Another Good Article by Miles Kimball & Noah Smith on Learning Math

The authors wrote a previous article for The Atlantic that explains the need for math in economics.   Here is a link to a post on that article  Need for Math to Study Econ – Excellent Description – But…

They have now written their suggestions on changing how math is taught.  The article makes a good point but I think they need to focus on where the problem starts.  Here is the link to their article http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/#comments

Here is my comment:

“I, too, have taught math for many years. I agree with the authors that almost every American can – and should – learn far more math than they are presently learning. The authors make an excellent point by stating that math is hard, but not so hard that hard work won’t lead to an understanding of, and technical fluency with, mathematics. But I see the problem starting from the top (the teachers, actually the universities) not the bottom.

I have taught classes with an average Math SAT of 780 and other classes with an average Math SAT much lower than that. Here is what I have seen in over 20 years of university teaching. If the teacher knows math (so that they can guide the students well) and is honest in teaching it; that is, doesn’t go easy (either in teaching or assessing) on a topic just because it takes work, then most students respond by doing the work. Thus, to get students to work hard and learn, we need two things: knowledgeable teachers and honest teachers.

I see both of these problems starting in universities. Most of them have knowledgeable teachers but universities see that they can get away with increasing their prestige and revenue by taking advantage of students by misleading the students into believing math doesn’t require hard work. Even at one of the authors’ esteemed institutions, the calculus syllabus explains that the hard stuff (limits and continuity) in calculus won’t be covered much. Furthermore, the curve at that school is very lax. Clark Kerr and David Riesman saw all this coming as far back as 1980. Kerr wrote that “…This shift from academic merit to student consumerism is one of the two greatest reversals of direction in all the history of American higher education…” (There is more from Kerr and Riesman on my blog inside-higher-ed.com)

When universities are not honest in what they require students to learn, then the high school teachers they produce simply don’t know the math well enough to help their own students learn math without either talent or an inordinate amount of hard work on the students’ part.

The authors’ advice is excellent. Now, if we can only get universities to follow it. That will be hard to do. There is too much of a university culture of too many unscrupulous universities producing too many unknowledgeable graduates.”