[Latro]

Originally Posted by roninpro To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I'm always a little bit baffled about the fascination (or even obsession) with teaching projectile motion as a real-world application. There's nothing wrong with it, but the example is overused to the point that authors and teachers show a serious lack of breadth in their experience / knowledge. There are many other topics out there that can be taught even with no calculus: cryptography (elementary number theory), art theory (projective geometry), music theory (elementary number theory), image processing (linear algebra / matrices), GPS devices (classical algebra), computer science (elementary number theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, logic), and the list goes on. Even applications aside, it may also be important to respect the history of mathematical developments. Looking at the pitfalls and triumphs of mathematicians of the past shows the context in which each result appears and that there have been real and serious problems to be worked out. Nothing is more dull and discouraging than the all too common line "Vector spaces are very important in mathematics. We shall now study them.", to be followed by a long list of seemingly arbitrary and unmotivated axioms.

Right, though actually I was saying something rather radical, which is that you could teach simple calculus and hence simple applied examples to moderately gifted students as early as late elementary or early middle school. This would require getting to algebra faster, but I suspect that could be done too; many of the students in my classes (we used Accelerated Math, which is an automated worksheet-generating program that steadily advances the content, so not all of us were working on the same material) were working on things that amounted to very basic algebra without realizing it as early as 4th grade.

But yes, if you're willing to dive into the math that is "off the beaten path" a bit (not really, but just not in the usual "algebra->trig->calculus->ODEs" path), and are willing to teach why people should care about this as well (e.g. don't just say "vector spaces are awesome, here's what they do", and THEN get into why you care), then you can do some really cool stuff.

[Collide]

I think the problem lies with the lack of competent science teachers. If you have a talent in math or science, you have much better job offers in terms of monetary compensation. This combined with the lack of people skills often common in STEM majors can make a terrible communicator. Bad teachers lead to incompetent and uninspired students.

[scorpiomover]

Originally Posted by Psychotropic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Not quite refuting, but I think part of the problem is finding people to relate to. My high school has an engineering program for motivated students (the program requires additional classes). I was in the pilot class and one of our major problems was recruiting girls (15% girls in the pilot class). This was a problem due to the politics of the area and the fact that it was a public high school. An expensive special program that has 85% girls in it is "progress" while a similar program with 85% boys would be perceived as sexist. The problem was confidence, but I think a lot of high school boys and girls suffer from confidence problems due to the rapid physical and emotional changes that they are going through. Where girls differed from boys was in their confidence to build something as opposed to just solving a physics problem. Almost all the boys in our program grew up with Legos or some equivalent that allowed them to build from an early age. None of the girls grew up with those things and I think it affected their confidence. In spite of this, after 3 years the program was around 50/50. This was accomplished by using the existing girls to help recruit other girls from the physics classes. Having enthusiastic girls who learned a lot from the program come back and recruit had a strong effect on prospective girls. We also emphasized to everyone that the program is designed to accommodate students with a wide range of design and construction abilities. This likely had more of an effect on girls than boys with regard to their confidence. It is one of those things that requires a concentrated effort; it takes women to get women into these fields. I also feel that it can be difficult for women/men in male/female dominated fields because most people tend to relate to their own gender better than the opposite gender. I am finding this in my graduate program. The administration/lecturers are roughly 80% women and they seem to be a lot less effective at providing academic counseling to males. They also do not view a gender imbalance as a problem (nor the trend of increasing numbers of women and declining males in the field).

This is one of the reasons why there seems to be a lot of intransigence towards balance being shifted in favour of women. Where the men have most of the power, women declare this is not fair, and things are changed to at least 50/50. Where the women have most of the power, the situation remains unfairly badly for the men. This then suggests to many men, that if they support female rights, they will end up in an equally tyrannical society, with no benefit to humanity, only that the one main change is that men suffer a lot, while women get to enjoy the high life. It makes sense to sometimes make your life a bit harder, if everyone will benefit, because the overall is one of great benefit for the species.

But if the end result does nothing much for humanity, and it's only a question of who is on top and who is on bottom, then it doesn't make sense to make efforts to put yourself on the bottom.

That's not how it has to be. But the mind doesn't decide based on possibilities of what you MIGHT do, only on what it sees happening consistently, and in this, we see such a consistent pattern, that it is not surprising to me, how many men are opposed to feminist changes. So the results are dictated by science.

[Stargaze]

I've never been able to learn Algebra because the teacher I had would FLY right through the lessons and when I'd ask a question she would just give me the answer and not show me *HOW* to get the answer. I failed the class twice and gave up after that. I think if I had a better teacher, I'd learn it.