Subject: Re: [MATHEDCC] Assessment
From: Martha Haehl (haehl@kcmetro.cc.mo.us)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 18:06:13 EST
O.K., I just had to jump in. The biggest fraud is not the use of a
calculator. It is the failure to teach students to think. Teachers who
make students write 1x2=2, 2x2=4, 3x2=6, etc. for 100 times and call that
teaching are just as guilty of dumbing down education as teachers who say,
"Here's how to multiply 3 times 2. First punch in 3 then the times key and
the 2 key." Today as well as yesterday, there are teachers who challenge
their students to wrestle with mathematical concepts and real applications
as well as learn basic skills, and there are those who think the ultimate in
education, particularly in the lower levels, is rote memory. Calculators in
the lower levels can enhance learning (while students learn to think) or
they can be just another rote memory educational tool. The culprit is not
the calculator, it is the lack of expectation that a student can and will
think, and interpret information and results.
I require my Basic Math students to have and use calculators. However, last
semester, I gave 11 skills tests. On 8 of those students could not use
calculators. On the ones where they could use calculators, they were
getting a decimal approximation to the hypotenuse of a right triangle, or
the circumference of a circle, or other problems where expressing the answer
in decimal form makes more visual sense. (What carpenter ever measures and
cuts a board to the square root of 7 feet?) Their answers had better match
what they determine makes sense from measurements and drawings.
Martha
----- Original Message -----
From: David Beach <DavidB@labette.cc.ks.us>
To: 'Bob Leibman' <bleibman@io.com>
Cc: <mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2000 9:18 AM
Subject: RE: [MATHEDCC] Assessment
> Bob and Dorrit:
>
> My thought is that what they (k-12 ed) have accomplished is to help create
> students who can't think and who believe god is machine and machine is
god,
> who can't estimate, can't measure, and cannot think abstractly about
> mathematics.
>
> The idea to keep pushing calculators down to lower and lower grades is one
> of the largest educational frauds ever perpertrated upon the american
> public.
>
> DavidBeach
> Labette Community College
>
> > ----------
> > From: Bob Leibman[SMTP:bleibman@io.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 9:13 PM
> > To: Alton Amidon; mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu;
> > DOhallaron@CHUCK.STCHAS.EDU; castagna_p@hotmail.com
> > Subject: Re: [MATHEDCC] Assessment
> >
> > At 1:06 PM -0500 2/8/00, Alton Amidon wrote:
> > >And the problem goes further. Our Community College graduates going on
to
> > >a four-year college or university or often restricted in calculator use
> > in
> > >higher level Mathematics, Science, and Engineering courses.
> > >
> > >Al
> > >
> > >Alton Amidon
> > >P.O. Box 185
> > >5049 Highway 306 South
> > >Grantsboro NC 28529
> > >252-249-1851
> > >FAX 252-249-2377
> > >
> > >>>> "Paula >>>
> > >Dorrit:
> > >
> > >This is one battle looming that I have not tackled. The high schools
> > tell
> > >us that we are undoing much of what they have accomplished if we do not
> > allow
> > >students to use scientific calculators on our placement tests. I
concur,
> > but
> > >have not mounted the energy to fight this particular battle.
> > >
> > >Paula
> > >
> > >
> >
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> >
> >
> > I know that I am going to sound like a reactionary, but I am wondering
> > just
> > what it is that those who use calculators in their teaching think that
> > they
> > have done and, therefore, what it is the those people at the next level
> > are
> > "undoing."
> >
> > If the calculator is used to allow the student to learn through
> > exploration
> > and thus make the concepts being studied "their own" this is great. If
it
> > permits them to handle a greater variety of problems without the
> > restrictions of being limited to those which are easily done by means of
> > the algebra which we teach, that too is great.
> >
> > I wonder, however, why, at the end of the course, that same student
should
> > not be expected to do the simpler problems for which calculators are not
> > necessary with the same ease as those who did not have the benefit of
> > learning with a calculator.
> >
> > I just noticed that the original comment was referring to scientific
> > calculators rather than graphing calculators, but I think the same idea
> > holds - the computations involved would presumably be easy enough to
> > reasonably expect hand calculation - or the answers would be such that a
> > reasonable estimate should make the correct answer clear.
> >
> > I say this on a day in which a reasonably bright student in Elementary
> > Algebra could not tell me what 6% of $100 is, could not multiply
> > 0.06($100)
> > because she didn't have her calculator - and wouldn't even try.
> >
> > Bob Leibman
> > Austin Community College
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
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