Let’s teach English like we teach Mathematics

April 3rd, 2007 • 2 comments education

Scrolling through my feed reader tonight after a wild round of Guitar Hero II, I found a little tidbit from science.reddit.com that wasn’t complete and utter crap: If We Taught English the Way We Teach Mathematics…. Beware foreign readers it’s completely America-centric.

This is incredibly well written and well thought out. It goes on to question what if we were given the very basic skills in English, as we are in math until post-secondary school, and are thrust out into the world with them; how would we survive? Pretty horribly I’d say. The article states that children in America are taught from an early age that math sucks and you should hate it, vehemently hate it. Even until our last year of high school, we’re clubbed into thinking it’s pretty much useless because we’re not given any good reason to apply any maths outside of the classroom. American schools want us to add, subtract, multiply, divide and sometimes deal with fractions and percents. Other than that, we’re taught (and sometimes told) that anything we learn aside from that is disposable will never be used in the real world. If that was really true, why would anyone want to become a math teacher? Or an accountant (why would you want to at all anyway)? Or a mathematical scientist or any type of scientist? No one would want to and we’d all live in a simple country based on the basic building blocks of math nearly devoid of any types of technology or luxuries we currently enjoy.

So, apply this to English. What if we’re given the basic ability to write, read, spell, comprehend, and so on in respects to any written or verbal communication we would ever encounter in our entire lives. Sadly, I know it’s already going this way. Pick any teen off the street and ask them to spell something like extradite or ask them to tell you whether irregardless is a real word. Ask them to name any play by Shakespeare other than Romeo and Juliet or see if they can tell you what Animal Farm is really about. Kids these days are barely being taught how to physically write let alone how to properly write. Since I’ve lived in Florida, I’ve noticed every person I’ve known under the age of roughly 20 is language retarded. Yes, exceptions exist but they exist for everything. If you start talking about something other than whatever’s on MTV or MySpace, they glaze over. Ask them what defensetrate means and they tell you it has to do with Iraq or the Administration. Anyway, off on a tangent.

Back to the topic at hand. What if children today were taught basic English and were shoved off into the real world with no applicable knowledge or understanding of it? What if they were actually reading is pointless and proper grammar was useless? This is exactly how kids are taught Math in schools these days. You’re taught to learn the basics in the driest manner possible without any examples of real world application. We’re given the least knowledge possible about the broad concept and beauty of math and are simply told “You’ll love it or hate it but you have to deal with that. I’m paid to teach it either way.” Why are children being thrust out into the world with a paltry knowledge of maths? Is math less important than anything else they’re taught? I hardly think so. I hate math with a passion but not because I was given little knowledge of it, I just hate it because my brain simply doesn’t function in that way. But that’s not the point. If all we’re given for knowledge of English is how to simply write a sentence, grammar and spelling not withstanding, we’re not going to go very far in life. That’s exactly what’s happening with math these days in American schools (and to English as well).

Last year I finished up a nearly three year stay at a local University and I met thousands of students in my job there. I came across so many students that couldn’t get by on anything mathematical without the use of a calculator. About 97% of them managed to pass remedial math classes and only took what was required of them. No one wanted to take abstract maths or number theory because they saw no application in it. I’m glad those kids will never become programmers or accountants. The other 3% were students who were taught at an early age that math can be fun and have worthwhile meaning if you bother learning anything past 2+2=4.

This trend will not only continue but worsen as the years pass. Primary and secondary school math teachers usually never have advanced degrees in any maths so they’re truly limited in how they can teach a class. These people don’t eath, breathe, and live numbers, they just teach them. Until you get to college, you’re met with teachers whose mathematical prowess can usually be match or surpasses by a number of students they teach.

As America gets older, its population gets less intelligent and this will not change until parents make a stand about the poor state of the education system.

Pop parodies pop, begets laughs

April 3rd, 2007 • parody, pop music

So my only exposure to pop music these days is letting my girlfriend choose the radio station or play a CD otherwise it’s blistering death metal or dreary doom metal. But apparently, all those popsters are a bunch of fun loving folks and like to poke fun at each other. Alanis Morissette made a parody video of My Humps and it made it to BuzzFeed.

I didn’t watch the video yet but apparently it made a lot of buzz since every feed I read yesterday in my reader mentioned this more than once. I don’t particularly like Alanis nor BEP but maybe I’ll watch this just to laugh.

Carnival of the Infosciences #68

April 3rd, 2007 • blog, carnival, web

Seems I was also included in the 68th edition of the Carnival of the Infosciences carnival. That’s three of the 4 I sent articles to although, I had no idea I got included on this one, I found it through a referer!

So what got me in? My article on Semantic Web and education which was an obvious submission.