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I have no idea how I got to this link, so can't give credit....

Maths in England sounds even worse than here, if that's possible, which I suppose it isn't:

Lost count of gloomy reports about the state of maths in schools and universities? For more than a decade mathematicians have been moaning and the government has responded with inquiries, changes in the curriculum, numeracy hours in primary schools, golden hellos for maths teachers and a plethora of other initiatives in England.

Golden hellos, you say. Sounds good to me. Think I'll knock off here and go learn some more Russian Math. Which is an especially good idea given the paragraphs that follow:

Where will the next generation of UK mathematicians come from, asks the group, drawn from university maths departments around the country, learned societies and the government's curriculum watchdog.

At the moment the answer seems to be "from Russia and Hungary". In many university maths departments nine out of 10 of appointments go to candidates from abroad, while the shortage of maths teachers in schools has got so bad that the Department for Education and Skills has stopped collecting the figures.

Oh, boy. This next part jibes unpleasantly with Loveless's report on the importance of ability tracking for the most talented students:

There is also agreement on the need - outlined by Adrian Smith's report Making Mathematics Count - to boost the numbers of pupils taking A-level maths, the pool from which science graduates (and future maths teachers) will come. Maths has gone from the largest A-level entry to third place as numbers have dropped by nearly half from 80,000 in 1989 to 49,000 in 2002.

A curriculum for the most able 25% of pupils is needed to encourage them to progress to A-level, says the report, which also suggests awarding more university admissions points for a maths A-level than other subjects.

Dr Gardiner wants a national debate. He argues that in the last 15 years or so, "much of our mathematics teaching, and most of our assessment at all levels, have become fragmented - with multistep tasks being routinely reduced to (and assessed as) a collection of unrelated 'one-step routines'".

The upshot, he says, is that maths undergraduates cannot solve the kind of problems that 13-year-olds used to be expected to do.

He adds: "Students in general are no longer required to combine simple techniques in the most basic ways - so they no longer understand that the power of elementary mathematics lies in the integration of simple techniques into larger wholes.

This is an interesting assessment of the problem, in terms of Saxon Math versus Singapore Math.

From the get-go--and I mean from the 1st or 2nd grade--the Singapore curriculum (the old one, at any rate) asks children to do multi-step problems. That strikes me as the right way to go, but of course I can't base such judgments on anything more than what I think I see in Christopher & me as we learn math.

Nevertheless, the one aspect of Saxon Math that makes me feel chronically nervous is the one-stepness of the word problems. Christopher and I are now working through Saxon 8/7, which is in theory a 7th grade book, and the word problems are either one-step, or they're two-step problems that we're told upfront are two steps. That can't be right.

otoh, I had a fun moment the other day when Christopher, who is, after all, still only 10 years old, solved a problem (probably in the Primary Mathematics 3A Workbook) and then tossed off the comment, 'It's a two-parter,' like some guy in a bar casually mentioning he just wrestled a bear. He thought he was hot stuff, doing a two-parter.

I loved it. Macho in a 10 year old boy--especially macho about a story problem--is awfully sweet. (OK, maybe that's a mother's perspective.)

Still, if he gets manly I-wrestled-a-bear-feelings from doing maths, I say that's a good thing.

update

I just realized: I am supplementing the Saxon 7th grade book with a first semester 3rd grade book for Singapore.

I should say that the 3A problems are now far too easy for Christopher, thank heavens (although the bar model solutions are not too easy. He still can't fully do them. He'll get the bar model wrong for a problem he can do in a second just setting up the problem and doing the computation.)

However, I've worked all the problems in the Challenging Word Problems Grade 3 book, and I know there are problems in there he's not going to be able to do.


maths in England
maths in England, part 2
more maths in England, part 2
top students in England, US, & Singapore
why do kids like math?
another brilliant person who liked getting right answers (scroll down)
Catherine's cousin talks about Everyday Math

Call for national debate on maths teaching GUARDIAN
Where will the next generation of UK mathematicians come from? (GOVT REPORT: pdf file)

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jul 2005

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