The NEA has always been quite helpful in providing parents with guidance on how to teach their children what isn't being taught in school, so I was delighted to see that they are offering online brochures on a number of topics.
Parent guides on a number of topics, including helping your child with math are available here.
I was particularly impressed with the guide on what children need to know to become engineers.
Here are some excerpts:
"What do kids do in a technology class?
They think about and solve problems like:
• Cleaning a polluted lake or river
• Creating an invention to solve a household problem
• Designing and building a habitat for a unique
situation
Second-graders might design and make a home for
their favorite bug. They would draw a plan (complete
with measurements) and use boxes and other
materials to build the home. They would have to think
creatively about how to keep the bug in the house,
how to provide water and food, and how to make
sure the home was the right size for their pet."
Silly me; I thought for sure they would need to learn something about bugs in their science classes. But, after all, we’re talking about future engineers here. Mere facts are of no use in the modern day classroom.
"Fifth-graders might design and make their own paper
airplanes. They would test them to see which ones
flew the furthest or the highest and then revise the
design to see if they could make a better paper
airplane. They would use mathematics, learn aviation
science, and practice reading and writing skills
throughout the design process."
Just curious; what type of mathematics would they be using other than measuring the distances? Also, any clue about how “aviation science” would be used? I don’t think I have to ask about reading and writing skills used throughout this activity. Writing: How I Feel About Today’s Assignment. Reading: Various essays about paper airplanes in a rascist world.
"Eleventh-graders might investigate the idea of
growing plants in a hydroponic system (without soil).
They would design, build, and test the system. They
would study the effect of this type of growing on the
environment and figure out whether this system was
more cost effective than growing plants in soil. They
would become engineers!"
Yes, it’s axiomatic that when students design, build and test hydroponic systems, they grow up to become engineers. No one really knows why, but there is a flurry of “action research” taking place in our classrooms to find out.
Wait. There’s more!
"When those juniors in high school study
hydroponics, they think creatively about ending
hunger and about how to grow food in places where
the soil is not ready for planting."
RIGHT. Of course, how to get the water to deserts is part of another class. Creative thinking is the order of the day here.
What content should I expect my child
to be learning?
What students should know and be able to do
is identified in standards developed by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA–
Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the
Study of Technology. Standards for K–12 were formally
reviewed by the National Academy of Engineering,
the National Research Council, and the technology
teaching community.
The standards address content for K–12. Content is
integrated into thematic units at the elementary
levels, while course titles at the middle and high
school levels may include:
• Exploring Technology
• Innovation and Engineering Design, Technological
Systems
• Engineering Design Fundamentals
• Inventions/Innovations
The standards also address medical, agricultural and
related bio-technologies, energy and power,
information and communication, transportation,
manufacturing, and construction topics."
Yep. No need for math, biology, chemistry or physics. Just get them up to speed on technology and engineering design. It’s gonna be a beautiful world!
oh gosh, this is droll
ReplyDeletewell, not droll ha-ha
PLUS: what does a K-8 teacher feel reading this junk?
ReplyDelete"Gee I didn't learn anything about hydroponics in college; I guess I need another 8 or 12 or 15 years of education to teach 8th grade."
Ed went to the Community Conversation last night.
ReplyDeleteThe group was given three "Citizen Positions" that had emerged from the focus groups they've been conducting for months now.
The positions were:
Citizen A: (this is how they were listed - Citizen A, Citizen B, and Citizen C): "IUFSD should continue doing what it's been doing."
Citizen B: IUFSD should prepare students to participate in the global community. (This did not mean IUFSD should adopt international standards. It meant the district should reach out to local companies that have headquarters in other countries. Things like that.)
Citizen C: IUFSD should do a better job communicating what it does right. (This one may have included something about communicating what it's doing to enhance weaker areas; don't remember.)
Ed's group came up with an alternative: IUFSD should prepare students for higher education by teaching the the liberal arts disciplines.
It makes me sick reading this. It's part of the constructivist pretense that pupils can be scientists, engineers and scholars or what have you without foundational knowledge coupled with the "real-world" imperative.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Gates billions, this delusion is now being forced on high schools. See my post: http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2007/11/radical-transofrmation-of-high-schools.html
I've heard that the packages required for Gates's high school transformation cost $15,000 PER PUPIL whereas a quality textbook (abolished) might cost $80.00.
I think I am going to loose my mind!
Barrrrrryyy!
ReplyDeleteYou're pushing my buttons!
