Welcome back to the Fall term. I mostly took a break from writing to this blog over the summer since I didn't think I needed to be posting when everyone was off for the summer. I started writing a few postings when a news article caught my eye but didn't post anything and may come back to them if I have fresh ideas.
I couldn't however pass up commenting on the latest headline in the Toronto Star "Internet teens failing math : Multi-tasking lifestyles, abolition of Grade 13, leaves 'i-generation' ill-prepared for university" from the September 6 paper.
The most interesting thing about this article were the comments online. Articles like these generate a ton of finger pointing: high school teachers, elementary school teachers, the university curriculum, the parents, abolition of grade 13, the curriculum, math itself, textbooks, politicians, standards for teachers, etc.
No short term fixes are going to change the situation. I am teaching a first year class that is supposed to be a bridge for students coming from high school and going into a university level math course (Math 1200: Problems, Conjectures and Proof). One thing I hope that I am able to convey to students in this course is that if they put in the work then they will learn and succeed and this is something that the article acknowledges is lacking with this generation. However I don't doubt that many of the problems with our education system identified in the article and the comments are real.
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The Toronto Star published a sequence of response letters from readers in the editorial section.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thestar.com/comment/article/693924
This article saddens me. While I am not familiar with the initiatives described at York or McMaster, I’m quite familiar with the one from Guelph. Most importantly, I understand their philosophy behind sending the review packages out to incoming students in August. This was NOT intended to make students feel their high school math preparation was inadequate, nor was it intended to suggest that high school teachers weren’t doing their jobs or that incoming freshmen are inherently lazy. Instead, it was written with the belief that students DO care about their success, ARE willing to work hard to achieve it, and that the major hurdle students have to overcome in 1st year math is simply a lack of confidence in their abilities. Completing the problem sets was intended to be a positive, confidence-boosting experience. By reviewing some material in August, students are reminded how much math they DO already know, they appreciate that effort WILL lead to success in their university math studies, plus they have the opportunity to revisit and consolidate any problem areas before the craziness of frosh week. Here is an excerpt from the introductory letter in the Guelph package:
ReplyDelete“Dear Jennifer, Ahmed, John, Peter, Emily, Suri, George, …, whoever you are!
Here is a sad truth from a veteran math professor. One of the biggest fears of many students entering first year is that they will struggle because their math skills are so rusty. Math anxiety is rampant. Even many students whose high school math marks were high come to class worried.
Many should be worried. Math profs, or in fact, profs teaching ANY course that uses or builds on math, will just assume you have your high school math down pat and at your fingertips.
You may not. You shut your books in June and haven’t solved a quadratic equation or found the hypotenuse of a right triangle, or sin(30°) since way back then! By the end of July, your basic math skills and knowledge are surrounded by neural cobwebs!
Have we got a deal for you: the Math Post-Secondary Preparedness Package! MP^3!
Here are 9 problems sets dealing with topics from “Basic Numeracy” to “Exponents and Logarithms”.
This is a FINITE package.
This is a DO-ABLE package…”
The entire U of Guelph package is available at: http://eldar.mathstat.uoguelph.ca/dashlock/Outreach/MP3.html
As mentioned in the article, the response to this package from students was overwhelmingly positive. The Guelph profs. were so pleased with this that *they* were the ones who contacted Ms. Brown to propose an article about a “math ed. success story”, a positive story to start to a new school year. Her initial response was enthusiastic. She followed up and began contacting some other universities. I find it very unfortunate that she missed the chance to write something positive about efforts underway to ease the transition to university math and instead chose to write from such a negative, alarmist perspective. Perhaps this shock value is what sells papers???
(continued on next post)
I’m also troubled by her focus on the statement “on some campuses up to 50 percent fail or quit first year math”. She makes it seem like this is typical in Ontario universities. While, according to Prof. Gibson’s quote this was the case at York, the numbers elsewhere are nowhere near that value (for example, at Guelph 10% would be a more realistic estimate). In fact, those in math departments at other universities must be left scratching their heads wondering what is going on at York. Is this the norm in first year York math courses or was it a statistical blip this past year, maybe due in part to the strike? Perhaps there was just one course with a 50% “unsuccessful” rate and this unfortunately became the focus (after all, it does say “up to 50%”) Or is there something different about York’s incoming freshmen or the nature of their first year math courses? Hopefully the task force can figure this out soon since York certainly doesn’t need any more negative press. And hopefully once York’s math department does come up with constructive solutions, Louise Brown will be back to write an article about them.
