Re: American Family Association on Santorum


Tim Norfolk wrote:
> A. Grace Haliburton wrote:
>
> > And as far as there being no interest...it's not that, it's just that
> > there are two ways of talking about physics in an American school:
> > English and Math. The English version of relativity is somewhere
> > between boring and incomprehensible with a splash of inaccurate. The
> > beauty of the theory only really comes out when you start speaking
> > Math. This, of course, requires your students to have already accepted
> > math (to the level of Calculus) as a language through which one can
> > understand things.
>
> > -Grace
>
> This last sentence shows your problem. I teach at a mid-western
> open-enrollment State University. Of the students we get, 15-20% start
> in 6th-grade mathematics (signed numbers, fractions), another 15-20%
> start in 7th-grade begining algebra (through the quadratic formula),
> and another 40-50% in 8-9th grade intermediate algebra. Even those who
> took precalculus in high school, and actually test to that level on the
> ACT or our placement test, fail their first course in calculus at a
> rate of about 40%. That doesn't leave too many students competent to
> study the real science.

Trust me, I know. I'm in the military; we get kids about 2 steps down
from the level you guys are getting. Ours largely range from "I sort of
remember long division" to "I took algebra 5 times." But it's not a
matter of them being incapable of learning it - it's just that nobody
expects them to, and they mostly don't see why they should.

I've got several friends struggling their way through remedial
community college math. One of the best ways I've found to help them
understand pre-algebra, algebra and geometry is to relate them to
tangible, real-world physics problems. Just as you relate fractions to
pie slices, you relate parabolas to projectile trajectories. Not only
does it help with their math, but when they get to physics they're
already used to it.

Now, if you combined physics 1 with algebra and physics 2 with
calculus, and expected (at a minimum) all ninth-graders to take the
first one, you might fix a lot of the problems in both physics and math
education. You might also get your kids in a mindset where they can
relate the two subjects and ask intelligent questions about both.

-Grace

.

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