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Jennings Foundation Director
addresses school superintendents
at Center for Math & Science
Education, Teaching & Technology
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| (Far left) Linda Gojak, CM/SETT Director;
(below) Bill Hiller, Executive Director of the Martha Holden
Jennings Foundation |
 "My
View of Mathematics from the Balcony" is how Bill Hiller, Executive
Director of the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, titled his
remarks to a breakfast meeting of NE Ohio school superintendents
hosted by JCU's Center for Mathematics & Science Education,
Teaching & Technology (CM/SETT) this morning (May 11) in the
Dolan Science Center.
From the balcony? "I speak not as a math teacher," he explained, "but as someone with 32
years in education and as a parent aware of the young struggling
math student."
In contrast to the many American students who struggle with
math, Hiller marvelled at Russian students with little grasp
of English who can still get an A in math. "I believe it's because math is a 'symbol system,' one
that's the same worldwide.
"People often think you 'have it or you don't,' as if there were
such a thing as a 'bad math gene.' In addition, they give you permission
not to do well. Parents will tell their children, 'It's okay
if you get a C or D in math, but don't ever do that in English.'
And then they deliver the clincher: 'I had trouble with math,
too.'"
Math requires a lot of thinking skills that are not inherited:
how to classify, categorize, sort, order and list, Hiller said.
Mathematics is a science, and therefore a lab subject, but we
don't treat it in the same way as other sciences. For example, a school system may offer
seven periods of physics each week to five periods of calculus.
We need to make math part of our culture, he argued. "The
(Cleveland) Museum of Art, for example, has a great collection from the Middle
East. Why not turn it into a math exhibit for geometry? Why
couldn't the Great Lakes Science Center have a terrific math
exhibit?"
Many schools have maps of the US drawn on their playgrounds.
"Why not a number line? Why not angles, trapezoids and parallelograms?
Math is becoming the new "gatekeeper" to success, the subject
that is used to "weed out" students for honors programs and
advanced programs.
Hiller highlighted a number of solutions, beginning with professional
development for teachers (the mission of CM/SETT), as well as
modelling, which can take place via distance learning. "Get the best (math
instructors) here at John Carroll to demonstrate how they do
it, online."
Instead, Hiller asked, "Who's doing staff development in our schools? The
vendors. It's all formula -- based on what they want to sell
you." If school systems are going to rely on vendors, he maintained, they need
to tell them what they expect and hold them to it.
Hiller also recommended finding out what organizations such
as the US Army and companies like Lubrizol do to give their
members remedial training in math.
And why it is that people studying English as a second language already may be "fluent" in math. |
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