22 May
2021
22 May
'21
8:46 p.m.
On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 08:05:03AM +0200, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
I teach mathematics, and I'm curious what you mean by this. What year
level is Junior studying, what topics?
(Also, in Australia, "PITA" means Pain In The Arse. What do you mean by
it?)
In English-speaking countries, it has been traditional for the last 40
or so years to make maths relevant to the kiddies, with lots of real-
world topics, examples and questions. Especially in primary school
maths, years 1 to 6, but also into secondary school, which is my area.
For example, lots of business maths (interest, annuities, depreciation,
loans, etc); applications of trigonometry to navigation; maths applied
to practical problems like working out the cost of items using
simultaneous equations, etc.
Of course there is still pure mathematics taught with no applications
given. In Australia, our senior year (Year 12) of secondary school has
four mathematics streams:
- Specialist Maths (pure mathematics, heavy on calculus and advanced
algebra, very abstract);
- Maths Methods (mix of pure and applied maths, some calculus);
- Further Maths (practical applied maths: finance, statistics, etc,
very light on algebra);
- Foundation Maths (remedial mathematics, heavy on practical
applications like cooking, sport, finance, measurement, speed and
distances, etc, virtually no algebra).
Most kids do Methods or Further Maths.
What is the situation like in your country?
--
Steve
Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:14:42 -0500
J Leslie Turriff scripsit:
[...]
Yeah. Good
luck getting today's teachers to teach how to learn instead of how to
memorize.
That's impossible. Checked juniors math books this week: they are full
of descriptions what different kinds of hammers are around, but not a
single line on what you use a hammer for. Just PITA.