The state of western education due to cultural peculiaritiesFollow

Corrupted education.

The above link is an article describing a study that concludes US children do not fully understand what the = sign means. This is not a dig against the US, it could just have easily been Canada.

I've been arguing this for years. The western culture of have it all now is causing us to change the curriculum for the lower grades. Children now are not taught how to spell correctly, how to solve problems using math. Instead they are taught how to put words together, and how to answer types of math questions. They can write a great essay with a spell checker, but trying to read a child's written work these days is task. They can do triple digit multiplication, but they can't figure out how long a piece of wood needs to be to hold up a wall.

If you give a child a math question they may be able to answer it, but if you change the format of the question they are lost. They don't actually understand the relationship between the various components of an equation they're simply answering the questions the same way they answered the last similar question they did correctly.

This of course leads to a large drop in grades once they hit high school where questions turn from a + b = c to c^2 = a^2 - b^2 + 4ac. The first example can be solved simply by filling in the blanks the second typically requires you to understand the function of the operands.

TL;DR

We're trying to teach our children too much instead of giving them a solid base to learn on. So the question becomes what is better? Knowing more but not quite as well, or having a solid grasp on the basics allowing you to understand what you know. I vote for the later, thoughts?

Edited, Aug 10th 2010 4:08pm by Yodabunny

You might need to calculate the angle of travel at a given velocity to intersect the path of a moving object, or to calculate transversal velocity for targeting calculations in game coding. All part of the same equations.

Edited, Aug 10th 2010 4:13pm by Yodabunny

People have a huge amount of trouble adjusting to variable math simply because they have to learn how to think abstractly. That's nothing new. High school math requires much greater capacity then elementary math, and not everyone is good at thinking that way. That's why there are tiers of math. Also, I'm not sure what grade you're talking about with written work, but kids writing has almost always been completely horrible to read.

Edited, Aug 10th 2010 3:32pm by Xsarus

I think the largest problem we have in the education system here is the focus on standardized test scores. Sure, testing is a plausible way to test knowledge, but if all we're doing is teaching kids how to score well on the tests, kids aren't actually learning anything else. More time should be spent teaching kids critical thinking skills and actual material and that would help a lot.

Putting in effort is required for grade school?

I though it was mostly finger painting and algebra.

Seriously Demea, I'm not talking about high school here.

There is always a lot of tedious work to do. I don't want someone who only tries when they're really interested in something.

Edited, Aug 10th 2010 4:32pm by Xsarus

No such thing as an interesting job without any annoying parts.

Some tedious work isn't the same as all tedious work. It's not the same type of work. Schools assign pointless work to keep people busy. In real life, people don't don't get paid to do pointless **** that accomplishes nothing other than alleviating boredom. I don't mind doing boring work that i don't like, it's boring work that i don't like, that serves absolutely no purpose that i have a problem with.

Gee, that's the attitude employers are looking for.

Psychotic, you making the same mistake a lot of aobve average intelligence people get stuck in: overvaluing intelligence and undervaluing effort.

Usually the result of the tedious work is that you keep your job.