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Be a Skeptic - Defend your Child/Teen's Education
In mathematics education, there is no certainty that basic skills
in arithmetic onward will be develop in schools. So parents have to hope
for that development, but also position themselves to take charge of
their child or teen's mathematics education if schools do not deliver, or
if there is confusion in course design and delivery. If a
mathematics course includes topics not seen before, ask a neighbor or a
family member, near or far, with a knowledge of mathematics or a
family doctor to view and judge the qualify of mathematics texts and
notes your child or teen meets or gets in school. If an individual
with advanced education in medicine, accounting, engineering or science
(the list could go on) does not understand what is being taught in
school, be alarmed and raise your concerns with other parents, and if
possible with university experts (Professors outside of education) in
mathematics or another discipline at hand.
The writers of textbooks and course materials for primary and secondary
courses may put theories of style in skill and concept development and
verification, styles that may exclude verification, before content
matters and knowledge. Whence dated or misleading or incoherent
views of a subject may appear in textbooks. Be a skeptic to guard
against and to be on watch for the latter, so that it can
corrected.
Adopt a Subject or Discipline Viewpoint of Education
If a art or discipline is worth meeting year after year in school, then
respect for the methods and values of that art or discipline are also
required. Anything less pay lip service to education in that
discipline.
Where the student of carpentry cuts, carves and binds wood to show
skill, the mathematics student writes to show skill in
an observable hands-on manner. Respect for and use of the
phrase "show me your work, what you have written" is key to proof of
progress and correction. Otherwise, student progress will be
invisible and unchecked.
In the martial arts, students expect to practice basic moves and then
more complicated ones, one at a time and one after another. Just as
students understand that the alphabet need to met and mastered for the
sake of spelling, reading and writing, they need to understand that
arithmetic, algebra and geometry need to be mastered to face and solve
routine problems in daily life at home and at work. Before we ask
students to think out of the box, to invent new methods for solving
problems, we should teach them the routine methods for working with
routine or common problems in a way that develop the self-discipline need
to learn and follow steps carefully and precisely. Focus on the basics.
Focus on what is feasible. There most students and most instructors in
primary school and junior high school, mathematics should be kept simple
and consist of figuring skills with numbers and geometry that are easily
mastered and repeated with verifiable results.
Binders and Documentation of Learning
Encourage or require your son or daughter to keep a mathematics note and
work binders in each year of school, and collect them at them at each
year to document his or her level of comprehension, and if you have
younger kids, to have an aid and a reference for them and yourself to
consult.
If you have knowledge of high school mathematics, look through the
binder and protest whenever its content does not make sense to you or
when the work is not neatly done. Tell your child or teen that the
binders have to include neat copies of each type of question, example and
problem met in their mathematics classes with answers written clearly and
full, so that you can observe their progress. The binders may
include work marked by teachers or tutors with corrections.
Give your child or teen the job of keeping notes, of
documenting what they meet in mathematics in a manner that proves mastery
to you or another you have asked to help in the monitoring of his or her
education. Students 6 to 14 should show progress in arithmetic and
geometry. Students 13 to 17 should show progress in algebra as
well. Tell your child or teen that skills met one year must be kept
and maintained. The child or teen who says "I Learnt
fractions last year, I do not need them this year" is more trouble than
he or she knows.
Hope but verify the quality of education of your son or daughter
If your son or daughter attends a school, in which math teachers and
guidance counselors do not know and hence do not emphasize the full
strength mastery of arithmetic, algebra and geometry to the strengths and
standards implied by calculus, take charge of the education of your
son or daughter. Pay a undergraduate student strong in
mathematics and science to cover and verify the skills and concepts in
mathematics, one at a time, one after another. Require you
teen to keep a binder full of written work that demonstrates this mastery
to yourself and others.. Also instruct or reward (pay) your son or
daughter to cooperate with the tutor, and to produce the written work
necessary and well-formatted in accordance with calculus implied
standards. The work required is dry and boring, but the pay will be
necessary if your son or daughter would otherwise lack the initial
motivation to do the necessary work in a written manner that demonstrate
progress or reveals weakness. In mathematics education, the
reluctant to do written work correctly points to difficulties that need
to be identified and corrected. The pay will overcome objections.
Remember, its is quality first and speed second
Have your tutor and your student keep a binder full of student
work and tutor notes/explanations, so that your child or teens work is
observable. Your child or teen, not knowing better, may want to
do less. This quality first kind of tutoring in which work and progress
is recorded will initially require more time and be slower than
tutoring done quickly, but it will set or raise standards and show your
child or teen how to learn and what is expected. Rewards or pay for
learning (or parental firmness) may provide the student with the will
to sit down and do the work in an readable and observable manner.
