Math, a complex subject that most of us hate doing or aren’t that great at it. While some are good at math, I was never that person. I struggled with math all my life, it also seems like many Americans are bad at math. We’re a culture that makes it okay to be bad at math. But is that okay?
In ” Why do Americans stink at math?” By Elizabeth green. Discusses what most young American students go through. It is not uncommon for students to not do well in math. Within this article, the author discusses Takahashi in 1978, a college student in Tokyo, and his mission to make math become easier to learn, with different ways of teaching it.
Having a desire to make learning math easier for students, he became the only thing he thought would do that. Akihiko Takahashi became an elementary school teacher, but in Japan, he taught college students who aspired to become teachers as well. He brought teaching to another level, teaching like no one before. He turned his classroom into a laboratory. He decided to change the way students should study, instead of having them memorize equations and practice problems, just like how we do in American schools now. He decided to have discussions among the class, and by doing this having the students work out the problems themselves. Over the next 12 years, the Japanese educational system used this approach when it came to teaching math. In 1991, at the age of 58, he had an opportunity to teach in America, a school run by Japanese. He had a desire to be the center of new math. He started to visit American schools, he would see that Americans had this dream way to teach math but they would fail.
American teachers failed guidance, were unprepared, they were damaging students more than they were helping them. A reform to change math but it’s without a good system for helping teachers be able to learn to teach them. Teachers are doing different types of training constantly to keep up with what’s new and learning it themselves, so how can they teach it? I have experienced this many times. I’ve had teachers tell the class that they learned this new concept and a new way to teach but it never helped any of the students. One of my teachers was taught a new way to do an algebra problem, but instead of trying to help they just made the class more confused. It only made math 10x harder. I understand trying to educate teachers more that way they can educate us and make our generation better than there’s. Though it is not helping, from experience. I think teachers need to know concepts fully before deciding to teach it. Students know don’t know basic math concepts like how to multiply or divide, use arithmetic and applying it to daily life. Teachers are unprepared, setting the children back in their education.
In countries like Japan, they have a similar approach but their success with it is incredible, while in America maybe we aren’t suited for this just yet. On an average test, two-thirds of fourth graders and eighth graders are not skilled in math. Same goes with on multiple choice test, the students could not comprehend the question. Even in our home state of Massachusetts, one of the states highest performing with math, the average student is two years behind in math, versus in other countries like Japan. The unschooled are more capable of math that’s complex than the students who have been taught it. The students being taught aren’t comprehended it. Instead, they are only getting more confused, and they aren’t learning much at all.
Almost all of the American math classes have the same structure and follow the same pattern. We are focusing on procedures but not that the procedures mean. Students aren’t able to apply the problem strategy to new problems. I dealt with that constantly with math through the years. American institutions that have charged teachers to learn new procedures in math have shown unable to do it. If teachers are not getting the right training then they are unable to teach math the right way or understand it themselves. The training is weak and just leading to inefficient teachers. As a teacher, you have the power in your hands to educate the next generation. It is your job to bring them on the path of success, if you’re failing by teaching them, then what’s your purpose? I personally would like if math would be taught the way it is taught in Japan in America. I feel being taught math over the years that we are just given a problem and have to solve it on your own. By doing this I’m not learning the steps and what each of them means to solve problems. A lesson that Japan has taught the united states is that there is a possibility of change, that change can be made. It will take time to train teachers in this way to benefit the students, it is far from an overnight process, but it can get done. The education system in the united states needs to change, we need to improve our math skills and the way math is being taught. It is only going to keep hurting students like me who are not strong in math.