Learning algebra in my 60s

Re:Learning algebra in my 60s by thesuitonym on Monday August 08, 2022 @10:31AM (#32385841)

I'll start my reply with this: I'm not a teacher, nor am I an understander of maths, but whenever I talk to teachers at any level, and especially mathematics teachers, they lament that they want to teach differently, but due to time constraints, or predetermined lesson plans, or any number of reasons, they simply can't. They have to teach in a way that gets students enough knowledge to pass the test, but only those that seem to have a natural aptitude end up really learning anything. The rest discard the information as soon as it's no longer necessary.

I don't think it's a disservice to teachers to say it's a better way of teaching, because they say it themselves. It's just a model that only really works one on one. It can't be done in a room full of 30 bored children, and especially in a room of 400 university sophomores who are ready to get out of class to go to a party.

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Re:Learning algebra in my 60s by dkarl on Monday August 08, 2022 @11:50AM (#32387035)

You are saying some things that are guaranteed to generate skepticism. First, that the great power of this teaching method only manifests under circumstances that very few people get to experience. Second, that concepts make skills "trivial" and "intuitive" but testing skills prevents teachers from teaching concepts.

Both of those statements call into question the effectiveness of what you're promoting.

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Re:Learning algebra in my 60s by Viliam1234 on Monday August 08, 2022 @05:54PM (#32391592)

It is okay to be suspicious when it sounds like someone just made this up, but actually in educational research it is one of the few well known things.

See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

Anyone who tried both teaching and tutoring knows that the difference is just incredibly large. A part of it is that 1:1 you can pay more attention individually; a similar argument can be used in favor of smaller classes. But the other part is that as a tutor, you are free to actually use your best judgment, while in school it is more of "yeah, I know that I should do X, but the rules say that I have to do Y instead".

The school is just insanely ineffective, for various reasons. You need to follow a predetermined schedule, whether it makes sense for the given classroom or not. Your students are expected to already have some knowledge from their previous grade, and if they don't (which happens quite often) you don't get any extra time to catch up. There are all kinds of disruptions, like students who never pay attention and interrupt you and their classmates during lessons, but you must proceed at the speed that was designed for a hypothetical classroom without disruptions. The school inspection randomly checks whether you follow the latest fad, usually based on some pseudoscience, like whether your lessons are okay for both visual and kinesthetic learners, or whether your math lessons are sufficiently decolonialized.

So the same teacher who fails to teach her class fractions at school, may be a successful tutor during the afternoon and explain the fractions properly.

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