Central control of schools and colleges may raise standards or lower
them. All depends on the will and wits of school governance in your
local community. That may change over time. It may leap forward,
fossilize and stagnate before leaping forward again, if at all, in cycles
that may span one to three decades. Fossilization, Decline and
Stagnation in lies represent an invariable rule of bureaucracy in
countries where entrance and promotion within a bureaucracy is based on
timing and who you know and not on objective or competitive examinations
- the more demanding the better for entrance and continue tenure.
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Secondary
Mathematics for Ages 11+, A Practical Approach for home-tutoring or -schooling, or for schools & colleges
with local curriculum control. Study how to include site content - its skill development how-TOs and innovations
into present or future lesson plans - some reading required.
Road
Safety Messages and Questions: When and why should you face
traffic when walking along a road or cycle path? Is it a good
idea to hang limbs outside of cars etc? What gives more
protection in a crash: a car, motorbike or bicycle?
See too, the BBC-Belgium story Texting and
Driving - texting & the impossible test - the article links to a gruesome utube video on the subject
The Logic of Injustice:
How Texas sent
an innocent man to his death - The wrong Carlos. Some judgments are irreversible. Procescution: Where and when prosectors play to win rather than for
justice, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt goes unrespected due to prosecutors who putting winning
first, those innocence before the law may be convicted. Some procescutors offices in continuing to accuse after a pardon
due to reasonable doubt or innocent being shown, may sucessfully oppose compensaton for false convictions
by asserting a pardon individual is still under suspicion. Then the pardoned individual or the latter's estate
is not compensation for years or decade
of improper or false imprisonment, or for execution. Site chapters on Logic
and some in Pattern
Based Reason may slowly lead to greater precision in reading, applying and
writing laws.
May 2012, Composition Starting:
Pre-School and Primary Mathematics - Quantitative Skills, An
Intellectual View, Feedback Welcome:
The 8 Most Popular Site Inlinks
Parent Center: Help your child or teen
learn:
Parent-friendly
Work Booklets for ages 3+ to 13 Use these or others to check
or build skills. Other booklets are available but these booklets
allow parents unsure of themselves in mathematics to help their
children. The selection acquired in Canada is published in the
USA. So it has a US orientation. In retrospect, the selection
shows parents what to check with the booklets or by other ways,
the choice is theirs. But in retrospect, the selection does not
cover integral and fractions liquid weights and measures - ask
the publishers to correct that! For ages 9 to 12 say, parents may
compensate by showing boys and girls how to use weights or mass,
and further measures in food preparation. Beyond that children
may be shown how to measure and calculate angles, lengths and
areas [proportional amounts too] directly or by using maps and
plans drawns to scale. Learning how to gather and measure all the
ingredients, pots and pans for a dish or a meal, along with
cleaning up sets the stage for like activities or experiments in
science courses, and in developing organizational skills,
gives boys and girls a head start. Good luck. At the other
extreme, more comprehensive than light, if your motto is
McCainian: drill, drill, drill then Toronto
mathematician and actor John Mighton's jump math organization has jump math
workbooks for at least grades 3 to 8 for at-home and in-school
use - training sessions for teachers available. Jump math has
been expanding to cover older students. Jump Math Samples: plus
Fractions for
Grades 3-4 & Grades 5-6 [Read] Free Resources grades 1 to 8
[unread - likely to be good]. and
Mathematics
Skills For Ages 3 to 14 - technical!
Skills with take
home value - A few ideas
Basic skills include
time-date-calendar Matters; money matters; map, plan and
scale diagram matters;counting, measuring and figuring;
decision making with logic and likelyhood; being careful and
being aware of the domino effect of mistakes; reading and
writing with precision.
Is your child able to add, subtract and multiply amounts
of money, work with fractions, work with clocks and calendars,
work with maps and plans, and measure length, weight-mass and
volume? Schools may promote your son or daughter without
providing basic skills in reading, writing and
arithmetic.
Arithmetic
and Number Theory Skills
Algebra
Starter Lessons
Geometry
- maps plans trigonometry vectors
More
Algebra
70
Calculus Starter Lessons
Calculus Lessons Elsewhere:
-
How to Ace Calculus: Street Wise Guide - Mostly
Text.
-
Flash
Video for Calculus Phobics
They cover basic topics in ways likely to complement your
notes, your textbooks and site material. When Goldilocks
trespassed in the house of the three bears, she found three bowls
of porridge, two not to her liking, and one just right. Different
bears have different tastes. As invited guest here and elsewhere,
if one or more explanations is not to liking, try another. It may
be better or just right.
Unsolicited Advice
Learning to do and high marks if it comes to easy is often
deceptive - light rather than deep. For that reason, students
with learning difficulties determined not to let it get in their
way may go deeper and farther than those with none. High marks,
if the come easy, may be deceptive - provide a too light and not
a deep mastery. That could have been your problem in secondary
school, one that leads to comprehension shock or difficulties in
calculus and more generally in the first year of college. Bon
Appetite.
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