"Labels: arrogance, constructivism, jerks, NEA"
"What content should I expect my child to be learning?"
[MATH!!!!! Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus]
"Content is integrated into thematic units at the elementary
levels, while course titles at the middle and high school levels may include:
• Exploring Technology
• Innovation and Engineering Design, Technological Systems
• Engineering Design Fundamentals
• Inventions/Innovations"
Technology is NOT engineering, design is not engineering, and engineering design fundamentals requires calculus. You have to be able to integrate weight curves to get shear curves and integrate shear curves to get bending moment curves - basic statics and dynamics engineering course.
A technician is not an engineer. The difference involves quite a bit of math.
"Hey Mom, I Want To Be An Engineer"
ReplyDeleteThis is part of the title, but the article does not answer this question in any way, shape, or form. They talk about technological literacy, which is completely different.
Nowhere do they explain that to get into a college of engineering, you have to either have taken calculus in high school, or be ready for a rigorous course of it in your first semester. A high school course in "Engineering Design Fundamentals" won't cut it.
They're just setting kids up. They get them all excited working with things robots, engines, and windmills. Then the kids find that because of their poor math background, they aren't accepted into any engineering degree program. They are only able to go to a vocational schools to get a "technology" degree. The authors apparently can't tell the difference between technology and engineering.
Let's see if I still know how to link:
ReplyDeleteHigh schools transformation
Hey, Instructivist knows how to link. He knows technology. Ergo, he MUST be an engineer.
ReplyDeleteSorry if that pushed more of Steve H's buttons!
You're pushing my buttons!
ReplyDelete"Labels: arrogance, constructivism, jerks, NEA"
Are you saying I used the wrong labels?
"
ReplyDeleteTechnology is NOT engineering, design is not engineering, and engineering design fundamentals requires calculus. You have to be able to integrate weight curves to get shear curves and integrate shear curves to get bending moment curves - basic statics and dynamics engineering course."
But how did the Egyptians, the Romans, the Chinese, Mayans and Greeks all make their monuments all without Newton and Leibniz? ;-)
(Although the Indians invented precalculus...)
This reminds me of Ken de Rosa's "letter to engineering school dropouts":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.edspresso.com/2006/05/freshman_engineering_dropouts_ken_de_rosa.htm
(I don't know how to link properly; clearly I do not know technology -- and ergo, I am most definitely NOT an engineer!)
Thanks for the great post, Barry.
Cheryl in Singapore
But again, the Arabs invented algebra. Some of the more fascinating things in math aren't properly anticipated in the years before calculus.
ReplyDeleteFor example, introduction to infinite series in the second year of calculus would make more sense to have two years before calculus (save for things like the integral test, which could come later).
I was rather frustrated with my American precalculus teachers especially when they taught conic sections: the exams were aceable but they never made you think. When they made you memorise formulas.
Take for example the simple circle: for a while I was confused at why increasing the r in the (x-a)^2+(y-b)^2=r^2 worked. Of course, they perhaps derived the formula once but they never returned to it, or hounded you on the principle.
Of course, knowing why it worked wasn't critical, because you simply had to regurgitate it on the exam. If you were a person who wasn't satisfied however, you would seek out the reason yourself (maybe some sought out tutors when they got blank stares from incompetent teachers).
It took a while to realise the idea, it was only spurred with those problems of lying line equations or having circles tangent to various parabolic forms. The pre-algebra "if x is this, y must be ..." approach doesn't work with equations that don't represent functions (such as a circle) -- this was the major hurdling block for me. It seems really silly now, but how was I to know, when the teacher never connected the two concepts (a circle is not a function; why the formula works) together? It was only after this clicked (for some reason, which I might have missed and thereby become forever retarded) that I realised that the idea was all points (x,y) that agreed with the equation.
And this occurred to me only when I had to solve for the equation of a line tangent to a point on the circle, such that the concept of "infinite solutions, therefore infinite points with the same pythagorean distance from some centre" came to me. Had those problems never been assigned to me, I might be well retarded today.
It's not just about what courses you learn; I think even the traditional, non-fuzzy, non-constructive way of teaching these courses are deficient.
My precalculus teacher for example, completely skipped the end-of-chapter exercise that showed an infinite series equation for sin x and cos x. She was satisfied that she didn't have to teach it. I was fascinated with the idea of representing transcendental functions (and constants) with algebraic sums (of infinite terms). The concepts I discovered independently as a consequence were invaluable even in my first year of calculus -- I shudder to think, "what if I hadn't encountered those? Those weren't in the syllabus!"
