No wonder!

[Bill Spight]

Why have schools at all, lets just all be dumb and happy.

I think you miss the point here. Most of the stuff you learn in school you will probably not need in everyday life. Just like most of the stuff you learn in college you will probably not need in your job. However - the stuff you learn teaches you certain things you will need, like abstract thinking, problem solving ability, assimilating and combining new knowledge quickly, extracting an d applying new knowledge, using sources, stuff like that. And true confidence in your own abilities, the knowledge that you have the general skills to tackle almost anything. This is what you learn in school, really, or what you should learn. And you do it by solving hard, abstract problems, in many areas, not just math. This is why I think kids in school should be pushed to learn more and go further, not entertained and amused so they don't complain about having to learn.

It sounds like you are talking about college. At lower levels, at least in the US, it seems like the main lessons are to sit still, be quiet, be on time, and follow instructions.

[Uberdude]

Sorry to spoil the grumpy old man party, but when I was at university a few years ago I and my peers were all highly numerate. I don't think we should write off humanity just yet.

[tapir]

Sadly, they don't feel it in reality. (Relevance of math)

Have you ever read / signed a labour agreement, maybe even one complicated on purpose? Have you ever gambled or played the lottery? Have you paid "bargain really" subscription mode for the nice phone (your calculator)? Did you ever take a loan? (Did you repay it?) Did you ever add up the transaction fees for your elaborate stock market gambling? Did you ever fall for an unsound argument because you have to take number-based arguments as evidence, even when they are not? (How would that change politics, economy, I wonder?) ...

It should be really easy to convince people that math matters (maybe start with student loans).

[Knotwilg]

Sadly, they don't feel it in reality. (Relevance of math)

Have you ever read / signed a labour agreement, maybe even one complicated on purpose? Have you ever gambled or played the lottery? Have you paid "bargain really" subscription mode for the nice phone (your calculator)? Did you ever take a loan? (Did you repay it?) Did you ever add up the transaction fees for your elaborate stock market gambling? Did you ever fall for an unsound argument because you have to take number-based arguments as evidence, even when they are not? (How would that change politics, economy, I wonder?) ...

It should be really easy to convince people that math matters (maybe start with student loans).

The examples you give are about probability and power series. These are two areas of math for which a lot of real life examples can be found and I agree they should take up a much more important part in the curriculum today.

[ez4u]

How's math this year?
Enjoy!

[Bill Spight]

Sadly, they don't feel it in reality. (Relevance of math)

Have you ever read / signed a labour agreement, maybe even one complicated on purpose? Have you ever gambled or played the lottery? Have you paid "bargain really" subscription mode for the nice phone (your calculator)? Did you ever take a loan? (Did you repay it?) Did you ever add up the transaction fees for your elaborate stock market gambling? Did you ever fall for an unsound argument because you have to take number-based arguments as evidence, even when they are not? (How would that change politics, economy, I wonder?) ...

It should be really easy to convince people that math matters (maybe start with student loans).

Have you ever owned a financial calculator?

[huhu]

They sure taught us a lot of useless junk in school.. should've taken cooking and wood\metal crafting instead of calculus and geometry.

Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly..

[Marcus]

I'm currently going through some training at work, and it is reminding me why I should avoid going back to University. I am quite a terrible student. This kind of classroom learning is not how I learn, and it seems to me that most of the courses I took in University (and even back in grade school) were taught in a similar manner.

It's totally an issue of my own, not an issue with the teaching in general, too.

(I work in Telecom, with a Comp Sci degree, and the course is about the LTE Air Interface.)

[Bantari]

Why have schools at all, lets just all be dumb and happy.

I think you miss the point here. Most of the stuff you learn in school you will probably not need in everyday life. Just like most of the stuff you learn in college you will probably not need in your job. However - the stuff you learn teaches you certain things you will need, like abstract thinking, problem solving ability, assimilating and combining new knowledge quickly, extracting an d applying new knowledge, using sources, stuff like that. And true confidence in your own abilities, the knowledge that you have the general skills to tackle almost anything. This is what you learn in school, really, or what you should learn. And you do it by solving hard, abstract problems, in many areas, not just math. This is why I think kids in school should be pushed to learn more and go further, not entertained and amused so they don't complain about having to learn.

It sounds like you are talking about college. At lower levels, at least in the US, it seems like the main lessons are to sit still, be quiet, be on time, and follow instructions.

I had to tutor some college students in math - which was their major. They picked this major because they were so good at math in school and they thought it was easy and fun. They could not add fractions, let alone multiply them. When i asked them what did they do in school, they said math was fun, the teacher was telling jokes, doing head-stands, and they all got excellent grades.

This is what I am talking about, among other things.

Now, granted, not every pupil/student/graduate is like that. But from my experience, an amazing and scary percentage of them are.

[Bantari]

Sorry to spoil the grumpy old man party, but when I was at university a few years ago I and my peers were all highly numerate. I don't think we should write off humanity just yet.

It might depend on what standards we use.
Many of the students I have met thought of themselves as math prodigies. And since everybody around them was comparable, they were all great. And if they fail a test, the test was unfair, biased, and possibly racist, obviously.

[snorri]

The whole discussion reminds me of this spoof questioning whether video games are preparing our kids properly for the zombie apocalypse.

Of course that video is satire, but the point is that what we want to prepare our children for (and I am a parent myself) depends greatly on what we think the future will be like. The truth is we don't know the future, we can only guess. So probably the best things to teach are resilience and flexibility, and to learn how to learn. That won't make every kid a Lazarus Long, but that's okay because not everyone needs to be that way anyway. (I've love to see the curriculum for that that school, though. 9AM - computer programming, 9:30am hog butchering, ... )

Where I am, Mandarin classes are popular. There is even discussion of Mandarin immersion. There are a lot of parents buying into this, but to be honest I'm not sure why and I'm not convinced those jumping on that bandwagon are so sure themselves. Maybe I haven't gotten the memo on the Asian zombie apocalypse? Perhaps it just boils down to a natural fear parents have that their kids will be unprepared or won't measure up.

Educators have a hard task ahead of them. They mean well. They really do. And probably more methods work than we are willing to recognize, so I'm definitely willing to cut them some slack as long as they have an approach that works for them. I hope my child has good teachers, but the reality is I have to prepare her for the bad ones, too. Or the ones who are good for most students but terrible for her. All education in the end is ultimately self-education, so resilience, patience and independence are critical.

[snorri]

I think that it is a mistake to teach arithmetic before 5th grade. It is more sophisticated than it appears.

That's interesting. I've always thought it is a mistake to teach literature to anyone under the age of 18, as there is insufficient life experience to appreciate it.

[Bill Spight]

When i asked them what did they do in school, they said math was fun, the teacher was telling jokes, doing head-stands, and they all got excellent grades.

Doing headstands? Was that to illustrate 1/x?

[paK0]

When i asked them what did they do in school, they said math was fun, the teacher was telling jokes, doing head-stands, and they all got excellent grades.

Doing headstands? Was that to illustrate 1/x?

http://9gag.com/gag/838542/math-dance-moves

[Bonobo]

[..] Many of the students I have met thought of themselves as math prodigies. And since everybody around them was comparable, they were all great. And if they fail a test, the test was unfair, biased,

this far I can follow you.

and possibly racist, obviously.

But this smells bad.