We went to a party attended by a lot of teachers and professors. As typical at a gathering of educators, there was a lot of talk about public school politics. Since, I'm an adjunct at a private school (in my spare time), I knew to keep my mouth shut.
Florida's legislature just completed a 60 day session that shamelessly panders to the self-destructive right wingers that voted them into office. The cuts to education are non-sensical, but I knew that more than a few of my fellow revelers voted for these idiots and were largely having a buyer's remorse session.
This is what it is to live in Florida. Many teachers are part of the Democratic party, but a significant number of them are best described as Blue Dogs or DINOs. In reality, they are closet Kool Aid sippers. To fit in with this crowd I had to either go along with their DINO, Blue Dog ideals or spout what I believe and have no one to talk to. This meant I had to believe school vouchers and all charter schools are bad in all circumstances and only teachers know how to run schools. This same group hasn't seen an anti-abortion control law they didn't like including Florida's recent ultrasound requirement. Like I said, I intended to keep my mouth shut on education and kept on changing the subject whenever I was in the danger zone. I just wasn't up to talking politics, healthcare or education. I wanted a night off.
That didn't last through the evening.
I was asked how my daughter is doing. She has 16 credits to go to her bachelor's degree but it might as well be 2 more years. She's up in Michigan licking her math wounds. She's trying to gear up for what she has to do to complete her degree. She had her math ass kicked this last term - again. My daughter, the high school mathlete can't hack collegiate Calculus II, Differential Equations or Multivariate Analysis (aka Calculus III on steroids) well enough to get a 73.5% or higher which is a requirement for her Physics B.A. degree. She can get 70% and 71%, but not the 73.5% deemed necessary. I mentioned that our current strategy is to find an instructor who's actually teaching these classes in another school in town (we have 6 major colleges and universities in town to choose from) and transfer in the credits so she can get her degree.
Well, that statement set the mouse amongst the pooties.
How could I say that! Was I saying the instructors weren't teaching! (That would be sacrilegious in this group.) What's strange is that I wasn't criticizing Chibi's elementary, middle or high school math experience. Her high school math classes were the last classes where actual math instruction occurred. We complain about education and math education in particular, but Chibi got decent math education through to her Senior year in high school. She did well there. It's university math outside the physics department that's giving her trouble. She aces all her Physics & Calculus classes that require her to calculate vortexes, how moisture flows through tail pipes, predicting the sizes of hail stones or whatever; these aren't difficult for her. It's the math for math's sake classes, where there's a bare equation with no real world application or context for solving it that kicks her butt. The lack of practical application simply stymies her mathlete abilities.
She isn't alone. I've admitted to her that her collegiate math experience is pretty much the same as what I went through 30 years ago. (I know this because I used to observe college math instructors give classes in a previous job.) The U.S. is ranking low in the math abilities department and it doesn't look like we're going to turn this boat around anytime soon. We certainly won't as long as we keep on trying to solve the problem with 100 year old solutions.
I didn't say that at the party. What I said was that her calculus professors are mostly doctoral candidates that resent the classroom duties they must fulfill as part of their financial aid package and if we don't get math professors who love to teach calculus, the U.S. isn't going to improve their math ability rankings in the future. I mentioned Chibi's struggles are because she is expected to teach herself the material and that her university puts Calculus II & III demonstrators in the classroom, but no Calculus instructors. She's expected to pay an additional $60 per hour for a private calculus tutor outside of class. She did that once and got a 1:1 demonstration of problems, again no instruction. She's had professors state in class that they expect all first attempters in her class to fail and sure enough their prophecy came true. I mentioned that a teacher who makes statements like that has a attitude problem toward their students. I was surprised when someone agreed with me, her son who had top math marks in Calculus in high school is getting his math butt kicked over at the Crimson Tide for the same reason.
That was more than the teachers in the discussion could take. How dare we criticize instructors. Any instructors! For any reason!
Well, if the shoe fits....
I had a conversation with one of Chibi's calculus instructors last fall. He had no idea who I was when he spoke with me as I was in an instructor work area preparing to teach a class. He was going on that his teaching his Calc II class was a waste of his time and that he had better things to do than waste it on students who have little interest in doing the math work. I listened as he complained that he was required to teach the classes as part of his FA package. In his case, he's got it backwards; he's wasting the University's money and the student's time. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do. This university is more interested in the prestige their math department brings them rather than the satisfaction of competently instructing students in higher math concepts.
It's not that we don't have competent calculus instructors. I know an unemployed professor with a doctorate in both math and math education. She can't get a contract to teach the math classes at this university, because she already has her doctorates. The students lose. This university could have competent Calculus professors, but they choose to employ Calculus demonstrators instead. These doctoral candidates have never taken a math instruction methods class and have little interest in teaching. Teaching is something they do while they journey to where they want to go.
This was the same in the physics department. The professors at MIT noticed that they were losing way too many students and banded together with other universities and created a new approach to physics instruction. This university joined MIT in making these changes to physics education. It's working. It would be a good idea for them to do the same for calculus. Until then, our choices are: 1. Change her major so that a 70% in calculus II and III are acceptable 2. Take the class elsewhere and transfer the credits or 3. Give up altogether (like a lot of students do).
One thing is for certain, as long as we continue to teach collegiate math using 100 year old methods, the U.S. math competencies will remain where they are.