Are they sure it’s pandemic? And not just a new product of the good ‘ol American education system?
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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I tutor college students. While many students struggled with math before the pandemic, the fallout from the changes made during the pandemic made these deficiencies so much worse.
How are they getting into college? I guess colleges are accepting lower standards to keep money flowing?
Otherwise wouldn't the students just do terribly on the math section of the SAT/ACT and just be denied entry?
Sounds like that is what accredited Universities should be required to do if so. If you haven't learned the prerequisites there is no reason to be acting like they should be there.
As for math, something that Ive noticed over and over again is that if students are explicitly told to solve a specific math problem eg. 145 × 306 = ? they can generally do that but if you give them a problem that requires them to know when to multiply, divide, add, subtract etc. they struggle. They also struggle in finding systems that are analogous to one another and use the same math. eg. limiting reagents and cooking. i.e what do you run out of first? how much stuff can be made given what you have? They can do that for things theyre familiar with but they cant do the exact same type of problem with molecules instead of say... apples and oranges. That kind of weakness wont be caught in their grades or SAT/ACT problems unless they rely heavily on those type of problems which they dont. And its also something that is harder to teach and easier to fall through the cracks during a pandemic.
AND on top of that, online classes are harder to control the use of resources that they shouldnt be using and was arguably not as well prepped and planned for. Teachers simply were not prepared to teach remotely and in some cases eg. labs, you cant really effectively teach the same thing remotely as in person.
Is this what you mean they couldn't answer? Or are you saying would just be hard to submit answers online?
Denote the methods used and how many of each item can be made in the following baking situations:
Ed has: 4 dozen eggs (thank god prices came down some so he didnt get robbed), 5lbs of sugar, 12lbs of flour, and 5 gallons water.
Item 1 requires: 2 eggs 1lb sugar 2lbs flour
Item 2 requires: 1 egg, 4oz sugar, 300oz flour
Item 3 requires: 500ml water, 250g sugar, 350g flour
The situations I am talking about are things like: "You have 6 pounds of flour, 6 pounds of sugar and 12 eggs. Each cake requires 2 pounds of flour, 4 eggs and 1 pound of sugar to make. How many cakes can be made? What ingredient if any, is left over? How much of that ingredient is left over if any?"
Or being able to work in units of pounds but not grams. They struggle with generalizing what they know. i.e its brittle knowledge. They know how to press buttons but not why
Gotcha, that was my intent of making item 1 easy without conversions. Then 2 conversions, then 3 conversions to metric. Thanks for spending the time to type that out for me. It helps me get a better grasp of it. : ) Hope you have a great day
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.
The question isn't if fractions are taught. The question is why aren't people retaining it while they are there.
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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
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.
But it says they are struggling with fractions and exponents, don't those get taught earlier on?
The don't say how they are struggling. It could be inside more complex equations. Or conversions.
Also an entire education system that does its best to be bad at making math interesting.
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.
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.
The pandemic made everything worse, but students struggled with math as long as I have been alive. As someone who loved science and math stuff outside school, but hated it with a passion in school, this text really put my thoughts into words as to why :
Lockhart's Lament: https://maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
TLDR: It is taught wrong.
As a dad constantly frustrated with the shittiness of my kids’ math curriculum: thanks, this is wonderful, puts to words a lot of what I’ve been feeling and more.
I love this lament.
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.
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Don't these colleges have any admissions standards? What's going on that they're admitting these idiots?
They need money.
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.
So, Idiocracy was a prescient documentary.
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.
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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..
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.
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.
“It’s not just that they’re unprepared, they’re almost damaged,” said Brian Rider, Temple’s math chair. “I hate to use that term, but they’re so behind.”
It's as if there was a highly-infectious pandemic that's known to damage most organs of the body, including the brain
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I blame the way they teach math
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.
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
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