<p>Our lackluster education system is to blame for an entire generation of talented Americans who think they suck at math. Now, a new study proves that people who are good at reading are also quite naturally talented at math.</p>
<p>Original study</p>
<p><a href=“The correlation between reading and mathematics ability at age twelve has a substantial genetic component | Nature Communications”>The correlation between reading and mathematics ability at age twelve has a substantial genetic component | Nature Communications;
<p>I don’t know. I am a very good reader but very bad at math. The study makes no sense to me.</p>
<p>When people say they’re bad at math, I don’t think they’re talking about the level of math that a 12 year old is supposed to be able to do. That’s not even algebra-level math yet. </p>
<p>“We also excluded twins whose zygosity was unknown or uncertain, whose first language was other than English, and included only twins whose parents reported their ethnicity as ‘white’, which is 93% of this UK sample.”</p>
<p>"ALSPAC recruited more than 14,000 pregnant women in the former Avon area of the UK (around Bristol and Bath), with estimated dates of delivery between April 1991 and December 1992 (ref. 32). […] The sample used for replication here is a population-representative group of participants who were tested for word-reading efficiency (TOWRE) at the age of 12.5 years. "</p>
<p>It’s unclear if the population sample (ALSPAC) was also limited to English as first language, white parents, known parentage. If it was not, then there are serious flaws in the study. It’s bad enough that the study sample is limited to such a special population (white, known parentage, English as first language).</p>
<p>I also hated the way this study was written. Way too much jargon - makes me suspicious. </p>
<p>What about selecting for students who are good at math, and seeing if they are ALSO good at reading? This might be interesting even if limited to native English speakers. Perhaps skill at learning a second language at various ages might also be added to the mix?</p>
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<p>Seems pretty typical for a scientific study to me. But, that is why the Media “rewrites” these studies in layman’s terms and you end up with: </p>
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<p>…hmmm, perhaps our reading skills are just as poor as our math skills? 
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<p>Here’s the problem I have with it. At least the way it worked when my kids were in school(and also back in the dark ages when I went.) If a kid is good in reading when they are young the school usually labels them as gifted or advanced and then the teachers give them extra work and that work includes extra math and so of course over time at least until the age of 12 they are going to be better in math. I think the study is flawed.</p>
<p>It makes some sense.
“Good” reading (as in, questioning the author’s theme and purpose, making inferences, paying attention to every detail) is similar to solving a math problem (questioning the purpose of the problem, deducing facts from the given information, and so on). </p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes
That’s true. People most likely refer to everything else - Geometry, Algebra, Trig, and Calc.</p>
<p>xiggi, I agree that math education could be greatly improved which would result in many more students excelling at math. However, parents must share the responsibility, even take most of the responsibility. Bad parenting is the primary cause of poor academic performance. Many kids are intellectually handicapped by the time they enter kindergarten. Biology is not destiny. Recent discoveries about inheritance show that experiences early in life can affect the way genes express themselves (e.g. methylation). Nature and nurture are not as distinct as once thought.</p>
<p>Here’s one sample. My kid is excellent in reading and writing. She was going to major in english until junior year in high school. She got fascinated with calculus and switched to math and science toward the end of junior year. Until then, she didn’t think she was good at math. Now in college majoring in math.</p>
<p>Improving math education would certainly help, all three of mine had the luck of the draw when it came to teachers in K-12 who were less than excellent, but I still believe that the brains are wired to excel at certain concepts and not others otherwise we’d all have the same capacities and I don’t personally believe we all have the same capacities.</p>
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<p>Most of the responsibility of education rests on the parents? Okay, then why not give them the freedom and … the resources? Homeschooling for all could not be worse than this temple of mediocrity, self-serving laziness, and waste called public education!</p>
<p>Yes, some are handicapped by SES or lack of attention. Others are actually very advanced. And then we see how the US is very strong in K-4, average in middle school, and mediocre in high school. Correlate that to the parental involvement in the early years, and you can see that when parents are less able to prepare the terrain and continue to shore up the deficiencies, it falls apart. The conclusion is simple: our system can only educate the ones that do not need much in teaching skills. </p>
