A few students have checked in with me about how their school years have started. It’s stories like these that make me grateful that I no longer have a vested interest in how teachers are teaching (or not teaching, as the case may be):
Sarah, would you like to know how to mke the inverse of a parabola?? We take our paper, flip it over, turn it around and trace it! I turned to my friend and was like is this a sick joke? (Actual MSN transcript, edited only to make it a single paragraph.)
Now, some of you will have a mini-heart attack, although likely only if you’re a math tutor. The rest of you probably won’t get what’s going on here, so let me attempt to summarize in a non-mathy way. (You’re lucky, my first instinct was to explain the math. You can thank me later.)
Non-math summary: This student is in Gr. 12. This student is learning one of those things that most people only use when “building bridges.” This student is learning barebones tricks based on pattern recognition for putting something on the page that a teacher can mark as being correct without needing to understand any of the math behind it. And we’re wondering why bridges are collapsing all over the place?
To compare, I can teach you “calculus” in the same way right now, in about 12 seconds. Ready?
The derivative of 8x is 8. The derivative of 24x is 24. The derivative of -123x is -123. The derivative of 67x is 67. So, what’s the derivative of 17x? Not a trick question. It is in fact 17. Congratulations. I just taught you calculus. I can give you a test right now to prove that you know calculus and to prove to the Ministry of Education that I’ve taught calculus. You may think I’m kidding, but this is what passes for teaching in more classrooms than anyone wants to admit.
This is just another reason why we live here now.
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