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The majority of schools today don't teach cursive writing, and they teach advanced math by showing the students how to plug numbers into a graphing calculator. Ask students to calculate the roots of a polynomial, and they'll pull out their trusty graphing calculators to get the answer. However, ask them what those numbers actually represent, and you'll get a bunch of blank stares.
The majority of schools today don't teach cursive writing, and they teach advanced math by showing the students how to plug numbers into a graphing calculator. Ask students to calculate the roots of a polynomial, and they'll pull out their trusty graphing calculators to get the answer. However, ask them what those numbers actually represent, and you'll get a bunch of blank stares.
Second, its decline (nothing new - the trend is nearly half a century old at this point) is because in the keyboard age it's become less useful. There's never enough time in a curriculum to teach everything, so the things that go are the less useful things. Allocating limited teaching resources out of a nostalgic fondness for cursive writing is unwise allocation.
Third, advanced math is about how to use mathematics, not about basic calculations - that is learned before one gets to advanced math. They used slide rules on the Apollo missions, but I highly doubt they use them in the International Space Station now. That's not a problem - it's just the embrace if now-available technology. And so it is with mathematics. By the way, I have two students who just graduated high school last year, and one more in high school this year, and the claim that no one is taught the utility of mathematics is just the usual flat-out false doom-and-gloomism from every aging generation that looks down upon the succeeding generation as inferior. No doubt the generation that preceded yours looked similarly down their noses at yours. But that says nothing about those succeeding generations - just about the fact that generations in general can't handle the fact that the next generation is as accomplished as were they, or that they're going about things in an invariably different manner.
Second, its decline (nothing new - the trend is nearly half a century old at this point) is because in the keyboard age it's become less useful. There's never enough time in a curriculum to teach everything, so the things that go are the less useful things. Allocating limited teaching resources out of a nostalgic fondness for cursive writing is unwise allocation.
Third, advanced math is about how to use mathematics, not about basic calculations - that is learned before one gets to advanced math. They used slide rules on the Apollo missions, but I highly doubt they use them in the International Space Station now. That's not a problem - it's just the embrace if now-available technology. And so it is with mathematics. By the way, I have two students who just graduated high school last year, and one more in high school this year, and the claim that no one is taught the utility of mathematics is just the usual flat-out false doom-and-gloomism from every aging generation that looks down upon the succeeding generation as inferior. No doubt the generation that preceded yours looked similarly down their noses at yours. But that says nothing about those succeeding generations - just about the fact that generations in general can't handle the fact that the next generation is as accomplished as were they, or that they're going about things in an invariably different manner.
I'm not sure I would agree that dispensing with teaching something which is still used all around the world is wise. That's enough about cursive from me.
As the discussion has morphed into criticism about teaching methods of mathematics (and arithmetic) I feel it's important for students to understand the concept of the functions they are doing. And I'm not sure these concepts are being well enough taught. I have no problem with students using a calculator or other technology to complete problems, but without an idea of the concept behind these functions, you will get students multiplying 30 X 100, making a typographical mistake, and accepting 300,000 as the result.
Why can't students learn to read cursive writing even if they do not learn to produce it themselves? If the 'big deal' is that teachers felt they were maltreated by having to learn to produce it, so they don't want to perpetuate that on today's kids, that is one thing. But being able to read it will always be important.
Second, its decline (nothing new - the trend is nearly half a century old at this point) is because in the keyboard age it's become less useful. There's never enough time in a curriculum to teach everything, so the things that go are the less useful things. Allocating limited teaching resources out of a nostalgic fondness for cursive writing is unwise allocation.
Third, advanced math is about how to use mathematics, not about basic calculations - that is learned before one gets to advanced math. They used slide rules on the Apollo missions, but I highly doubt they use them in the International Space Station now. That's not a problem - it's just the embrace if now-available technology. And so it is with mathematics. By the way, I have two students who just graduated high school last year, and one more in high school this year, and the claim that no one is taught the utility of mathematics is just the usual flat-out false doom-and-gloomism from every aging generation that looks down upon the succeeding generation as inferior. No doubt the generation that preceded yours looked similarly down their noses at yours. But that says nothing about those succeeding generations - just about the fact that generations in general can't handle the fact that the next generation is as accomplished as were they, or that they're going about things in an invariably different manner.
Nope, it's far from incorrect.
First of all, I have a math degree, so I've had more than my fair share of "Advanced Math."
Second, the "utility" of mathematics has nothing to do with understanding the concepts behind the math. Utility comes from getting a result from a calculation, conceptual understanding comes from knowing why that calculation provides the result. Most students today lack the conceptual understanding.
I've tutored several freshman college students in math because their high schools let them use graphing calculators and didn't teach the concepts. When they got to college they weren't allowed to use their calculators and had no idea what to do.
If I write a note, I'm not going to print it. If someone can't read it my reccomendation to them is to learn. I'm not going to print. I can even write so neatly, like I did on the wedding invites, that people thought it was printed so you can't claim it was a 'scribble'.
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