Being a math teacher I have noticed that calculators are not always a good thing in a classroom. I have watched students blindly enter numbers, use some operation (why is it mostly multiplication?), and simply write down the answer. They are unaware of why the answer is incorrect or even how the answer seem to appear on the screen. Yet, I’ve watch other students (a depressingly few) carry out complex “what if” tasks before confidently jotting down the numbers on the tiny screen.

It is such a wonderful feeling to find research that supports what your gut has been saying: calculators can be helpful and also very damaging. Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal has posted an excellent article on the necesssity of college degrees:

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that’s the system we have in place.

Having been through the degree process myself (twice) I find myself agreeing with the sentiments of the article. My four years in physics were designed to make sure me and my classmates had sufficient general knowledge before going onto graduate studies. One classmate went onto law studies and I headed to education. So it was our decision that the four years was “wasted”. I thought my education degree would prepare me for teaching. It did - kinda.

It was in the practicuum that I really learned anything. The theory, the philosophy, and the history of education was interesting but I don’t feel it built my competence. Would a CA type of exam be more appropriate here? And I wonder what is in store as I comtemplate my next stage - a master’s degree. I’ve already heard from people how they jumped through the hopes of the program knowing it had little to do with the actual business of counselling. It was just a stage to go through to get to the next level of the game.