Editor's note: Those who have followed my math rants know that I am critical of the disconnected math skills taught in schools that take the subject out of context. I also am not a fan of the drill and kill math games like Mangahigh that are more interesting than math worksheets, but pay little attention to the real-world relevance of why these skills are necessary. In this post Brian Marks gets to the heart of the math problem by sharing a resource that puts real-world relevance at it's core.
I can still remember my own math classes as a kid. I remember working out of a text book, listening to my teacher as she taught us three example problems so that we could do problems 1 – 43 (odds only) for homework. Of course problems 1- 43 were all the same problem, they just had different numbers or letters in them. At the time I thought they were just letters, but now I know they were variables. Maybe at the time I knew they were variables, but did I know what a variable was?
Let’s fast forward to the present. What has changed? Often math classes still look the same as they did decades ago. Students enter the room and check their homework, which is followed by direct instruction on some math skill that is meaningless to most of them. Students get to practice a few problems in class and look forward to more homework full of practice problems and maybe some contrived word problems. The only thing different today might be the availability and variety of math resources on the Internet. Students might be using text books less and worksheets more. The Internet is full of websites that provide teachers with skill worksheets that focus on algorithm practice, which means tediously doing the same procedure over and over again. There are even some popular websites that help kids learn the steps to successfully work through an algorithm. On some websites if you get ten of these problems correct in a row you get to move on to a new skill. What is concerning is that many of the math resources on the web are simply making it easier for teachers to teach skill procedures and for students to memorize procedures. We have yet to see sweeping changes in math education in terms of: student learning to conceptual development of math concepts, student discourse, critical thinking, number sense reasoning and a purposeful use of technology, all of which can help prepare students for the challenges of the real world.