The Teaching of Math - Page 3

I had a teacher in 7th grade that made the same type of statement the first day of class. I went to a very strict catholic school and one of my friends was always getting into trouble. The first day of class Mr. Smith ( good teacher, not as scary as some of the nuns) had Mike sit in the front row right in front of him. Mike gave this defiant look to him. Mr. Smith walked over picked him up by the front of his shirt and put him out the window. Mike was told to stand there and pay attention for the rest of the class. No one ever did anythng wrong in his class. He turned out to also be one of the better teachers. You could do that 40 years ago.

I had this one teacher Mr. Lamb who had a very monotonous voice and he insisted on reading us the Illiad. Anyway many students would fall asleep so he came up with the "alarm box" so you would fall asleep at your desk and he would throw an empty copy paper box at your head. Either that or he would sneak up on you and bang a rolled up copy of the times on your desk. Scared the crap out of you and was very amusing for the rest of the class.

I'm sure your classes are both entertaining and illuminating. That is an excellent story. I think if I was a teacher I would feel compelled to torture the students a bit, I'm sure you must get to deal with plenty of dumbasses.

Phoenix, AZ has the best community college system in the US. The teachers there get paid more than university professors, the classes are smaller, and the courses are usually cover more material.

By FAR, the best math teachers I've ever had have been at Phoenix Community College. I took Trigonometry and Brief Calculus, both of which I made an A in with very little studying simply due to the teachers.

By contrast, I took an algebra class at University of Arizona in Tucson and HATED IT. I dropped it halfway through the semester even though it was remedial for me. The class size was enormous and the teacher sucked. I went directly into trig and then brief calc from there with no other math.

Of course, this is not a large sampling of schools.

The Illiad... it brings back great memories. I had to translate it for my Latin class summer assignment between junior and senior year of high school. I was one of the lucky ones and it only took one month. Or maybe it was because my parents required us to have an hour of study time everyday, even during the summer. To get back on topic, my wife and I have the same idea about learning and school. We are hands on with our kids. When they get their assignments, things don't get pushed off till the last minute. The same with math. When I was in school, a new topic would be started and they would try to get you to use a cookie cutter approach to solving all the problems the same way. After several weeks of doing this and having to solving problems that might take 2 pages you were them given short cuts or rules that would then knock the problem down to 2 or 3 lines. So instead of spending a half hour with many chances of making a simply error because of penmanship or having formulas not lined up right, you get a power rule that takes a couple of minutes. Our kids enjoy math and I believe that is because they know how to apply the proper rules to problems. It is great when they come up and say "Here is the way we are suppose to do our work but there has got to be a better way." That is when they seem to learn the most. I will say that for the multiplication tables, rote was they way my kids learned. After being shown the basic principal of how to multiply sometimes you just have to menorize.

He was lazy.

Okay,

I belive that this is the perfect thread to help me rant about a recent grade that i got, while keeping context of the thread. Two days ago i received a pretty shitty mark on an essay i did. Usually if i receive a pretty mark it's because i deserved it. I then suck it up, learn my mistakes and make sure not to do them again. Not so this time. I lost nearly 30% for, take a seat, "thinking too much". Now let me give you the direct quote of the t.a's comment "You actually write fairly well, but you thought too much. Next time, to raise your grade, you should leave behind your own thinking and follow the professor's."

That ladies and gents is what they are teaching us to do in university. To follow our professor's ideas and beliefs and to leave our own behind. #^%# And after all this people are all suprised that today's generation of students lack important skills. It's because we're put between either thinking for our own and getting a shitty gpa or following the prof and getting A+'s. Don't get me wrong i didn't lose all the points just because of "thinking too much". My grammar obviously isn't perfect but i did lose points in that department, but those ones are understandable.

[/rant]

Dear lord... take the paper to the prof or some academic review committee...

I dunno...

I want to see an assignment sheet and a scanned copy of the paper with the t.a.'s comments.

The T.A. is absolutely right. (S)he did you a TREMENDOUS FAVOR by telling you!

If you're a liberal arts major, you MUST agree with the teacher on all the things they say, no matter what.

Otherwise, you are taking a huge risk in addition to wasting your time.

Usually, spelling out the professor's argument is easier than formulating your own and has probably already been done by them, in class. Not only that, but the professor, like most idiots, thinks that they know all the facts, and have come to the only logical conclusion from those facts. Therefore, if you don't think the way they do, you must be ignorant.

Welcome to college!

Liberal arts is all about restating exactly what the professor says on paper, even if you think otherwise. This is an EXTREMELY useful skill in the real world. The better you convince them that you agree, the better you do.

You're probably the argumentative type. For a single day, try and fake agreement on everything with anyone. Dicussions will last 20 seconds and end with 'lemme buy you a beer!' nearly every time. It's remarkable.

P.S., as someone said earlier, you probably did the assignment wrong anyway, which is what the person was probably trying to tell you. The rest of my post was just there to rant about why I went from political science to pre-med.

Hey,

Pm me your email and i'll send you the copy of the assignment (scanned) and my essay.

I'm not a liberal arts major, i'm studying science. This is, however, a philosophy class so i guess it falls under the arts.

I've emailed the t.a and he said what you guys are saying, that i didn't follow the assignment correctly. I'll be meeting with him to discuss this, if he's right i'll retract all i said earlier.

I agree, take it to the prof. That comment is unacceptable.

Isn't 75% of a Liberal Arts degree about learning how to kiss your proffessor's ass?