Sunday, January 13, 2008
Opinion

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The teaching of mathematics in this country is a case of the intellectually blind leading the potentially intellectually sighted...

Children play at an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in South Korea in 2005. CREDIT: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

By Bob Zaslavsky

The teaching of mathematics in this country is a case of the intellectually blind leading the potentially intellectually sighted, until the potentially sighted become as intellectually blind as their leaders.

As part of a Michigan State University project called “Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century,” Professor William Schmidt and a team of 11 researchers have produced a preliminary study of middle school mathematics teaching in the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Bulgaria and Mexico, titled “The Preparation Gap: Teacher Education for Middle School Mathematics in Six Countries.” The areas of mathematics tested were algebra, functions, number, geometry and statistics.

The report is preliminary to a study of both elementary and middle school mathematics teaching in 19 countries. However, the report’s findings are not preliminary: They are solid, and distressing.

In terms of overall mathematical knowledge, the United States and Mexico were ranked at the bottom. In Chapter One, the report states, “Taiwanese and South Korean future teachers typically covered about 80 percent or more of advanced math topics in their training, while those in Mexico and the U.S. covered less than 50 percent.”

Therefore, while Taiwanese and South Korean middle school teachers study a breadth and depth of mathematics equivalent to what would be required for a math major, our teachers fall far short. “What’s most disturbing,” Professor Schmidt adds, “is that one of the areas in which U.S. future teachers tend to do the worst is algebra, and algebra is the heart of middle school math.” Indeed, United States teachers were at or near the bottom in both algebra and functions.

Previous studies should have alerted us to this deficiency. In Chapter Three, the report states that “The Third International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS] … show[ed] low U.S. achievement in math compared to other countries [and] indicated that one of the major factors related to this low performance was a U.S. middle school curriculum [that was] unfocused, lacking coherence, and not demanding.”

In another study, published last month by the Washington-based American Institutes for Research (AIR), the performance of our students on international science tests was discovered to deteriorate as they progress through our system, with our fourth graders scoring comparably higher (although nowhere near the highest) when compared to other countries than our eighth graders score.

The root of this problem is a deficiency in our college education programs and our system of preparing teachers. Schmidt puts it simply and directly: “It is important for us as a nation to understand that teacher preparation programs are critical, not only for future teachers, but also for the children they will be teaching.”

These studies highlight three major deficiencies of our schools: teachers with an inadequate knowledge of academic subject mater; curricula that are vague, empty, and incoherent; and students of whom too little is demanded.

The culprits who are in collusion to perpetuate this failure are: college and university education departments (who attract primarily our worst students to be future teachers and demand little or nothing of them); bloated school system bureaucracies (which are more interested in feathering their own nests than in providing rigorous education, and which demand even less academically of themselves than of their constituents—teachers and students alike); elected public officials of both parties (who preen and posture to hide their failure to act forcefully and their ignorance of what constitutes high quality education); and parents (who are credulous of what their schools tell them and are undemanding of their own children, preferring tokens of educational progress like diplomas to substantive academic achievement).

In mathematics, competence has been given the name “numeracy” (parallel to “literacy”) and incompetence the name “innumeracy.”

Innumeracy and functional illiteracy go hand in hand. Our schools have become factories in which these twin incapacities are the chief products.

Our loss of global excellence and preeminence is dire in its prospects for our future. It is rooted more than we want to admit in our abandonment of educational excellence and preeminence. SP

Bob Zaslavsky, who lives in Avondale, is a retired teacher of our much-neglected humanities. He can be reached via his Web site, www.doczonline.com.