Math or Science Anxiety? Forget about it!
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This Just in: Ohioans have a love-hate relationship with math and the sciences. So says a report to Gov. Ted Strickland prepared by the state School Board and the Board of Regents that oversees public colleges and universities. Parents of school-aged children all over Ohio are asking, "We needed a report to tell us this?"
No, of course all of us already knew this because we have our own horrific experiences in math and science in our academic past. In 2004, less than half of Ohioans surveyed favored requiring algebra, biology and chemistry in school. Two years later, a majority said four years of math and three years of science should be mandatory. Why the big change in a two year period? I suspect that it is easy to support "math and science" when asked, but more difficult when the question is do kids really need "algebra" or "chemistry"? I mean, how many people in my high school took these when they were elective courses? Less then 1/3, if memory serves me right, because, frankly, these classes were HARD. Our class valedictorian didn't take them because she would never have been our class valedictorian… And my own class ranking included those that left to go to vocational school (no math or science)and returned for a graduation ceremony.
Karen Holbrook, Ohio State University President, says that people like me are exactly why science and math needs a public relations campaign. "I think a lot of people didn't come up through an education system where math and science was approachable," she said. "They just simply weren't introduced to it."
The report tells us that launching a public awareness campaign to explain the value of math and science to Ohio's economic future and telling parents to encourage their children in these areas would be just the first step to solving the problem. The panel also recommends that more math and science teachers need to be available in the middle grades, and that an Institute for Mathematics and Science Education should be created to help state agencies develop courses to engage students and contribute ideas to the public awareness campaign.
I am not certain what all this means, but let me, this product of respectable public schools and a mother of three middle school students break it down for the panel. Leaving the science part out, (because my struggle with chemistry was due to my ineptness in math), there are very few really good math teachers and there are too many kids in the math class to effectively teach students that do not have a natural aptitude for math. I spend hours with my A/B student son teaching him algebra from really poor textbooks.
And the teaching method does not seem all that different from when I was in middle school when my mother gave up helping me because I had already passed her limited proficiency. Every year it was harder and harder as the classes built upon concepts that I really never mastered from the year before. Is it any wonder that we have a bias against math?
Other countries seem to be able to produce students with better math and science skills then we do. At least that is what we are told. Instead of spending money on a public awareness campaign, maybe we ought to be looking at more successful teaching methods, increasing teacher to student ratios, and dumping the current textbooks that just do not seem to be working. Students today will be the parents of tomorrow, and they will be the only public relations campaign that will matter.
No, of course all of us already knew this because we have our own horrific experiences in math and science in our academic past. In 2004, less than half of Ohioans surveyed favored requiring algebra, biology and chemistry in school. Two years later, a majority said four years of math and three years of science should be mandatory. Why the big change in a two year period? I suspect that it is easy to support "math and science" when asked, but more difficult when the question is do kids really need "algebra" or "chemistry"? I mean, how many people in my high school took these when they were elective courses? Less then 1/3, if memory serves me right, because, frankly, these classes were HARD. Our class valedictorian didn't take them because she would never have been our class valedictorian… And my own class ranking included those that left to go to vocational school (no math or science)and returned for a graduation ceremony.
Karen Holbrook, Ohio State University President, says that people like me are exactly why science and math needs a public relations campaign. "I think a lot of people didn't come up through an education system where math and science was approachable," she said. "They just simply weren't introduced to it."
The report tells us that launching a public awareness campaign to explain the value of math and science to Ohio's economic future and telling parents to encourage their children in these areas would be just the first step to solving the problem. The panel also recommends that more math and science teachers need to be available in the middle grades, and that an Institute for Mathematics and Science Education should be created to help state agencies develop courses to engage students and contribute ideas to the public awareness campaign.
I am not certain what all this means, but let me, this product of respectable public schools and a mother of three middle school students break it down for the panel. Leaving the science part out, (because my struggle with chemistry was due to my ineptness in math), there are very few really good math teachers and there are too many kids in the math class to effectively teach students that do not have a natural aptitude for math. I spend hours with my A/B student son teaching him algebra from really poor textbooks.
And the teaching method does not seem all that different from when I was in middle school when my mother gave up helping me because I had already passed her limited proficiency. Every year it was harder and harder as the classes built upon concepts that I really never mastered from the year before. Is it any wonder that we have a bias against math?
Other countries seem to be able to produce students with better math and science skills then we do. At least that is what we are told. Instead of spending money on a public awareness campaign, maybe we ought to be looking at more successful teaching methods, increasing teacher to student ratios, and dumping the current textbooks that just do not seem to be working. Students today will be the parents of tomorrow, and they will be the only public relations campaign that will matter.