ReplyDeleteMe again. I forwarded a copy of my blog comments above to one of the Guelph profs., Jack Weiner (with fingers crossed that I hadn't misrepresented things). He wrote me back and included a message he had written earlier this week in response to some emailed concerns about the Toronto Star's take on the story. With permission, I am posting his statements:
ReplyDelete"Here is the story behind the story.
I emailed reporter Louise Brown with a good news story three weeks ago. Students accepted into our programs at U of G CAN do the math. The problem is the mental cobwebs that form for not having done math for two months or more. And that is why we wrote and U of G mailed out the MP^3. It was a GOOD NEWS story.
Well, Louise emailed back that she thought this was fabulous. She called other campuses for input and repeatedly (if you accept her reporting as factual and non-selective) got these messages:
"These students are bad."
"50% fail or drop."
"The high schools are NOT doing their job."
These are not my messages. The first and third, in my opinion and with lots of anecdotal data, are false. The middle may be true at some institutions but not my place. If and where that is the case, I suggest it is more about problems at the institution.
Here is my recent experience with students who get the marks from the high schools sufficient to make the U of G admissions people smile and say, "Enter!" Last fall, all three streams of first year calculus at U of G had averages in the high sixties to mid seventies and the failure rates were under 10%.
Louise called me back to ask about the 50%. I told her what I wrote in the previous paragraph. That data did not get reported. Guess it was too positive.
So it is my fault this negative slam at students and grades 1 to 12 made the front page, let alone the paper. I got the article started. But the message that emerged was not the positive message I sent and believe.
Think about this: perhaps at the institutions that reported their high failure rates, the students are told the first day, "Up to 50% of you are going to fail. We warned you. Now get to work."
Here is what happens at U of G: "You have met the admission standards of U of G. That tells us you CAN succeed. We WANT every one of you to succeed. We will do our best to teach well. Your job: embrace the strategies we present and work hard using these strategies. And you will succeed."
If these are accurate descriptions of the first year first class experience (and it certainly is an accurate report about U of G), then is it any surprise that the U of G success rate is so high?
I wanted to spread good news. That reporter (or maybe her editor) really let me and the public down. That negative message about our elementary and secondary teachers, schools, and students is just wrong, wrong, wrong."
While neither Jack nor I would claim that all is perfect with the current system, or that a package of review questions is a panacea for all struggles that first year math students might face, viewing the glass as 3/4 full rather than half empty goes a long way towards motivating and encouraging students to work hard. And, in the words of Mike, "if they put in the work then they will learn and succeed".
Nice reporting! First, even before you got the response from Jack Weiner I think that you hit the nail on the head: "Perhaps this shock value is what sells papers???" My assessment is "yep."
ReplyDeleteThere are almost too many issues to discuss here, let me touch on one or two.
I barely read the article, I thought it was unhelpful and not too insightful. I spent a lot more time scanning the comments. Everyone had a finger to point. On rare occasions the suggestions were good, for the most part I don't think blame game isn't very helpful unless it identifies an issue that can be fixed.
Is the 50% statistic accurate? Even if it is, I doubt it gives a clear picture of what is going on.
York has introduced a first year math course (that I mention in the posting) called "Problems, Conjectures and Proof" to try to help first year students succeed in their future math classes. Starting last year it is required for all incoming math majors. There is lots to say about this course after the first year (including f*&%@! strike didn't make it easy). FYI, we don't warn the students that 50% are going to fail, we try to prepare them for what is to come.
I had a discussion this morning with the very Peter Gibson mentioned in the article. We are talking about this very subject because he teaches the 2nd year courses and I teach this 1st year prep course. There is a transition that needs to be made from the computational/memorization level of mathematics to this notion of proof and explanation.
We were by no means 'lamenting' or 'blaming' high school preparation. The tone of the TO Star article would seem way off base from our conversation. But because we are also the two teaching "Fundamentals" and "Analysis" we see what we can do to help prepare the high school teachers to understand what their students will find when they enter university.
I sent an email to Peter asking him about the origin of the 50% drop out rate statistic. Here is how he responded:
ReplyDelete"That statistic was computed by Kim Maltman, and, if you trust his calculations, it incorporates not just failures, but drops. Of course what you count as a drop entails some sort of arbitrary cutoff (do students who were registered in MATH 1013 for just the first three days of class count as drops?). So the figure might be less gloomy if someone else were to try to calculate it. I talked to the reporter, Louise Brown, for about an hour, and spent much of it saying positive things. But she picked out just the nasty statistic and the statement that students are inadequately prepared to attribute to me. I can't say I'm totally surprised; and in the end I think it's more or less accurate."
