, is a system that even educators must operate in without any real input. You likely will be surprised what you can do with a little guidance in a self-paced situation. What was that Mark Twain quote here - "Don't let your schooling interfere with your education."

freeman,

I was told by one of my kids teachers that teaching my second grader to carry the one was wrong.

Also they were basically doing algebra in the beginnging just not using letters. Ie: 1 + __ = 9 , fill in the blank. So I taught my kids to just put x in the blank part and solve for x. Teacher said I was teaching them bad habits.

I am still flabbergasted. My kid is not a math wiz to this day, but I’m pretty sure the strategies im teaching them are the only things getting them by. I’ve taken to teaching them dice games like 10,000/Farkle and making them keep score.

dragonflyteaparty,

I struggled with any math basically beyond fifth grade. It was incredibly hard for me. Math continued to build on the previous year until I worked my ass off to get C’s. Every year after that I got C’s all while spending hours and hours studying the homework and equations and doing problem after problem. I was in remedial math at community college. The only reason I passed college algebra was because the homework was online and I was able to do every problem over and over again until I got it right. That was 14% of my grade and got me up to a C.

Some people don’t get the support they need. In a subject like math that is detrimental.

AngryCommieKender,

Fractions and decimals. There it is. You never learned how to read .125 as 1/8 and vice versa. This is the most common thing in the US, maybe elsewhere. If you don’t really understand that, then Algebra and Calculus may as well be Greek to you.

CmdrShepard,

What benefit is there to rote memorization of common fractions in this day and age, though? We all have calculators in our pocket and most often, real world problems aren’t going to come out to neat fractions like 1/8 or 1/4. I think the time spent on forcing kids to memorize a table of decimals/fractions could be better used elsewhere.

AngryCommieKender,

There’s no benefit to rote memorization. Understand how to fluidly convert between the two is necessary to understand algebra that your pocket calculator can’t just spit the answers out for you. Also for some reason calculators don’t do order of operations correctly, so it’s useful to know how the language works, not memorizing by rote.

CapgrasDelusion,

deleted_by_author

    •
    callouscomic,

    All true, but there also exist a ton of shitty math teachers who fail to connect with students or give a shit. I struggled all through college and eventually learned it was because of a combination of books and teachers skipping critical steps, and some professors using slightly different math language than I was previously taught, so I thought these were new things but it was just a new termnjnterchangeable with stuff I’d previously done. Especially in various algebra and calculus.

    You can’t expect some kids to learn and “show their work” if there’s actually 10 steps to a problem but you consistently skip 5 of em assuming they just get it. Too many just assume we learned something in prior grades that we actually didnt.

    AngryCommieKender,

    The real issue is that they are teaching arithmetic as though it is just playing with numbers, rather than that it is the alphabet of an entirely different language that is far more precise than any human language ever could be. I don’t know how to fix that because it didn’t click for me until Calculus, but that is a root issue, and why there are so many bad math teachers. Admittedly it’s very dry material, and I don’t know how to get kids excited about math, unless you incorporate it into baking lessons. They all love cookies and cake.

    AdmiralShat,

    I blame the way they teach math

    bobman,

    There’s not a very good way to teach math without restructuring the whole system.

    I bet a lot more people would be interested in their subjects if they could learn at their own pace and go to an expert for help when they get stuck. That way, everything they’re learning is immediately relevant to them. It’d be harder for instructors, of course. But I don’t think we should structure education around what’s easiest for the teachers.

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