Re: American Family Association on Santorum

A. Grace Haliburton wrote:

> 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
>

For me, math really started to make sense when we studied organic
chemistry in biology and then in solving physics problems. I can relate
to what you're saying.

Combining mathematical problem solving with fun experiments helped me
later when I tackled statistics.

It's all related.

.

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