The high failure rate does not reflect all math profs who teach 1st year calculus at York. I went to York math prof's web sites and 3 of them had final grades for 1st year calculus:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.math.yorku.ca/~huaiping/teaching/m1013/MATH1013_F2008_FLG.xls.htm
Applied Calculus (taught by Prof Huaiping Zhu (I counted 12 failures out of a total of 101 students = 12% failure rate).
http://www.yorku.ca/ssachan/M1300/Grades.htm
Differential Calculus w/ Applications - taught by Prof Ada Chan (I counted 5 failures out of 43 students = 12% failure rate)
Then there is Prof Kim Maltman with at least 15 failures http://people.math.yorku.ca/kmaltman/1013su09_gradestopost_jul20_09.pdf
It's important to teach students so they can learn and be successful. I wish I could have seen the grade distribution of other profs. But one thing is clear from Prof Zhu and Prof Chan -- not all 1st year profs have huge failure rates.
Louis, I think that this statistic is a bit more interesting and useful than the 40-50% failure/drop rate. 12% of the class failing seems to put more of a face on the problem and it is suddenly something we can compare to classes in other disciplines. Its not good, but we can ask the question, "why are those students failing?" and hope to answer it while I don't think it is as easy to give a short list of reasons why so many start the course but don't finish.
ReplyDeleteA reporter for the Excalibur contacted me over the blog posting and because I am teaching the 1200 course. I told him something that does not come out clear in the T.O. Star article, namely, that we don't know why students are not succeeding in these courses. The finger pointing at the school system does not get to the heart of the problem. My personal feeling is that it has something to do with the general public attitude that it is ok to not be good at or like math and therefore it is ok to give up on these courses.
It used to be if you want a high mark in high school, go to summer school or night school. That's no longer that true as students have now gone the private school route to buy their marks. It's truly sad...Two years ago, I collected data at my school comparing the final marks of students who took private school buy your credit to their previous math mark at the high school -- there was a 25% difference! I shared this data with the math heads in my board.
ReplyDeleteI believe one reason why some students are not succeeding in first year mathematics is their very inflated mark they bought with $. I've heard that the ministry now requires course codes to be identified differently if granted from a private school. But do universities take this into consideration? What about students repeating high school courses in order to get that high mark?
I will not forget one student who explained to me why he would pay good $ to buy his credit in private school: "Investment for scholarships."
We've had students at my school buy 6 grade 12U credits -- superintendent forces the principal to sign the graduation diploma since majority of courses were taken at the high school. I heard Waterloo did not accept this student (even with the A+ average)...
I confronted my students in Math 1200 today with the apparent accusations of the T.O. Star article. Since they are the ones who are not passing their first year courses, I asked them what might be going on and to respond to what it had to say.
ReplyDeleteWhile I got a few responses, none seemed very satisfying to me. One or two said that the calculus instructors seem to make the course unnecessarily complicated by introducing a lot of abstraction and too much vocabulary. Another point said that the instructors didn't put in the effort to make the material easy to learn (e.g. with mnemonics). A third pointed out the i-generation's notorious lack of abilitity to concentrate.
I left that conversation feeling a bit empty. I'm not sure what I was expecting from speaking to 40 pre-accused individuals asked to defend themselves.
I forgot about one response that should have shocked and stuck with me. "50% doesn't seem out of the ordinary, the failure rate at my school was more like 90%."
ReplyDelete1) I think we need to be very, very careful making blanket statements about private schools and inflated grades. Yes, there are issues with *some* private schools, but by no means should all be lumped together. Sure am glad this is not my problem to solve though.
ReplyDelete2) High school failure rate of 90%! I find this hard to believe. Before curriculum revision a few years ago, we did have failure rates approaching 50% in some of the grade 9 applied math classes. But now, few (if any) math courses at my school have failure rates above 10-12% or approximately 3 students in a class of 25.
However, I find it interesting that in my 12U Functions class I have more than half of the students repeating the course, trying to upgrade their mark. Many of those had grades in the 70-80% range from last year. Or perhaps as Louis says, this is not that uncommon.
Alice;
ReplyDeleteI should clarify about private schools -- I'm referring to the ones where you can take a course and buy your mark. I'm not referring to private schools or independent schools where parents send them children and pay big bucks for an education. The buy your credit and grade operate after school or on weekends. The difference is there are private schools and independent schools that pride themselves on giving the best education to the students, while there are others that you can pay for a credit and mark.