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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To be fair, that’s not specific to mathematics at all.
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.
Most people can fake their way enough to pass the test without having a true understanding of the concepts behind it.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
you have a recipe that serves 5. You only need to cook for two. That’s a fraction right there
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.
And here we find the poor problem solvers in life who lack critical thinking skills.
Nice personal attack. Did you make it just cause you have no real argument?
Problem solving and critical thinking are skills developed by math education
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can say “fuck” here, it’s ok.