Math Woes

 

thecomicstrips.com

As an Associate Professor of Operations Management in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management, I teach a few courses that are analytic.  That means they require math.  One thing that I have come to learn and accept is that the students that I teach have a wide range of math skills or preparedness.  This situation at the university I currently teach at is not unique.  I have taught at three other colleges since 2010 and I experienced the same phenomenon. 

The easy thing would be to simply say “kids these days” can’t do math or can’t do arithmetic.  Many do jump to this conclusion and, basically, they blame the students. 

It is not that simple.  From my perspective there are two factors that should be considered.

First, the percentage of high school graduates that enroll in college has gone up 24 points since 1960.   Per admissionly.com, 69.1% of high school graduates enrolled colleges and universities in 2018 versus 45.1% in 1960.  We used to take the 45.1% of the students most prepared for college which made them, more or less, the 45.1% most math prepared students in the country.  Now, we take a much wider portion of the students and thus a much wider swath of math preparedness are entering colleges and universities.

Secondly, we have attempted to modernize our instruction of mathematics since I was in fifth grade.  Arithmetic was deemphasized and focused more on what they called “New Math” in the 1960s.  It is my contention that it was misguided effort, and we stumbled for a number of years until regaining our footing sometime in the 1980s.  Note that this is more my casual observation and impression than any kind of definitive study. 

Moving forward, we stratified our math education in schools via track.  In high school, took advanced placement testing out of calculus when entering college.  I believe the students in the advanced placement track are competitive with college students around the world in terms of math.  The other track or two did not prepare students well.  Too many stopped at Algebra I or II and come to college not having taken any math for one maybe two years. 

Put these two factors together and we have lesser math preparedness at institutions where I have been teaching. 

I taught in China for two summers before in 2016 and 2017.  The math preparedness of the students I taught there was much better.  All the students had taken calculus.  It allowed me to teach the same courses I teach here, like microeconomics or operations management where optimization is involved, more effectively.  I have maybe one or two students that know calculus in the classes I teach here.

This concern of mine should be a national priority.  We have been talking about it and trying a variety of solutions with no avail.  Clearly, our tactics do not work.  We should emulate other countries that do it better than us.  We need parents to push their kids and we need to use technology to enhance how we teach math.  We have been floundering for decades with this.

We need teachers that inspire students, entertain, and push them.  My model for this kind of teacher is Jaime Escalante featured in the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver.  I was certain we had to replicate and roll-out his method and approach thirty-four years ago.  We still have not figured out how to do this.