Today, I wonder sometimes if it's ironic that the majority of the people with a passing grade in my calculus class at a pretty large public university happen to be high school students (me, two girls and another boy); of a class of 19 (originally 30+), only two or three other college students are passing I think. The rest are either failing or are running D's.
What leads you to believe that Irvington graduates are not prepared for higher education? Do you have evidence that they are not succeeding? Do you know if they are happy? Do you know what activities and clubs they participate in while carrying a full load of classes?
ReplyDelete"Labels: arrogance, constructivism, jerks, NEA"
ReplyDelete"Are you saying I used the wrong labels?"
No. You just forgot ignorant.
Here in California, many of our teens have already discovered "creative uses" for hydroponics!
ReplyDelete"The pre-algebra 'if x is this, y must be ...' approach doesn't work with equations that don't represent functions (such as a circle) -- this was the major hurdling block for me."
ReplyDeleteOne of the big rationales of reform math is that "we" are traditionalists who just want what we had when we were growing up. Actually, I want something better than what I had, but reform math is going in the opposite direction.
I remember the big emphasis on functions (explicit equations) when I was in school. My brain revolved around functions. Sure, we saw equations for circles and ellipses, but they were just "something else". Only later did I learn all about explicit, implicit, and parametric equations and how each are used.
For example, the parametric form of a circle of radius 'R', centered at (h,k) is:
x = h + R*cos(t)
y = k + R*sin(t)
Where 0 <= t < 360
You can't do computer graphics without parametric equations.
But how did the Egyptians, the Romans, the Chinese, Mayans and Greeks all make their monuments all without Newton and Leibniz?
ReplyDeleteBrute force guess and check? ;-)
"... 'creative uses' for hydroponics!"
ReplyDeleteNow all they have to do is bring their project to the science fair. All I ever studied when I was growing up were geraniums!
"1. Build a boat that floats. Give your child equal-sized pieces of tin foil, wrapping paper, and paper. Tell her the objective is to design and build a boat that can
ReplyDeletehold nine objects (marbles, pebbles, paper clips) for
10 minutes or to design and build a boat that can hold the most objects without sinking. Do this
many times, allowing your child to improve her design."
"many times"???
Astoundingly bad use of time. How about picking up a book on boat design? The people who come up with this junk are clueless. Since they love spirals so much, you think they would be happy to learn about design spirals, but guess and check is about as formal as they get.
It appears that Texas will drop Everyday Mathematics (with all kinds of qualifications).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=66711&v=7140265911
I read in the article that EM has a 20% market share. That's horrifying! And it is mandated by the B&K regime in NYC.
EM in TX
I was sort of (ok, not sort of, really) a math and science geek in high school. College, not so much. But, in the standard 4 years of high school I took 9 semesters of math and 10 of science. Most of it I didn't struggle with too much, although physics class my sophomore year was pretty rough. Gradewise I ended up doing fine, but I had to really work at it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I took calculus my senior year, at some particular point (I'm not sure exactly when), it suddenly became crystal clear to me: those physics problems from 2 years ago would have gone a lot easier if I had known this trig and calc stuff! In fact, the problems in my calculus book seemed to be almost exactly the problems that would be on physics tests, except that now, I could just use calculus to solve them, instead of doing an end run around math I didn't know and thus having the physics not make sense.
Almost (but not quite) made me want to take physics again, just because I knew that I would know how to do it now.
SteveH: Boats are for babies. Real engineering children make quantum entanglement teleporters. ;-)
ReplyDelete"Brute force guess and check? ;-) "
ReplyDeleteHahahahahaha, I suddenly get the joke.
"When I took calculus my senior year, at some particular point (I'm not sure exactly when), it suddenly became crystal clear to me: those physics problems from 2 years ago would have gone a lot easier if I had known this trig and calc stuff!"
ReplyDeleteExactly! There's nothing like doing the problems by integrating g = 32.174 ft/sec^2 and finding the constants. Add in some trig and then many physics problems become trivial.
So, what's the big deal about "Physics First". Our high school is talking about switching to this. Anyone have any comments. My reaction is given below. Maybe I'm missing something.
"Physics First is an educational program that teaches a basic physics course in the ninth grade (usually 15-year-olds), rather than the biology course which is more standard in public schools. This course relies on the limited math skills that the students have from from pre-algebra and algebra I. With these skills students study simple kinematics, free fall, Newton's laws of motion, Newton's law of gravity, ..."
