I am beginning to become concerned about the way students are learning particularly language and math. Mostly because these methods are damaging in the aspect of pursuing higher math and more advanced or professional language learning.
I understand a lot of this has to do with the pedagogy of traditional education with stuff like rote and such, but still...
I see all these math students who only learn things on a step-by-step, by the book level which is REALLY bad if they happen to be students who actually want to learn math on a more complex level. Even for students who aren't, I'm not so fund of what I see.
There's students who don't know or understand even the simplest of concepts they learn in math. They simply just follow the "steps". I see so many memorizing and using formulas they don't even understand the origin of, properties they don't know the logic behind, and even postulates and theorems that they don't even understand about even if they are quite simple.
This becomes a problem when they are encountered with trickier math problems where they can't just use the "steps" they learned but also their logical reasoning and problem solving skills. When they do figure out how to do these problems, they often don't necessarily know the logic behind everything they did and how it comes together. I also see a lot of students depending on calculators and having no idea what exactly the calculations are as well.
This is ironic, considering that problem solving, logic and understanding the reasoning behind mathematical concepts is literally like what math is supposed to be XD and often the origins of a lot of the stuff we learn in math are based on this and that how they were discovered. In fact, most of this is what shows the underlying beauty of math.
It's ridiculous that I see this happen as all of these things are kinda supposed to be the point in math. This also creates a false stigma that math is some alienating subject that only "nerds" can understand and be good at, which is not true.
I'm also not fund of words that teachers say such as "cancel out" and "isolate the variable", as although they make sense, it leaves some students even more confused on what exactly is going on unless said students already know the concept behind these things in depth. Otherwise they begin to just think stuff is just magically disappearing and happening.
The same also goes for language students, who spend a bunch of time memorizing conjugation patterns, grammar and translations to vocabulary without having much background information on the linguistics of the language they learn or cultural/dialectual effects on the language that are crucial to fluency. This unfortunately leads to a shock when students encounter real-life situations where what they learned from school isn't necessarily what is said by native speakers.
This gets even more hilarious when teachers or courses mention that their reading or listening comprehension exercises are "authentic". I can say from experience that they aren't necessarily completely off from real-life ones, but they definitely aren't super authentic.
Often times students end up just learning language like a machine as if there is an input and output process to learning and understanding it, which unfortunately isn't completely the case at all. There are often dialectual differences that some languages have and degree can vary from language to language. Some words have cultural significance to them that reflect their connation and overall usage. Often there are untranslatable words that although you can learn what they mean, that they have either so many possible contextual translations that an English word wouldn't necessarily suffice as a translation, or no real word in English that can be a true synonym to the word.
I know none of this is necessarily the fault of the students, but it sucks to see students be enrolled in these classes and only able to know what they learned on a superficial level than having true understanding, considering that these classes are kinda supposed to be about understanding and learning the concepts I mentioned in both subjects. It's not like our history, humanities and science classes where if a student was to just to choose to learn the material on a deeper level rather than memorize it, they will see the underlying significance of what they learned. In the case of math and languages, there isn't much they can do besides seek outside sources, which unfortunately because of the varying degrees of quality in doing that and the exact things they'd have to look for, that's pretty horrible from an educational standpoint as they should able to be learning that from these classes alone.
I can't say this accounts for all courses and schools. I also don't think I'm alone on this, as I believe I've heard teachers complain about this themselves. It's just annoying to see this, as I feel that students could have a better understanding of these subjects.
In addition, I feel that this is what generally accounts for a lot of students just learning this and just forgetting how to do it, as they don't have any connections drawn to any of it, which they really should.
I'm not familiar with pedagogy at all, as I'm not a teacher (despite the tone I might be writing this in could make me sound likd one XD) and only a student myself, so I'm not necessarily sure about exactly ways to improve on this, however I am wondering on your personal experience. Is your school classes, students and teachers different? Do you personally have different or similar understanding of these subjects? I'd like to know.
I understand a lot of this has to do with the pedagogy of traditional education with stuff like rote and such, but still...
I see all these math students who only learn things on a step-by-step, by the book level which is REALLY bad if they happen to be students who actually want to learn math on a more complex level. Even for students who aren't, I'm not so fund of what I see.
There's students who don't know or understand even the simplest of concepts they learn in math. They simply just follow the "steps". I see so many memorizing and using formulas they don't even understand the origin of, properties they don't know the logic behind, and even postulates and theorems that they don't even understand about even if they are quite simple.
This becomes a problem when they are encountered with trickier math problems where they can't just use the "steps" they learned but also their logical reasoning and problem solving skills. When they do figure out how to do these problems, they often don't necessarily know the logic behind everything they did and how it comes together. I also see a lot of students depending on calculators and having no idea what exactly the calculations are as well.
This is ironic, considering that problem solving, logic and understanding the reasoning behind mathematical concepts is literally like what math is supposed to be XD and often the origins of a lot of the stuff we learn in math are based on this and that how they were discovered. In fact, most of this is what shows the underlying beauty of math.
It's ridiculous that I see this happen as all of these things are kinda supposed to be the point in math. This also creates a false stigma that math is some alienating subject that only "nerds" can understand and be good at, which is not true.
I'm also not fund of words that teachers say such as "cancel out" and "isolate the variable", as although they make sense, it leaves some students even more confused on what exactly is going on unless said students already know the concept behind these things in depth. Otherwise they begin to just think stuff is just magically disappearing and happening.
The same also goes for language students, who spend a bunch of time memorizing conjugation patterns, grammar and translations to vocabulary without having much background information on the linguistics of the language they learn or cultural/dialectual effects on the language that are crucial to fluency. This unfortunately leads to a shock when students encounter real-life situations where what they learned from school isn't necessarily what is said by native speakers.
This gets even more hilarious when teachers or courses mention that their reading or listening comprehension exercises are "authentic". I can say from experience that they aren't necessarily completely off from real-life ones, but they definitely aren't super authentic.
Often times students end up just learning language like a machine as if there is an input and output process to learning and understanding it, which unfortunately isn't completely the case at all. There are often dialectual differences that some languages have and degree can vary from language to language. Some words have cultural significance to them that reflect their connation and overall usage. Often there are untranslatable words that although you can learn what they mean, that they have either so many possible contextual translations that an English word wouldn't necessarily suffice as a translation, or no real word in English that can be a true synonym to the word.
I know none of this is necessarily the fault of the students, but it sucks to see students be enrolled in these classes and only able to know what they learned on a superficial level than having true understanding, considering that these classes are kinda supposed to be about understanding and learning the concepts I mentioned in both subjects. It's not like our history, humanities and science classes where if a student was to just to choose to learn the material on a deeper level rather than memorize it, they will see the underlying significance of what they learned. In the case of math and languages, there isn't much they can do besides seek outside sources, which unfortunately because of the varying degrees of quality in doing that and the exact things they'd have to look for, that's pretty horrible from an educational standpoint as they should able to be learning that from these classes alone.
I can't say this accounts for all courses and schools. I also don't think I'm alone on this, as I believe I've heard teachers complain about this themselves. It's just annoying to see this, as I feel that students could have a better understanding of these subjects.
In addition, I feel that this is what generally accounts for a lot of students just learning this and just forgetting how to do it, as they don't have any connections drawn to any of it, which they really should.
I'm not familiar with pedagogy at all, as I'm not a teacher (despite the tone I might be writing this in could make me sound likd one XD) and only a student myself, so I'm not necessarily sure about exactly ways to improve on this, however I am wondering on your personal experience. Is your school classes, students and teachers different? Do you personally have different or similar understanding of these subjects? I'd like to know.
