Periodically, I tutor young men and women in my neighborhood. Often they are having some trouble because they missed a few days of math clas, or maybe they just don’t quite understand their teacher as well as they’d like. So they come to me, and we do some problems together at my kitchen table.
I get angry. Not at the kids; they are generally doing the best they can with whatever they have been given. But I get angry at the problems they are assigned. And I figure if I, as a math teacher – as someone who is not afraid of sentences that begin, “Let H be a compact Hausdorff space. . . .,” as someone who periodically integrates secant cubed just to see if I still “got it” – if I get angry, what chance do the kids possibly have?
See, it isn’t ever enough to teach a concept, then see if kids can apply that concept. No. We have to teach several concepts, then make horrible examples in which they all apply at once. And throw in some ugly fractions at the same time. I’ll give you an example of what I mean:
Problem: Graph y = 7 + sin x.
Student: “No problem; that 7 just moves the graph up 7 units.” (Hums happily while sketching graph)
Problem: Graph y = 3sin x.
Student: “Easy. That 3 just stretches the graph 3 up and 3 down. I can do that.” (More happy humming)
Problem: Graph y = cos 4x.
Student: “OK, I know that 4 makes the period – uh, longer? Shorter? Let’s see. Oh, yeah, I divide the period 2 pi by that 4, and the new period is pi over 2, and so I just scruntch it all into pi over 2 instead of 2 pi.” (Proceeds to sketch graph. No humming this time.)
Problem: Graph y+7/3 = 5/2 tan (3x + 7/4).
Student: “Mr. Math Teacher, sir? Please come over here so I can beat you up.”
See? Anger. Anger is a perfectly rational reaction to that. Admit it. You wouldn’t take that kind of abuse from anyone, let alone some old guy who talks through his nose and is half covered with chalk dust. So why do we expect kids to take it?
Sigh. Good thing nobody reads this blog, or I’d have a lot of angry math teachers to deal with.
3 comments:
well, I didn't understand a bit of it. All I read was "blah, blah, blah, plus, blah, times blah and something about pie? My favorite is boysenberry. My grandpa was/is a mathematician and he'd "try" to help us with math but I think so many things are already understood by him, that it's unfathomable that it's not just common knowledge. "sir? I still don't have my times tables memorized."
In my experience, it seems that all anyone really needs to know about math is the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. It shows up all the time:
"That person is so stupid, he doesn't know that 2 + 2 = 4."
"That isn't possible. That would be like 2 + 2 = 3!"
"That's so easy, it's like doing 2 + 2!"
I hear 2 + 2 wherever I go. I'm sick of it. To be completely honest, I find
y + 7/3 = 5/2 tan (3x + 7/4)
very refreshing. Of course, if I had to graph the thing, I would probably make a voodoo doll of my math teacher and stab him with the sharp end of my compass. But in everyday conversation, it is very nouveau and tres chic.
Ahh, I love your musings. And when I look at that problem I say, FUN as well, but since I have no patience to tutor anyone (I literally go into a chasm of deep depression), I'd hand the kid a graphing calculator and tell him to knock himself out.
I've missed your musings the last 5 months. Had a baby boy in January. Check him out: bkkftk.blogspot.com
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