movdqa t1_j4dogas wrote on January 14, 2023 at 11:55 PM

Reply to comment by Trailwatch427 in robo calls by Strict_Zebra_3585

I agree with what you wrote. Modern parents try to treat their sons and daughters the same but there are influences beyond parents. The question is: can the schools provide the spark to make science interesting and approachable without having someone with a strong math and science background at home?

Perhaps in better school districts. I like the idea of everyone knowing this stuff as then parents can help their kids learn this stuff and talk about why it is interesting and useful.

My wife and my mother fit your description of their schooling. My wife grew up in an Asian country in the 1960s and the teaching was rote learning. Both struggle with technology expecting someone else to do things for them.

My mother resented her father giving her many brothers money to go to college but not paying for her to go.

If you can get kids to do reading and math early, then they can learn on their own with only a little help. There are a lot of good self-programmed materials out there and kids have the satisfaction of learning or discovering on their own. I am somewhat of a fan of the unschooling philosophy as I have seen it work spectacularly well.

Trailwatch427 t1_j4e1ff1 wrote on January 15, 2023 at 1:26 AM

There are so many cultural influences in the way we learn. Your description of your wife's experience is interesting. My midwestern parents were of German and Norwegian background, also Protestant. Reading was important culturally, but the pioneer aspect puts everyone into survival mode. Women couldn't be feminine and sweet, there was too much work. If a woman couldn't sew, preserve food, grow a garden, and often balance the books for the farm--she wasn't much use. I carry that with me.

I would hope today's schools put more emphasis on critical thinking, and that includes basic science and mathematics. While we don't have to be pioneers, we need to be better prepared for life and decision making. Cursive handwriting isn't the same as understanding and reading labels and directions.

movdqa t1_j4e4aru wrote on January 15, 2023 at 1:47 AM

Several Asian countries acknowledged over-dependence on rote learning in the 1980s and 1990s and worked to try to get the creativity that the US had in a lot of different areas. So yes, critical thinking. A good example is the Singapore Math books that you can find in Barnes and Noble. The elementary school books would give a lot of parents a tough time. These textbooks are really cheap but they have very challenging problem sets.

We have kids for 12 years and I don't understand how kids learn so little math (or other subjects) in that amount of time. There are school districts in the US that are world-class but the average seems to be poor. I think that NH does well compared to the rest of the country. I used to follow the TIMSS studies out of Boston College and recall that Asian countries did particularly well in their testing.

My mother told me stories of working in rice fields and women delivering in the rice fields and then going back to work. I don't know if she was serious or not. She did a lot of the survival stuff and we used to go to Chinatown to buy live birds and she would butcher them in the sink. She was a single parent of four kids and worked two jobs to support us so we grew up without any supervision.

The modern world is considerably different and demands different skills and abilities and a lot of our young people have those abilities. It almost seems natural to them.

We used the Socratic method around our house to teach and to get an idea if the kids understood something or not. And to see if they could connect things together that were not inherently obvious.

Trailwatch427 t1_j4immpd wrote on January 15, 2023 at 11:58 PM

There are so many challenges. Overall, I think Americans are just lazy when it comes to math and science. That is why Asians and Europeans out do them in school and the workplace. Harvard has been accused of restricting the number of Asian students who are admitted--there would be mostly Asian students there, because their academics are so high.