Canada's fall in math-education ranking sets off red flags

This does no really surprise me. I know people love to attack teachers so I hope this is taken at face value.

Having a child in grade school really opened my eyes to the educational problems we are having. Something drastic has changed since we were in school. There is a culture of "not my problem" in the ranks of teachers now. Not all of them, but the culture as a whole is... We get BS notes home about tiny infractions like "your kid chose to not participate in X", while any time he needs help reading or in math it is all sent home for the parents to deal with. Maybe we just go to a bad school (doubtful, it is brand new in a very nice neighbourhood), but it certainly seems like this generation of teachers or our education administrators have broken a once great system.

The hard sciences have suffered under the more liberal regimes in education (in North America) because you can't give good grades for 'self-esteem' reasons in disciplines that are absolutely black and white in their quantification and assessment. Either you know math, chemistry, science, engineering, and etc. or you don't. You can't justify giving a kid a passing grade in math just to make him/her 'feel good' when the kid can't perform basic math functions.

There are no free passes for underperforming minorities or intellectually challenged students.

Conversely, a growing number of so-called 'educators' who are selected to teach these disciplines are themselves all too often unable to pass the same courses that they're charged with instructing.

My recommendation for any parent who really cares about their kids excelling in these disciplines is not to depend upon the public schools and the teacher's unions to prepare your kids for life but to instead seek out private sources to give your kid every possible competitive advantage in life.

The following resource is FREE and it's fantastic:

http://www.khanacademy.org/

^^ +1 on the Khan Academy! Many Universities like Princeton and MIT also have lots of free-online audit courses you can take.

When we were in Taiwan, my eldest was doing math in Grade 6 that they didn`t start touching on until Grade 9 here in Canada, and in my wife`s Grade 7 math class, the kids struggle with simple addition and subtraction, but that is also partially due to the fact that they are native and unmotivated......those few who are motivated get ridiculed and are called whitey wannabes Our youngest who went to school there, until last December, is able to mental math that was once accepted as the norm for his grade when I went to school, but now ranks him as advanced....only trouble is getting him to show his work .

The powers that be, will not challenge students, do not punish laziness and eliminate honour rolls because they don`t want to hurt the feelings of those who aren`t motivated or bright enough to try. The lowest common denominator seems to be the target rather than the highest.....they are creating a society of deltas and gammas at the expense of alphas and betas.

Bart, liberal elites don`t want thinkers.....they want to be the ones who run the show and tell others how to think, because they know what`s best for society

Actually, in Canada right now, the hard sciences are suffering at the hands of a Conservative government. They are simply hostile to science and scientists.

The problem doesn't fit nicely into a partisan dichotomy.

School has sucked for a long time. When I was a kid, I was quite gifted in science. But I could never draw worth a crap. So I couldn't get an A out of the teacher, because you had to draw a picture on the cover page of your experiment. My mom complained, but the teacher was just following orders, and didn't care enough to question them.

Most teachers were like that, but there were also those special few teachers who I can still vividly remember to this day. My son has one of those right now--a guy who inspires him, and who cares.

My advice is the same as Bart's though--don't rely on the school system to educate your kids. School is, for the most part, a factory to churn out compliant citizens.

Alberta is anything BUT a liberal regime...the federal government is also a Conservative one.

So much for that 'theory'.

Your Khan Academy link is great for kids, but if anyone else wants something more advanced, is fantastic!

There's been a lot of Funding pressure on most school systems for a couple decades now. Does anyone think this would not have had an impact?

This comment sums it up for me.


Let's keep refusing to fail students.
Let's keep teaching the "new math"
Let's keep confusing math skills like addition with problem solving of knowing when to add.
Let's keep training our teachers from a failed system.
Let's keep protecting student failure as well as incompetent teachers.
Let's keep no one accountable
Let's see where that gets us in future tests.

Seems to me Watson, we know what the solution is, we just don't have the courage to tackle the problem.

To say nothing of the complete lack of any kind of discipline in the schools today.

Couldn't pay me enough to teach in Canada; there just isn't enough money.

My daughter's fall in her math-education ranking is making me see red. What is it about adolescent girls that makes them suddenly unable to cope with math ed.? She was doing just fine, then puberty ... bango ... can't add up her fingers and toes.

This isn't a Liberal vs Conservative issue. I went to university with a guy who was more Right wing in his thinking than even our current government, this was almost 20 years ago. We did a project together and not only was he lazy (his dad was loaded apparently) but he had to be one of the least creative people I had ever met, guy was a walking airhead and he was graduating. I kid you not, this guy is now a teacher...it makes no sense to me how someone who was so obviously "stale" in his thoughts and even problem solving abilities could now bestow his knowledge on to others...

Canada isn't the only country with problems, U.S is also struggling, the difference is that other Western countries really drive home the reward for those who are great in math and science, in Canada we tend to reward mediocrity. "You don't need math or science to drive a bus son". Guy with Phd is making $70k a year with 5 days vacation, guy with grade 12 who focused on drama classes is making $125k a year, with union protection, big vacations and sick leave simply to drive a bus. Where is the motivation to achieve when it is not recognized nor rewarded accordingly?

Creativity is just as if not more important than just rote skills. This is as big a danger to the West, if we suppress free thought, free thinking, the use of both sides of the brain, than we really stifle innovation. What good is it to be superior at math if you cannot open your brain cells to make a better mousetrap? This is what industries require; creativity, logic and even handed ways to look at the world. in engineering and management. In my opinion the more "free" a nation, the more a nation is raised to challenge and question anything and everything the more innovative they will be.

That's the thing about teaching: it doesn't require much in the way of intelligence. If you are somewhat dim but have enough tenacity to get a degree, and you are too stupid to work in a real job, there's always opportunities to teach.

ha ha ha

Joking.

On the labour front, they could ease up the barriers to entry. You don't need a university degree to teach, at least in the lower grades. You need to be good with kids. School boards seem rather weighted on the administrative end too.

We don't reward those who are great in science and math?

Apparently you haven't worked with an engineer recently - most of them make far more than $125k after they have five or ten years experience under their belt. The half dozen or so that I know make closer to 200k annually (with stock options and other benefits are factored in). Others working in scientific fields like medicine, pharmacy, etc also make lots of cash. Same goes for computer programming (you typically need strong math/physics backgrounds to do well) - many of them make big salaries too.

Further, many PhDs make solid salaries (80k-100k) and if they become dean/ass't dean, they can earn well over 100K. Many working in academic science/math also often run research labs with hundreds of thousands or even millions in funding.

No, we reward the people who excel in math and/or sciences.

The problem is motivating people to stick with math/sciences through university. Engineering, medicine and many other disciplines are incredibly difficult and it seems like too many kids want to take the easy path in school.

How is it that quote goes: "We spend the first two years of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 16 teaching them to shut up and sit down!" Something like that.

Teaching has got to be the only profession in the world where there is a massive over abundance of qualified people trying to get teaching jobs, but at the same time the wages increase, tenured jobs are almost a given, and super long summer vacations still exist.

I for one want to see some competition in the field, and I am VERY pro union. I just wish they would start grading teachers on their ability to TEACH, not their ability to supposedly follow a lesson plan to the T then blame the kid, parents or society whenever a student has trouble learning. THAT is your ENTIRE job. You went to school to learn how to make kids LEARN.

Short of parents discounting the teachers or saying school is dumb or learning is for nerds there is nothing more a parent should be required to do in order for their kid to become educated. My kid spends 8 hours a day with a so called professional teacher, then comes home in grade 1 with 2 hours of homework... wtf?