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Re: math (in)competence



You may think of me echoing, word for word, everything John said in this
posting.
Regards,
Jack

On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, John S. Denker wrote:

Tina Fanetti wrote:
...
Some of these people are going to be nurses in charge
of sick people. If they can't do math how are they
supposed to give the right doses to patients? How are
they going to know when too much is too much? That is
what frightens me is that I may in the future be in the
care of these students.

That is frightening _if_ you assume you are going to fail
in the effort to teach them.

And I suspect that's part of the problem here. If you
believe they are a bunch of losers, they will fulfill your
expectations. The trick is to set a high (but achievable)
expectation and get them to fulfill that instead.

Teaching is maybe 10% knowing the subject matter and 90%
motivating the students. They could have gotten the subject
matter from books.

Unless you are an exceptionally skilled and highly trained
actor, the best bet is to start by convincing yourself, i.e.
creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that you will succeed.
If, in contrast, you come to work with despair, disrespect
for the school, and disrespect for the students, they _will_
detect it. Instantly. Then you've lost the motivational
part of the game, and knowing the subject matter won't make
up the loss.

Tangential remark: It's a bad habit to think in terms of
"the class did X" or "the class knows Y". It is better
to think of the students as individuals. I'll bet they
have widely-varying backgrounds and objectives.

I don't think you understand what it is like to teach at
this level.

Partly no, partly yes. No two classes are the same, and
I'm quite sure I do _not_ know exactly what's going on with
this one.

But I do have some experience in situations where a goodly
number of students came in ill-prepared (far beyond what I
was expecting) and ill-motivated (at least as bad as what
Tina is facing).

And I've made enough mistakes to know a thing or two about
the symptoms and consequences thereof :-). Teaching is hard,
and nobody is born knowing how to do it.


--
"But as much as I love and respect you, I will beat you and I will kill
you, because that is what I must do. Tonight it is only you and me, fish.
It is your strength against my intelligence. It is a veritable potpourri
of metaphor, every nuance of which is fraught with meaning."
Greg Nagan from "The Old Man and the Sea" in
<The 5-MINUTE ILIAD and Other Classics>