Why Math Knowledge Is Crucial For Teachers
Q.
It seems kind of mean for people to criticize teachers' colleges for not
requiring future teachers to take a lot of math in college. Especially if
you're just going to teach grade school, why should you have to have that
"hard" stuff? If you're not teaching higher-level math, why should you need to
know more than basic math?
A rather disturbing bit of
information on teacher college education requirements came to light in Kentucky
recently. In that state, it is possible for elementary teachers to graduate
with only a single college math course, below the level of college algebra, in
their curriculum folder.
While college officials said this
very low level course was not remedial, it does appear that it is merely a
retread of a former remedial math course, on about the difficulty level of
middle-school math. That means that the last four or five years of math classes
in a decent high school are more rigorous than this one semester course that a
prospective teacher can take in order to get a college degree in education.
"Dumbed-down" math requirements may
not be that prevalent in the nation's teachers' colleges, but there's a wide
gap between what math training teachers are required to have, vs. other kinds
of disciplines, including business, the sciences, and most other academic
pursuits.
No, a grade-school teacher shouldn't
have to be able to do rocket science or NASA-quality physics demonstrations.
But a lack of proper schooling in the discipline of thinking mathematically has
far-reaching negative consequences.
Teachers who are weak in math may
miss errors in student papers that have calculations in subjects other than
math - history, science, book reports, you name it. So the students don't learn
to think correctly and recognize their own math errors.
A teacher with poor math skills is
much more likely to make errors in gradepoint averaging, to lack the logical
skills to figure out why a student keeps making the same kinds of errors, or to
fail to understand statistics well enough to accurately interpret current
events or a newspaper poll in classroom discussions.
On a broader scale, when educators
as a group are weak in math, they may be pushing for public policies that are
dead wrong, simply because they didn't do the math correctly. You see it in the
push for class-size reductions, which are tremendously expensive, as well as
the push for year-round schooling and free laptop distribution. There's a
"disconnect" between how much things cost and how much they are going to help
student achievement. But those numbers somehow get lost in the shuffle, because
educators aren't comfortable working with them as much as the general public
is.
Widespread innumeracy is an
explanation for why so much of what passes as education "research" is based on
such poor math computation and statistical inaccuracies that it's basically
worthless.
You don't keep a job in the business
world very long if you make math mistakes, especially when you're handling
other people's money. But in education, there's no way to patrol and correct
innumeracy, so the students are stuck with it.
Better for public-policy makers to
put pressure on teachers' colleges to ratchet up the math requirements . . .
and the benefits for both the students and the public will add up.
By Susan Darst Williams • www.GoBigEd.com • Arithmetic,
Etc. 104 • © 2006
