I agree.
I teach remedial math at community college. 40% of the students at my school need remedial math. That means 40% of the students are not up to Algebra II. That is abysmal.
It's not just that we aren't graduating enough students with higher math skills like trig or calc, but we are graduating people that barely have basic math skills. I have students who cannot do fractions, don't know their multiplication tables, have no understanding of basic scientific or math principles, and who are generally lacking the ability to think critically about math or science.
These are average students. They should be able to do better and we as a country should demand better. They are capable of learning the material, but we need to do a better job of teaching math and science.
As an ed tech in middle school, I saw the same thing day in and day out. More than half of the 8th graders in my school are still adding on their fingers because they don't know their multiplication tables. They don't understand how fractions, decimals, and per cents are related. My guess is about 1/3 of them are still using the lattice method of multiplication. My husband teaches freshman chemistry at a local, small University and many of HIS students are the same; still adding/multiplying on their fingers if they cannot get to their phones or calculators. It's pathetic what passes for education these days. Now that I work in the classrooms in the lower elementary school, I can see where some of problems start. We aren't requiring that kids memorize multiplication tables. It's boring, and it might embarrass them if they can't recite such or provide an answer in a verbal drill, and it doesn't stimulate them, so we just don't make them do it anymore. Personally I think it's more embarrassing to not know if you have enough money to pay for your groceries or how to figure the tip in the restaurant, but maybe that's just me. Spiraling math programs do NOT teach mastery; they teach to cover a wide variety of topics, and hope that you learned a technique the first time because you are going to need it next month when the program spirals around. Too much is being thrown at kids, too quickly, and we just keep moving on. The kids aren't learning much, and are mastering even less.
Somewhere along the way (perhaps in the '80s?) we got caught in the "learning should be FUN" jag, and stopped demanding that certain things be memorized, that certain behaviors be followed, that homework be done, and that failing grades be assigned. OOOPS, don't want to embarrass someone by giving them a 45% on a test when that's what they earned! Elementary schools stopped dividing classes into groups based on ability, and requirements in high school were generally lowered; I guess the idea was to remove stress and possible humiliation over failure. Right now, we are caught up in "inquiry" and "student-led" learning. I just love arguing about how vision works with a 10 year old. Actually, I am not interested in hearing a 10 year old's fantasy of how science happens when I KNOW how these things occur. When does "inquiry" stop being about curiosity and segue into reinforcing wrong ideas?
Unfortunately, school funding is tied to the testing results. Consequently, we teach the test. Kids are shown how to do specific problems and we pray that they see this kind of a problem again and remember the practice problem. Most kids don't have any basic understanding of how the different topics in math are interconnected, and math, like science, is a series of steps. You have to understand and master the first step before you can progress to the second step. We aren't teaching the kids the basic tools they need to be successful in math, English, reading, and writing, so our international test scores flounder. Consequently, we turn to the educational theorists and cry, "Help, help! What can we do to make our kids want to learn more?" How about we try teaching them the basic skills they need, at an age where they can grasp them, and then teaching them to use these skills to build an understanding of more complex concepts, at an appropriate rate so they LEARN instead of just push forward?
Anecdotally: I have a new student, a child whose testing indicates a diagnosis of MR may be in the future. Why? The child cannot match upper and lower case letters, doesn't understand ordinals, cannot read the lowest level Dolsch words, and cannot add. Working with this child, I find curiosity, listening skills, and memory. I cannot help but wonder if perhaps the student didn't score well on the evaluations because this child is only 4 years old! Seriously... when do little kids get to be little KIDS instead of little professors?