Ninth graders?
1. Plug-and-Chug Physics?
2. Physics Without Trig?
3. Physics Appreciation?
4. MythBuster's Physics, where they would give you a scary warning anytime real knowledge is involved?
5. Limited Math Physics?
6. Physics First Because We Think It's More Important Than Biology.
We should set up Math First, which would start in Kindergarten.
"Boats are for babies."
ReplyDeleteGoo goo, gaa, gaa.
Last year, my son had a project where they had to build a land yacht (gym yacht?) model out of a block of wood, axles, and wheels, with popsicle sticks and aluminum foil for the mast and sails. They raced them in the gym using fans.
This is a modern K-8 science fair. It was at night and all of the parents came. Lots of fun, but no learning.
Texas joins California in rejecting one grade level of EM. You might recall that California recently rejected fifth grade EM.
ReplyDeleteLet's keep the ball rolling. Who's up for rejecting fourth grade? Second grade, anyone?
If you want your child to be an engineer here are my suggestions.
ReplyDeleteIn grade school make sure they are learning math and understanding it. If your school has "fuzzy math" teach the real stuff to them yourself. Make sure they learn to do the problems step by step and understand each step. Make sure they learn to check their work and fix any wrong answers immediately. If they have the problem wrong do not tell them the right answer, make them figure out what is wrong and correct it themselves. Make sure they have the math "cold" so that when they get to higher mathematics, algebra, etc. they do not have to think about the lower math involved they can just do it as a matter of routine. If your school does let them use calculators before they get to algebra, when they do homework do not let them use it.
As soon as possible make sure they are in algebra 1. I know some school districts now offer it as soon as 7th grade make sure they are good enough in math to get in at the earliest possible time. They should take every math class available at your high school up to and including calculus. If they have finished it all before their senior year enroll them in a night or Saturday class at the nearest community college. Do not let them skip a year because no high school classes are available. This will just make it harder to ramp up in college.
In science they should take at least 4 years of science in high school, bio, chem, physics, etc. If the school offers AP science courses get them into at least one. If there is only time for one make it AP Physics, preferably AP-Physics-C since it is calculus based. If AP-Physics_B is the only one available then it will do especially if they have taken calculus. They will enter college knowing calculus and physics, when they are in their calculus based physics class they will know the physics and the calculus they will only have to learn how to put the two together.
If the school offers more than one AP science course have them take as many as schedule will allow. If they can only get one make it Physics. I know this may annoy some people but the more comfortable a student is with physics the better they will be in their beginning engineering classes.
Have them take an art class. Ok this may seem weird but taking an art class and learning about shapes and perspective will help them in their engineering graphics class(es).
So in school a solid grounding in math and the sciences is essential. An art class will help and also make sure they are proficient in English. They must be able to communicate. A foreign language. I would suggest, if offered, Chinese. China is an up and coming economic and technical power and the U.S. will be dealing with them through the rest of this century. If not, German or French.
What can you do outside school?
If you have a home workshop, as soon as your child is old enough have them work on projects with you. Have them learn to use and be comfortable with tools. While as an engineer they will not be using tools much in their work they will be designing things that require tools to make them. The more they know about how tools are used the better they will be in designing something that can actually be made.
Buy them an erector set. Let them struggle making something out of it. They will learn how to use tools and how things are put together. Let them scrape their knuckles trying to get it to work and troubleshooting it when it doesn't. Legos are ok but buy them just the plain sets and let them use their imaginations to build things.
Do experiments with them. Get Hot Wheels cars and do things like finding the average velocity using a yard/meterstick and a stopwatch. See if they can figure out a way to find the instantaneous or nearly instantaneous velocity.
Get "Janice VanCleave's A+ Projects in Physics: Winning Experiments for Science Fairs and Extra Credit " and do the experiments in there. They are inexpensive and very good.
Check with the engineering professional societies, some of them will let high school students join at the same low rate that college students join. I know that the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) does. Your child can then attend meetings and meet and listen to real engineers talk about what they do. They will get selected journals like the student journal from AIAA. It will give them a glimpse into engineering in college. Also a lot of student members attend the meetings so it is a good opportunity for them to speak with young people not a whole lot older than they are about what to expect in engineering classes.
I took some of my students (when I was teaching) to dinner meetings. They loved it. Two of them got to meet Neil Armstrong at a meeting at the opening of the GE education Center in Cincinnati.