<p>We blame the parents for failing to educate the kids. Yet we were forced to abdicate the education to a system based on a promise of equality and competency. As long as we ignore the extent of clearing the bottom of the barrel to find our educators, we will not improve. </p>
<p>We just love excuses. </p>
<p>I don’t know about that. Education majors with low SAT scores teach in middle-class suburban schools, too, and the education there seems to be just fine. American middle-class kids do pretty well versus the rest of the world; the problem is that we’ve got a lot of poor kids. So while I’d be thrilled to see a boost in pay and prestige for teachers, and a Finland-like competition for spots in schools, I don’t think that would bring a dramatic shift in results for our poor kids as long as they stay this poor.</p>
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<p>She did not think she was good at math even though she was two grade levels ahead in math (to be able to take calculus as a high school junior)???</p>
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<p>Hanna, were you to dig deeper in the PISA data, you will see that such argument is merely driven by NEA propagandists. The trick is to remove our “poor” kids but leave the foreign ones in the data. The released numbers are COMPARABLE. Our middle-class kids do not do better than theirs nor compare well. A few years ago, a journalist compared the performance of a top New Jersey school to one in Belgium, and the results were pathetic. Not to mention, the Belgian school was actually a school specializing in educating … athletes and vocational students. </p>
<p>Countries that leave us in the dust have their own problems of inequities in race and SES. The results of certain countries that have separate zones point to different sets of issues, such a lower performance by government schools similar to our public schools. </p>
<p>The organization and forced monopoly of our system has a major impact on the poor performance of our public education. We also are one of the worst spendthrifts. We spend like drunken sailors and probably could better if those sailors would actually also teach! The poor preparation of teachers culled from horrible schools of education focusing on pedagogy over material content is what got us where we are. </p>
<p>That and the organizations that protect the incompetent and lazy profiteers. And there is no improvement in sight! </p>
<p>How much kids learn depends on a lot of things, including their natural ability, the value and support their parents and culture place on education, student interest in actually learning and willingness to work hard, having a stable home environment, having a safe and suitable school, their peers in school, the curriculum and educational materials in their school, the administrative policies in their school, the expectations of the school and parents, and of course their teachers.</p>
<p>Kids can go through the same schools with the same teachers and the same curriculum but have vastly different educational outcomes. You can blame everything on teachers but it then becomes rather hard to explain this.</p>
<p>Unless one believes the system only performs well for the students who do not need much … teaching. The basic tenet of a curriculum is that everyone should be able to pass the classes, safe and except for physical handicaps. We only get close by lowering the standards and fighting efforts to measure the results objectively. </p>
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<p>I have 2 kids who have been home schooled their entire lives. I used the same books and methods for both children. My son has always scored in the ~90th percentile on standardized tests. Yet his sister, who is several years younger, scored in the single digits on her first test. So, am I a good parent or a bad one? Or was I good to my son but not my daughter? </p>
<p>My husband (who is dyslexic) and I had our daughter tested and learned that she has dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia. We briefly considered enrolling her in public school, but we felt uncomfortable with the vague way they described goals and didn’t get a clear definition of what “adequate progress” meant, so we decided to continue home schooling. Within a year, her test scores were passing (above the 33rd percentile). Within two, they were above average. Now, in her first year of (home schooled) high school, they’re hovering close to the upper 25th percentile and we expect them to continue to rise.</p>
<p>Public schooling works well for those for whom learning comes easily, especially those whose learning styles are similar to the methods schools use, but they wouldn’t work well for my daughter. Her brain is wired differently and requires a more hands-on, intensive method than the school could provide. Her progress is no more the product of good parenting than her struggles were the result of bad parenting; there was a problem, we defined it, decided on a method to correct it, worked very hard, and made adjustments where necessary. However, not every kid has the benefit of thorough testing or intensive remediation.</p>
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I don’t know about where you live, but it’s a fallacy that all teachers are poorly paid. They used to be, maybe, and they want you to believe they still are, but teachers in our suburban schools make salaries comparable to their peers in other professional (not doctors or lawyers, lol) fields. They THINK they should be the highest paid people in the country, but it’s not likely to happen.</p>