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rtbarret
Joined: 09 Mar 2008
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 Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 3:44 pm Post subject: Americans aren't good at math? |
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| This is hilarious. I have an old friend who is a teacher in Korea. She showed me the teacher's guide for grade 6, and on page 143 it says, "Koreans can easily calculate prices without a calculator but Americans have difficulties even in simple calculations without a cash register or calculator." This was sanctioned by the government? Too funny! Fighting! |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Sad that it's so true these days! |
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Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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| They pummel them with math here. 95% of the time if one of my students is working on something else in my class, it's math. My middle schoolers are doing math I didn't do until high school. (and a lot of discrete math that wasn't even taught when I was in school) |
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Joe666
Joined: 19 Nov 2008
Location: Jesus it's hot down here!
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| They do get slammed with complex math very early. Bob is correct-a mundo. The question becomes - Will the average human being use a milli-fraction of what they are learning in their adult lives? Doubtfull. |
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Goku
Joined: 10 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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I've seen elementary kids doing proofs.
I did geometry in HIGH SCHOOL!
What the hell?
These elementary kids could tutor high school kids in America.
It makes me sad.
But like others said, will we ever use this stuff? Well, honestly you could say the same thing about a lot of subjects, science, english, etc...
lol I guess it's just exposure to all academic fields. |
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shifter2009
Joined: 03 Sep 2006
Location: wisconsin
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Goku wrote: |
I've seen elementary kids doing proofs.
I did geometry in HIGH SCHOOL!
What the hell?
These elementary kids could tutor high school kids in America.
It makes me sad.
But like others said, will we ever use this stuff? Well, honestly you could say the same thing about a lot of subjects, science, english, etc...
lol I guess it's just exposure to all academic fields. |
Yeah, but make um do a complex word problem and the kid's heads would explode.
That being said most kids here are albert einstein compared to my algebra skills. |
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rtbarret
Joined: 09 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 6:26 pm Post subject: |
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| I forgot most people on here are English teachers and therefore most likely poor at mathematics! Anyway, if Koreans are so good at math, why do they pull out a calculator every time I buy something? Good fun. |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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| My minor in university was math, and yet I still sucked at it. Most of my classes, the students were mostly Asian. To break a few more stereotypes, I can also jump. |
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Goku
Joined: 10 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| My minor in university was math, and yet I still sucked at it. Most of my classes, the students were mostly Asian. To break a few more stereotypes, I can also jump. |
Then you must be black...
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Kikomom
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: them thar hills--Penna, USA--Zippy is my kid, the teacher in ROK. You can call me Kiko
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| One of the first things Wario wrote home about was his amazement at kids doing trig in middle school. This from my son, the MIT 21 Club wannabe, who took "The Mathematics of Games and Gambling" as his undergrad math requirement. |
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Zantetsuken
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Kikomom wrote: |
| One of the first things Wario wrote home about was his amazement at kids doing trig in middle school. This from my son, the MIT 21 Club wannabe, who took "The Mathematics of Games and Gambling" as his undergrad math requirement. |
What was your son's major? Was it Video Game Villainology? |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:16 pm Post subject: Re: Americans aren't good at math? |
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| rtbarret wrote: |
| This is hilarious. I have an old friend who is a teacher in Korea. She showed me the teacher's guide for grade 6, and on page 143 it says, "Koreans can easily calculate prices without a calculator but Americans have difficulties even in simple calculations without a cash register or calculator." This was sanctioned by the government? Too funny! Fighting! |
I think there's some truth in it. The trouble, of course, is Koreans always tend to assume these things have genetic causes and have no brief against stereotypical thinking. I know in this example it's ridiculous, simplistic thinking arising out of ignorance (they don't know what we all know, namely, that our parents' generation could run circles around us in mental arithmetic), but it isn't always like that. In trying to teach their children how to conceptualize the world, Koreans may look for family resemblance categories to give them. These are groups of features that members of a category share, although they don't all have all of them, and, as you might expect from the name, often do have genetic causes. It's not an invalid way to categorize things (it's not wrong to generalize that we're not good at mental arithmetic, unless you subscribe to the politically correct but ridiculous, wearisome, and impracticable view that we must never generalize) but it becomes pernicious - and dumb - when people confuse a family resemblance category with a rule-based category resulting in the caveman-like logic that 'Westerner' = 'no good at math'.
When you rush through lessons and churn out textbooks at a rate of knots, and when the goverment is avowedly ethnocentric that's the kind of travesty of an education that results. |
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kerbythepurplecow
Joined: 02 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:35 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm... I thought they were so much better than Westerners because their words for the numbers are so much shorter. Well, that's what my wife's co-teacher told her  |
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mlindber
Joined: 22 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 2:40 am Post subject: |
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| I can't be bothered wasting my brain power on math. It has far more important things to worry about. |
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Teelo
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
Location: Wellington, NZ
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 2:48 am Post subject: |
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The reason they all want to be experts at algebra is so they can find out what is at the secret memory address 0x-1.
Too bad for them, I am the only one who has found out what it says. It sa.. SEGMENTATION FAULT |
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