<p>Perhaps the schools that offer AB as a semester course are on a block schedule whereby a semester is the equivalent of a year-long course in a traditional schedule. The fact is that AB covers 2/3 of the full-year BC class. This means that a year-long AB class moves a bit more slowly than a BC class and that a BC class covers a few more topics than an AB class. This is why there is an AB subscore on the BC exam.</p>
<p>In our school, students take one or the other; but not BC after AB.</p>
<p>I wonder about how we teach languages in this country- we have kids taking it for four years and can't speak even rudimentary french</p>
<p>How do other schools teach English? My Ds have friends who have taken French for 6 years, but are no better speakers than I am after all this time</p>
<p>Is it HOW we teach it? </p>
<p>To me, I would rather my D spend her first year of french class just talking- just learning converation, and not worry about all the tenses, etc</p>
<p>It was a pretty useless 3 years so far, and my Ds are not alone- seems most HSs teach foreign language the same way, and very few students come away with more than go on vacation proficieny</p>
<p>So, in India and China, do you think that the great books are more important to their educators than calculus is? This is why the United States is failing compared to other countries when it comes to an education in mathematics, the sciences, and engineering.</p>
<p>The great books might be a nice thing to have read, but they don't build bridges, they don't send men to the moon, nor do they cure cancer. I love math, science, and engineering, yet I've been able to read the great books in a undirected (outside of formal education) way: Nothing stopped me from doing it, but I didn't read them because my knowledge of them would add productive value to society.</p>
<p>I'm posting this question on this thread because I figure math-smart people check in on this.</p>
<p>My freshman son is so very brilliant in literature, history, writing. He could barely survive math in h.s. and is taking a required one-term course in college math now so he'll graduate. He can barely pass it! He works it every day but just can't get north of the 60's or 70's. He attends, he does all the work, but on tests there are those 60's and 70's again, as in h.s. He's in the exact middle of that university's SAT range. He's ace-ing every other course. He tested out of their "remedial" math class so this is just your basic first-year college math.</p>
<p>The prof made a pact with him that as long as he continues to work it steadily, he'll give him the pass (it's a pass/fail) even if he only makes a 65, not a 75. He thinks he can achieve that.</p>
<p>Why do kids so smart in some ways tank out on Math? I am assuming it's from weak foundations in Grades 3-7, when he attended a rural Hebrew day school with atrocious teaching in Math. I just thought he could get through this one silly course in college without such a close-call again. Dang.</p>
<p>His older sister was discovered during college to have an LD that had impacts on her math ability. I just never bothered to test and all that, either kid, during h.s. because both were so talented in literary fields. When she came home from college as a sophomore, she was tested and found to have an LD, a huge point-spread in some subtasks that affect math. But I frankly don't want to go through all of that with him. I just want him to pass Math and never revisit it again. That's how discouraged I am about Math.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I am assuming it's from weak foundations in Grades 3-7
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Those are the years to get the good foundations. Just in case I haven't mentioned this before in a thread you've been reading, I recommend </p>
<p>ALEKS</a> -- Assessment and Learning, K-12, Higher Education, Automated Tutor, Math </p>
<p>to parents looking for a spot check of their children's math abilities. The website offers unlimited free trials, set to any curriculum level up to precalculus, so a learner can self-test and identify areas that need improvement. </p>
<p>Schoolteachers looking for good materials about teaching elementary mathematics can learn a lot from </p>
<p>Hung-Hsi</a> Wu's Home Page</p>
<p>P3T, TA,</p>
<p>I would not be so quick to blame schools from earlier years.</p>
<p>There is a good deal of evidence that shows that math is essentially a non-verbal language, one for which an individual's ability to learn can vary widely. That is to say not everyone, even with the best instruction, will be good at math, any more than differing individuals will be equally good at spatial reasoning (i.e. map reading).</p>
<p>One's ability to learn various aspects of math (for example, the ability to learn algebra) is developmentally based. Therefore, it is possible that a brilliant adult just never developed the ability to learn higher level math to extent of peers. </p>
<p>So, P3T, be thankful of your son's strengths in other areas, and trust the professionals at his college to do the right things. Sounds like they are.</p>
<p>^^ agree with nmd. Two kids in my household, but had the exact same teachers and similar grades & test scores. One found math "easy, but boring"; the other struggles mightily to "get it".</p>
<p>A shocking book to read. Some parents have told me that it kept them up at night, but they were glad to learn the contents. </p>
<p>My kids "get" math without a lot of effort. I'm an engineer and have taken a lot of math and used it professionally for many years. Yes, sometimes even calculus. The only math classes that have seemed to truly excite my kids have been geometry, calculus and statistics. For this reason, I have a soft spot in my heart for calculus. I like it when my kids are having fun with a class. Can't really speak to the usefullness of calculus. In all honesty, statistics is probably of more value in parsing our media. You've asked a good, provocative question.</p>
<p>My kids had pretty good math teachers in elementary school - except for fifth grade. Mathson was naturally gifted and figured much math on his own long before he had it officially in class. He also read all sorts of books about math for pleasure. His younger brother spent much of elementary school thinking he was no good at math because he was lousy at memorizing. But I could tell he actually had a pretty good grasp of concepts, even if he had trouble remembering times tables or how to do long division. (This view was fortified when an IQ test showed him to be in the 97%ile or so in math ability.) He's finally coming into his own in high school math. Recently impressed the math teacher by forgetting a geometry formula for a test, but managing to derive it from scratch.</p>
<p>Back when I was in high school I remember trying to help a friend of mine with a very simple geometry problem. I'm still baffled as to why what seemed so obvious to me caused her such problems. It does lead me to think that some brains are better wired for math (or in the case of the geometry problem) for visual thinking than others. But I think it's also pretty clear that our math education is sorely lacking.</p>
<p>Tokenadult- do you know if that book is available in Mandarin? I couldn't find answer at Amazon.</p>
<p>I absolutely loved math until I got to Calculus. For some reason, it just didn't click for me. I suddenly understood all the kids I had thought were "dumb" when I was younger ... because I sure felt that way throughout my 2 college calc classes. I never really understood calc, but I got through 2 semesters of stats, a couple computer stats classes, and 3 semesters of econ, anyway. Maybe the exposure was helpful. Who knows? All I know is that I just detested calc. My D also loved math until calc (I never shared my calc phobia, so it wasn't me :) ). She did much better than I, but she wasn't the top student as she had always been in math class. She can't wait to finish up her college calc requirement & be done with it. </p>
<p>Is calc a necessity? I really don't think so. There are different ways develop necessary skills. I doubt calc is the only way for "everyone" to be well educated. It would be more helpful to determine what qualities a well educated person might possess, then develop a list of the various ways one might gain those qualities. Pick 3 from List A, 3 from List B, etc. That seems silly, but I think the idea that there is only one way to become well educated is even sillier.</p>
<p>I don't think there's a full-length Chinese version of Liping Ma's book, but I think she does have some Chinese-language writings. The last press notice I saw about her was in a Chinese-language newspaper published in the United States.</p>
<p>Thanks- I happen to have two Chinese math teachers staying with us for a couple of weeks. They're here to observe American teaching methods. I can only wonder what they think!</p>