But interesting the different levels of education in different countries. I looked at the amount of homework my borrowed grandkids did against my own kids ok 20 years difference but French kids do far more every night
I tried helping my youngest to do multiplication and she did it totally different to how I was taught and a friend when I started work did addition again totally different
Rules change
In English I can never remember where the ‘ apostrophe goes with the s don’t ever remember being taught
I did my first 4 years of schooling in the Catholic education system in NSW (1967-1970).
I was NEVER taught the alphabet - or - times tables!
After 1970 - I kinda missed nearly two years of school (travelled with my parents and siblings in Europe - mostly Greece - was there long enough to learn a fair bit of the lingo - mostly forgotten now - but I can still read Greek letters [lower case ones can be tricky though]).
When we got back to Australia in mid '72 - I didn’t go straight back to school - which was fortunate (I think so anyway) - we stayed in a friend’s holiday house on the seaside (Port Stephen’s in NSW - near Newcastle) while my Dad stayed in Sydney looking for work. We had a TV - and we’d all (me and 3 siblings) watch Sesame Street - that’s how I learned the alphabet - and I knew enough to know that “zee” was actually “zed”
Moved to Perth WA (not Washington State!) in December '72 and started school (grade SIX!) in late Jan '73 - me and my next brother we so far behind - it was rather small school (there was 1 boy, and 3 girls in Grade 7 [yeah in WA - Grade 7 wasn’t high school]) - the headmaster assigned a visiting student teacher to teach me and my brother the “algorithms” for doing subtraction, addition, multiplication and short division - they put two desks in the assembly area for us… But I still didn’t know the times tables - and think I just did addition in my head to figure out stuff for multiplication and division). I learned to do long division at another school we all switched to - still in Perth - in mid/late 1973… And I think it was there I learned about the decimal point - but still struggled with that in my first year of highschool (year 8) in Perth - but got my head around it by the end of that year…
Anyway - it turns out a lot of Aussie didn’t get times tables by rote in the 1960’s or early 70’s in primary school either!
I started Year 9 of high school in Melbourne in 1976 - and opted to be in the most basic maths class - and we had a great teacher - he was a Seppo (Yank) or Canook - Mr Hargreaves - and he was shocked to learn that at least half the class didn’t know their times-tables - so he made us go and buy blank “index” cards (or maybe he gave them to us?) and write out the times tables on each card and learn them by “rote” - it sounds boring - but he was such a good teacher - he motivated and encouraged us! Even as homework!
Great teachers make all the difference in the world! Lousy teachers (like sadistic nuns) can ruin your education…
I still kinda hate mathematics in some ways - especially stuff like algebra and trigonometry - and I’ve never even touched calculus (I don’t really even know what it is!).
But I can still do big number multiplication and long division on paper… and even relatively simple stuff like statistics… But - 'cause I’m lazy - I’ll use a computer - and - more often than not, a spreadsheet - not a calculator application…
In the 1950’s it was tables by rote, at least in public schools.
We learnt multiplication and long division of pounds, shillings, and pence … non decimal currency. It was great training in number bases.
Also getting the syllabus in order helps. Some topics are prerequisites for others.
At first year uni they tried to teach physics without the maths prerequesites… stuff like vectors needs to be understood before you tackle mechanics. I nearly failed physics.
When I started my comp-sci degree - as a “mature age” student (the year I turned 30) - we had a Mathematics for Computer Science first year unit to complete…
I failed it on my first attempt…
I passed on the 2nd attempt (but flunked the exam - luckily that was the ONLY unit in that degree course that didn’t require an exam pass to pass the unit - I scraped in about 48 or 49% for the exam)…
Anyway - I realised it wasn’t what I wanted to study - so switched to another science degree - i.e. “Information Technology” instead of “Computer Science”… And I didn’t even finish that! For most of those 5 years I was doing it “night school” and working… And - some of that work was after hours and on-call (had to carry a bleeper / pager) - so I dropped out (not officially - I just didn’t re-enroll for new units in the 6th year of the undertaking). I got maybe 66% of the units out of the way - but never finished…
That is so true. I had a superb maths teacher who also taught computing at secondary school. Thanks to his encouragement I went from bottom of class to top and ended up teaching and working in computing myself. I will always be thankfull to his efforts.
This weekend we met one of my wife formar students who was ready to drop out of school when she took him on and he is now doing his masters in music at the paris académie, singing in opéras around the world and chef of several leading choirs. His praise for my wife efforts were superb.
Having taught both of these courses in UK there is a lot of it which is great theory but has little practical value. My step son finished his computer science and télécommunications a few years back here but kept failing the maths part after 3 attempt he just scrapped through to get the qualification. I looked at the maths papers and not sure I would have passed them. A lot of the questions you would just get a calculator and do.
The practical value comes from learning how to learn.
It is said that Arts graduates make the best computer people… certainly not because of the practical value of what they learn, but more likely because they learn to be innovative . If you want a creative solution, ask an artist, not a scientist.
