In a typical North American elementary class, students are separated and labeled as either weak or strong students, especially in mathematics. As these students progress through school, gaps in motivation, ability, and knowledge grow between those who are consistently rewarded for their math… Read more
In a typical North American elementary class, students are separated and labeled as either weak or strong students, especially in mathematics. As these students progress through school, gaps in motivation, ability, and knowledge grow between those who are consistently rewarded for their math abilities and those who are not. By high school, the majority of students have fallen into the second category, and find themselves struggling with math; in 2003, 80 percent of Grade 10 students in Ontario failed to meet basic standards in math. In low-income neighborhoods families often cannot afford to hire tutors, and students who fall behind rarely catch up. Many have trouble getting into a college or a university. They grow up with the idea that they are not as intelligent as other kids, and when the time comes to plan a career, they often settle for unrewarding, low-paying jobs.
The traditional method of teaching mathematics in North America leaves most teachers unprepared to manage the individual strengths and weaknesses of their students. They rarely introduce mathematical concepts in steps that the weakest members of their class will grasp, and few know how to inspire the confidence students need to learn mathematics. Students who have trouble understanding some concepts get bad grades, but rarely get the intervention they need to turn those grades around. Even worse, many teachers bring negative attitudes towards mathematics into their classes. Their own past failures and difficulties in learning mathematics haunt their attempts to teach it. Existing teacher colleges and government interventions struggle to provide them with the tools to make math class a positive and engaging experience for all students.
A great deal of recent research in early childhood education demonstrates that, with very few exceptions, children are born capable of learning anything in the range of human knowledge. Unfortunately, this research has done little to change the way children are being taught. It took the human race many years to accept that the intellectual inferiority of females was a myth, as with the presumed inferiority of various racial groups. John argues that today’s assumptions about the intelligence differences between one child to the next are no different and equally harmful.
Teacher education materials encourage educators to identify “gifted” students and warn them against encouraging false hopes among “weaker” students. Few texts and programs put forward the idea that all children should be expected to do well. Faced with low expectations, children take teachers’ comments and test grades to heart, and decide early on whether or not they have the ability to succeed in school. To their minds, a failure is their own fault, not a failure of the system. Without careful guidance from teachers and parents, they make self-fulfilling prophecies for their future, setting patterns that can be very difficult to break.
Poor teaching in mathematics, perhaps more than in any other subject, quickly turns a good student into a bad one. The myths surrounding the subject encourage children to give up the moment they encounter any difficulty. Because mathematical knowledge is cumulative, a gap in knowledge created in one year of bad teaching can keep a student from succeeding for years to come. Failures in math can easily become failures throughout school, driving a young person away from intellectual pursuits. As class sizes grow, the stakes for mathematics education raise dramatically; without excellent methods for teaching in public schools, gaps quickly grow between the rich students who can afford small classes and private tutors and the poor students who cannot.
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