Bobcat, first response of a few

Posted on 6/30/09

On 6/26/09, Burt wrote:
> I’ll give one example. There is a program at a community college
> in my city called Supplemental Instruction. It trains students
> who received a grade of “A” in certain classes to work as
> tutors/mentors to students in those classes who need help. It
> targets a number of classes where the failure rate is
> consistently above 50%. I was stunned to learn that there were
> any classes where the failure rate was over 50%. One of those
> classes was I believe the first course in the Automotive
> Mechanics program. For sure, mechanics still get their hands
> greasy, but they also need to be able to read and understand
> technical manuals and use the computers to diagnose problems of
> more sophisticated electronic systems in cars today. Just about
> every industry has gotten more technical and requires more math
> than 50 years ago.

I just watched a home improvement program (I bought a house
recently, so I need to learn to do all of that non-math, non-
teaching stuff) and was amazed when one of the carpenters was
working at finding the middle of a piece of wood. Now, I know this
may shock most of you, but the length of the wood had a *GASP*
fraction in it. This carpenter verbally went through how he found
half of the number ... and the homeowner was just in shock that
anyone could do math like that.

Every industry may require more math than ever before, but I know
that I'm stuck paying over $150 for someone to come and install a
garage door opener because, while I can understand the directions,
I just cannot perform the actual operations. Why is this not a
failing of public schools, when lack of mathematical ability seems
to be?

Bobcat (response 1)

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