{"id":25031,"date":"2014-07-24T15:50:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T20:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/?p=25031"},"modified":"2015-11-01T23:58:20","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T04:58:20","slug":"americans-stink-math-nytimes-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2014\/07\/24\/americans-stink-math-nytimes-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Americans Stink at Math? &#8211; an NYTimes Article"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In school, did you &#8220;learn&#8221; mathematics by just memorizing some facts and not really understanding where those facts arose? Karen Morgan Ivy Tweeted the below Calvin and Hobbes comic.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Is Mathematics an art or a science? Calvin has a different perspective. Hmm&#8230;Calvin &amp; I might need to converse. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ijs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ijs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/99zx8nB6op\">pic.twitter.com\/99zx8nB6op<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Karen D. Morgan (@Afrikanbeat) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Afrikanbeat\/status\/441952639329529856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 7, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>(Transcription below by\u00a0http:\/\/blog.onbeing.org\/post\/250746172\/calvin-and-hobbes-math-is-a-religion)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #34495e\"><em>First frame<\/em><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">Calvin:<\/span>\u00a0You know, I don\u2019t think math is a science. I think it\u2019s a religion.<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">Hobbes:<\/span>\u00a0A religion?<br \/>\n<em>Second frame<\/em><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">Calvin:<\/span>\u00a0Yeah. All these equations are like miracles. You take two numbers and when you add them, they magically become one\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">new<\/span>\u00a0number! No one can say how it happens. You either believe it or you don\u2019t.<br \/>\n<em>Third frame<\/em><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">Calvin:<\/span>\u00a0This whole book is full of things that have to be accepted on faith! It\u2019s a religion!<br \/>\n<em>Fourth frame<\/em><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">Hobbes:<\/span>\u00a0And in the public schools no less. Call a lawyer.<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-style: inherit\">Calvin:<\/span>\u00a0As a math atheist, I should be excused from this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Related to this, I recently saw a link on my Facebook page to an article on NYTimes.com by Elizabeth Green entitled\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/07\/27\/magazine\/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Why Do Americans Stink at Math?<\/em><\/a> The article discusses\u00a0a Japanese teacher who has tried revolutionizing mathematics pedagogy.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333333\">Instead of having students memorize and then practice endless lists of equations \u2014 which Takahashi remembered from his own days in school \u2014 Matsuyama taught his college students to encourage passionate discussions among children so they would come to uncover math\u2019s procedures, properties and proofs for themselves.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article also talks about how the American mathematics teaching practices have seen several failed reform attempts in the past.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;color: #333333\">It wasn\u2019t the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #333333\">first time that Americans had dreamed up a better way to teach math and then failed to implement it. The same pattern played out in the 1960s, when schools gripped by a post-Sputnik inferiority complex unveiled an ambitious \u201cnew math,\u201d only to find, a few years later, that nothing actually changed. In fact, efforts to introduce a better way of teaching math stretch back to the 1800s. The story is the same every time: a big, excited push, followed by mass confusion and then a return to conventional practices.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How can we, as mathematicians, work to ensure new reform (we are in the midst of the Common Core) actually works?<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In school, did you &#8220;learn&#8221; mathematics by just memorizing some facts and not really understanding where those facts arose? Karen Morgan Ivy Tweeted the below Calvin and Hobbes comic. Is Mathematics an art or a science? Calvin has a different &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2014\/07\/24\/americans-stink-math-nytimes-article\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" data-url=https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2014\/07\/24\/americans-stink-math-nytimes-article\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math","category-mathematics-in-society","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3gbww-6vJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25031"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25034,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25031\/revisions\/25034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}