Some colleges now offer a course in "Introduction to Engineering" or similar name. The students get a taste of several disciplines and get to do a design project that is physics/reality based. For example at Ohio State University they design a rollercoaster for a ball bearing and have to understand kinetic energy, potential energy a little about friction, etc to do it. These are taught in the course so the student does not have to have had physics first. Also the student has to measure velocities as part of the project. If your local college has a course like this and there are no prerquisites (The OSU one does not have any) see if you can get them in the summer or evening version.
Lastly get them involved in robotics competions and similar things. They are fun and your child will learn something. They are by no means a substitute for a solid grounding in Math and Science but they have their place if kept in proper perspective.
A little long but that's my 2 cents as both a former teacher and current aerospace engineer.
JeffH
Ok, that will teach me to do this in a hurry. I meant to put JeffH in for user name and just went on automatic and put in my email. Catherine can you change that to JeffH please?
ReplyDelete"Exactly! There's nothing like doing the problems by integrating g = 32.174 ft/sec^2 and finding the constants. "
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I still can't get why my calculus textbook has us do physics problems in an outdated measurement system (feet?!!), at least for science anyway.
I understand that it's good calculus practice constantly having to modify your bounds at every step of the problem, and having your integration steps constantly befuddled by changing inches to feet, but really, couldn't they have us practice another way?
I mean, do engineers really use the imperial system anymore? It seems needlessly complicated.
"I mean, do engineers really use the imperial system anymore? It seems needlessly complicated."
ReplyDeleteImperial won't go away, but engineers use whatever units that are necessary or convenient. Most computer programs allow any units, so it's easy to change from one to another at any time. However, once you develop a sense (?) or feel for one type of units, it's easier to work with those and convert later, if necessary. Once you've worked with units like horsepower, it's really hard to switch to kilowatts. However, I notice that in my handy conversion factors booklet, they refer to something called metric horsepower, which is slightly smaller than the regular horsepower.
I knew a guy in construction who wanted to change all of his workers over to measuring everything in millimeters. That was his building tolerance and he thought it would be easier to get his workers to measure using whole numbers. He bought a bunch of millimeter tape measures. It didn't work. They still wanted to use Feet-Inches-Eighths-Sixteenths. They didn't even want to use decimal feet.
One of the complaints about imperial units is that people get confused about pounds-force and pounds-mass. But I also see this confusion in metric with kilograms.
As JeffH says above, a good course of physics in high school will introduce some of these issues (required by engineering) that you will never see in regular math courses.
"I mean, do engineers really use the imperial system anymore? It seems needlessly complicated."
ReplyDeleteLockheed does ... sometimes.
"NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday."
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
-Mark R.
Although, do you people still do things like dimensional analysis at the u-substitution (or, v, w, etc. for multiple integrations or integration by parts) stage. It's basically the only thing holding me back from making the operation mentally automatic, and it would be nice to know that the "Big Guys" still do it ... ;-)
ReplyDelete"...dimensional analysis at the u-substitution ...
ReplyDeleteDo you have an example?
Dimensional analysis can mean different things. At KTM (for K-12), it's viewed as a way to make sure that equations with units are consistent and to catch mistakes. In college, I learned how to use it to construct equations from limited information.
I taught a course that included integration by parts (long ago), but I'm not sure what you mean by dimensional analysis in this context.
I do a lot of integration these days, but much of it is done numerically using line integrals. There used to be a big division in engineering related to numerical analysis. The old school was insistent about carrying out the math analytically (e.g. integrating equations) as far as possible. Numerical analysis was only used at the very end to validate the equations with data.
When I was a promising engineering student at Michigan, I had a visiting professor (the head of a department at MIT) tell me to stay away from numerical hydrodynamics. It's seems silly now because many engineering analysis techniques are built from the ground-up using numerical techniques.
I suppose the argument still goes on at some level. I see problems where a numerical or algorithmic solution would work much better, but purists (I show my bias) still search for THE governing analytic solution. In other words, they try to force reality into an equation. It's not clear that this can always be done. Purists might say that all you have to do is find the right equation. The question is whether that equation exists.
This is making me miss math.
ReplyDelete(Haven't done any math to speak of for a month now, trying to power my way through MY BOOK.)
Seeing as how Ed didn't manage to rent the first season of Heroes for tonight, maybe I'll go do some logarithms.
Hey!
ReplyDeleteKen originally wrote tour de force for ktm!
(I had to say that.)