What's wrong with American math education?

[howardboys]

I know Americans don't score high on international math assessments like TIMSS, and I'm sure the American parents in this forum would love to help their children have an easy and pleasurable time of acquiring strong math skills (and essentially beating the odds), but finding the right approach to a great quality math education is still very mysterious to me.

I'm just going to throw a few methods and techniques out there and would like to hear people's opinions on them, perhaps from a math teacher's perspective, or from your experience with older children, or even your own tiny kids.  Or perhaps you grew up in another country and can easily tell the difference between math education in the U.S. and elsewhere...

Kumon (recommended to start at age 4)
Singapore Method (there is an Early Bird PreK-K program)
Doman Method
Mathriders (franchises in the U.K., Poland, Israel, but not U.S.)
Teaching through song (i.e. math songs, number songs, etc.)
Montessori

TIA for your thoughts.

[patreiche]

I believe the Chinese method is probably the most rigorous with an abacus.

[luckymommy1307]

Hi Mom2ross,
May I know what is the 'Singapore Method (there is an Early Bird PreK-K program)"
Thanks

[PY]

My question will be what is wrong with American Education System in general?

[DadDude]

The problem is that most American educationists are anti-knowledge--because most Americans themselves are anti-intellectual.  We are practical people and suspicious of knowledge for its own sake.  (I'm very very different in this regard.)  So it's more important for the educationists to make kids feel good about themselves, and to encourage them to work together, and learn some vague "skills," than to master subject matter.  They tend to dismiss substantial learning of math facts as "rote memorization" that is not ultimately necessary.

[howardboys]

luckymommy1307:  http://www.singaporemath.com/

mom2ross

[luckymommy1307]

Hi Mom2ross,
Not sure where I can get a copy in Singapore, would like to browse through the content

[PY]

I will say Education is part of culture, depends a lot of parents to teach your children how to be responsable and respectul with teacher and people in the schools like other children,..etc.
Like daddude say we need to teach children to manage their self esteem in the right way showing them good morals and providing good example.
I have to say as a teacher, it is sad to say some parents just do not care about educating their children.
No matter what if children don't have good fundation , in the future we can't expect well educated children.

We have to be alert who's are our children friends at the school, where are they going for sleeps over,who are their teachers, talk to teacher about how is child doing, show to the school that you care about your child,sit down at nights(I know after a full time job..you just want to relax in bed and turn on the tv for your child but this is the only time you can spent with your child, help with homework, talk to them, hug them, tell them you are proud of them,take them to the library, read with them, take them to the museum,take them for a walk...just find any small opportunity to be close to your child. And maybe we don't have the best education in the world but our children will try to be the best in class because he /she knows that we care for them and we are motivating them to be better and learn succesfully.

[DadDude]

Like daddude say we need to teach children to manage their self esteem in the right way showing them good morals and providing good example.
I have to say as a teacher, it is sad to say some parents just do not care about educating their children.

Actually that's not what I meant.  I meant that the leaders of education in the U.S. have been far too focused on protecting the self-esteem of children against the harsh realities of failure.  (I think teacher unions also want to protect the jobs of teachers, so there's a great de-emphasis on testing or even on any sort of really objective assessment that would allow decisionmakers to distinguish the classes & teachers that are doing well from those that are not.)  Of course I think it's important for kids to feel good about themselves, but mainly in response to achievement.  Unearned pride is a dangerous thing...

[howardboys]

DadDude, I see what you mean.

It's like memorizing facts, concepts (words, quantities, rules, etc.) are too vilified in traditional American schools when in fact a healthy dose of getting kids to just know (i.e. memorize)  material is fine, even necessary.  It helps build one type of foundation.

You don't have to beat your kids into submission to memorize stuff...and that's why starting early makes so much sense...you can turn it into a game in the beginning...an activity you do together...take advantage of their ridiculously large curiosity while they still have it.

No one really picked any one method out of the list I mentioned, so what I'm guessing is that a variety of methods would probably work...so do more than one.

mom2ross

[carcarte]

I came to america when i was 13 years old. I was suppose to be in the 8th grade and got skipped to the 9th grade. Let me tell you, i didn't have to study one day in high school. The stuff they was just touching on at my high school i have already done in elementary school.

With math, we start learning to count add etc in pre school. You start pre-school at 2.5 years of age. When you have math sessions we don't spend one year on a subject or a semester on on type of math. For that semester we cover all math. Algebra, geometry, arthimetic etc. And you have to actually know the work. You have to show how you got the answer. No calculators. and everything is open ended. I didn't know mutiple choice was until i got to this country......

My point is that everything in this country is about memorization and not understanding.

[howardboys]

carcarte, I don't know if everyone would agree with that statement.

Like, I don't even know if a decent amount of memorization happens in our schools.

I'm really looking for extremely specific information about pedagogy, math teaching techniques, and lessons that WORK for tiny kids and beyond.

Since Singapore is #1 in the world, is their teaching approach the best?

There is also this concept of Math Circles that are used in Eastern Europe.

[PY]

This is a hot topic. I agree with most of you.  if children don't have self steem they will be useless for this society.why? They won't have any idea how to take good decision on life.(we mean the future..our future).
That is why we have abuse of all kind of drugs,alcohol and premature sex...because kids don't have self steem. They can't think straight and say no this is wrong!! This is going around the world not only in United States.But I will say here in United States the porcentage is very very high.

You know ,I was watching some tv after my daughter went to sleep days ago, this show calls teenager's moms or something like was on  ..I couldn't believe what I was watching..really young teen showing their big irresponsability on tv...we are talking about really young kids...raising babies..fighting with the boyfriend and parents about childcare and goes on and on....I felt so bad for those babies!! Shame on this kind of tv!! Other teen can watch this show and they could think is a good way to be on tv...wauu lets do the same! You see this is the kind of tv we are leaving to our children and I can't even imagine how it will be for our grandchildren.
After 10 minutes I had to change the channel.

I will say one of the problems is we don't know how to teach children to have self steem...WE JUST DON'T EDUCATE CHILDREN!We are too lazzy,we are too tired,we are too busy,we just don't have time for them!!

What kids do is going to the streets or schools and learn whatever they can there!!

I agree some points with Carcate..they are really behind!!Even third world countries have better education.


I think America sytem won't change anytime soon it costs a lot of money to review and improve all their goals and change everything.Like I said before is not just about school systems also we have to educate our children in the house!! Guide them in some math, science,religion,language,reading,art & music. Basic stuff.
Also we need to ask teacher to work better.be creative.ask them a better job.requiring good and better education.

[susankhan]

Hello everyone,  I must say that i have used so many different methods with my children.  I do have a 13 year old girl who just placed in the top 1 percent in the world on the AMC 8 math test which is a global test (she scored a 23 out of 24).  Her school discovery-academy.org placed number one in florida. Her math teacher is amazing and I give him all the credit for teaching her to this level.  She is also taking the CLEP test for college in grade 7 !!!!!!  She was in public school for grades k-5 and I saw that her math skills were effected.  However she was in Kumon from the age of 3 and I think that helped her stay ahead.  Right now I am homeschooling our 6 year old and am using math mammoth curriculum www.mathmammoth.com , kumon,  time 4 learning and misc. other websites.  I STRONGLY believe in mastery before moving on.  I do find that in a lot of cultures families feel so strongly for children's education and no mater where they live they are looking for teaching methods that help outside of public schools  

[howardboys]

susankahn, that's great!  tell us more about this math teacher at your daughter's school.

it sounds like you were also pleased with using kumon workbooks early on.

and thanks for the link to math mammoth.

mom2ross

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