Problems in Math Education: Who’s to blame, instructors or textbooks?

This is a short message to inform you, the readers, that this week’s blog will be slightly different from the past two. Instead of consisting of a blog entry responding to current events in the educational/sociological field, it will respond to two recent blog entries. The two entries, Math education: An Inconvenient Truth and In Search of Constructivist Teachers, relate to the first blog, Decline in American Math Levels: Myth or Fact? The former blog explains that some math textbooks are missing important information, for example the mathematical symbol pi, and since the information is not in the textbook that information is not taught. The later examines the concept of constructivist theory and why it is not found in a mathematical context. The two entries are connected because each asserts blame of problems in math education on different sources. Below are the responses to the two entries. Perhaps both poor math textbooks and lack of new educational methods produce the problems in math education.

Comment on Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

Wanting to be a math teacher in the near future, I find this extremely disturbing. It is unfortunate that children miss out on important information because textbooks lack the needed curriculum. Like you said, this is not uncommon. Here is a table, slightly outdated, but still relevant, that shows the quality of math textbooks. Most of the textbooks are shown to be of poor quality. It is so distressing that such an important subject as mathematics lacks adequate textbooks. Also, as one response to your blog said, many times outside sources are looked down upon by head masters and department heads. In all the math classes I have taken, in both high school and college, I could have easily never have gone to class because the lecture was straight from the book. I was not aware of any missing information because it was not pointed out or included by the teacher. Better textbooks are greatly needed to bridge the gap in math education.

Comment on In Search of Constructivist Teachers

I am a student at the University of California and for the first two and a half years of college I was a math major. Every single class I took was taught in the exact same way. They were all traditional math classes; sitting at desks, facing the chalkboard, while the professor goes through the textbook, word for word. As long as I can remember all the math classes I have taken from first grade up have been in the same format. For me this way of teaching works, but for other students it does not. With limited time, space, and finances there really does not seem to be a better way. I cannot begin to imagine how constructivist theory can be applied to math education because the traditional format is so engrained in mind. But it is important to figure out different ways of teaching because not every child learns the same way. I hope that in the near future there will be some ways to change the format of math education so that more students will succeed and enjoy what they are learning.