Education's Failure : A Small World View- Cell Phones

Solving the math problem in our country will entail solving the cultural problem that we are currently fighting, the young have little incentive to study math, or any other subject for that matter, as they find it interferes with their personal social activities, such as video games, texting or just doing what ever comes their way. We live in a 'whim' society regardless of the cost.

The draw to mindless repetition is security to many of the young. Talking on the cell phone or texting constantly occupies the restless mind and avoids any need to improve ones daily life, let alone any future advancement. To many of the younger set academic achievement is not fundamentally part of life after waking up in the morning, immediately focusing on their Personal Electronic Device (PED), to find out what's happening with one's friends and anxiously awaiting what will happen in the next few minutes.

It obvious to me, texting, cell phones and IPads have reduced our world to such a small space that we can not find our way into the larger of world of self improvement and prosperity. The glare of that little screen has mesmerized so many millions into a mindless world that can only guarantee personal failure to succeed at improving ones future life with new ideas that can only come from the interaction with academic challenges like the math and science disciplines.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any solution to this vexing problem of cultural pressures that completely occupy the minds of our youth, as math and science test scores continue to plummet. Maybe if we can find a way to convince the small screen advocates to lift their heads long enough to see what can be a fun place to live where sun shine and the smell of fresh cut grass is a good alternative to tic tac, tic tac.

Hey wait a minute, I have the solution, we can send them a text message with all this good stuff that will save them from bad thumb syndrome.

Solving America's Math Crisis
February 8, 2013
Source: Jacob Vigdor, "Solving America's Math Problem," Education Next, Winter 2013.

American students lag far behind their global peers when it comes to mathematical capability. This is an important problem that must be addressed, says Jacob Vigdor, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke University.

• In general, those with greater mathematical capability, and specifically, higher math SAT scores and math majors in college, earn higher salaries in the workplace.
• From 1983 to 2007, the percent of college graduates with math-intensive majors fell from roughly 25 percent to around 15 percent and parallels the decline in the rate of college completion.

Until roughly the 1960s, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the Cold War was well underway, topics like algebra, geometry and trigonometry were consider intellectual luxuries that only the elite college-bound would study. As the space race intensified, more students were focused toward learning new, more theoretical math like calculus. A 1983 report titled "A Nation at Risk" exposed that while the elite students in math were excelling, the average American student struggled with remedial math.

• While each of the past five decades has witnessed mathematics curriculum reform aimed at improving student performance, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam, which creates a benchmark to compare students internationally, has confirmed that between 2000 and 2009 American high school students have gotten worse at math.
• Vigdor notes that the quality of textbooks over the last century has decreased significantly as courses have been catered to boost low-performing students.

Vigdor explains that solutions are not as easy as simply funneling more students into Algebra I at an earlier age. A previous study found that in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School (CMS) district, one of America's 30 largest school districts, students who performed poorly in 6th grade were unlikely to take Algebra I by 8th grade and that district-wide Algebra I acceleration made students perform worse on 8th grade math assessments.

In order to adjust education policy and continue the advances in closing the educational gap while simultaneously improving math performance, America needs to adjust its immigration policy to let more foreign graduate degree holders stay while tailoring math curriculum to adjust to the various needs of students, whether they be low-performing or high-performing.