When I TA'd, I found that the students who ended up having trouble were the hardest ones to develop a relationship with. They never came to see me during office hours, never came to complain about grading, so I never had an opportunity to get to know them. When the end of semester came around and it became apparent how badly they were doing, it was too late to help them.
In my case, it was because I was embarrassed. I mean, we know you know the grades. You looked at the work. I guess it was actually looking the prof/TA in the eye when you got a 30% knowing that the only people to blame for your failure is yourself.
Hell, there was a time I took a quiz that I know I bombed. Instead of turning it in hoping for partial credit, I just walked out with it, balled it up, and threw it in the trash. What sense does getting a flat 0% make when you know you can get at least something by turning in some work?
You were a TA though, so you didn't have a lot of experience with these things. Perhaps after a few years, you would have been able to spot those who didn't seem to be catching on.
Unfortunately, the trend is towards nobody having a lot of experience. A growing proportion of college teaching is being done by adjuncts, whose jobs rarely last for more than a couple of years. I lasted one semester.
So that's why they teach Organic Chemistry to aspirant medical students. It's not about the chemistry itself, which the kids won't ever need in the course of their professional life, it's all about pattern recognition skills. If you can't hack orgo because you can't spot a pattern you won't be able to do well in medical school.
What better way to severely constrain med school seats than by adding difficult yet arguably unnecessary hurdles? Consider Icahn School of Medicine's special Medical School track [1] which takes undergrad students with just 1 year of biology, chem, OR physics (just 2 semesters in total) as a prerequisite and that's it. Those students perform just as well, and have a higher propensity to practice in underserved areas.
It's interesting to see basic math ability also predict nursing success. Here are some previous observations about math ability predicting programming aptitude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8741868
I wonder what's going on here. Perhaps math ability is just a proxy for "general intelligence," which is useful in all fields? Or simply correlated to the quality of student's schooling prior to arriving at university? Or perhaps it is indicative of character traits like perseverance and self-confidence?
As a math author, I can't help but think that unblocking people fear of math could lead to significant improvements in society. It sometimes feel like basic math is a "gatekeeper subject," that decides student's academic outcomes. Can't memorize these stupid facts that are being drilled into you at the age of 10? Then you will never finish college/university! It doesn't need to be this way...
I don't know if it reflects "general intelligence" but rather the ability to just sit down and think/work through something abstract (which is more about patience than inteligence.)
What do you think is abstract about high school math? Solving linear and quadratic equations, converting between forms, factoring, applying trig formulas, applying integral and derivative rules + regurgitating memorized ones, etc. were the most concrete tasks I was given in high school outside of gym class. Just follow the procedure you were taught, and if it doesn't work, you were either misremembering the procedure or sloppy in one of the steps.
The things I consider abstract were literary analysis papers, "identify the mystery element based on these lab results" chemistry problem sets, etc. where you had at most some small procedures to string together, not a single given procedure that would solve the whole task.
I guess the "abstraction" the parent refers to is the fact that math isn't connected to any specific domain (e.g. history, chemistry, or bio), but instead it is an all-purpose tool. Also, an equation like a*x+b = c is not something you can touch or otherwise be familiar with from everyday experience.
(At first I wanted to reply and say how the procedural math skills you outlined in your comment are not what "real math is like" but then I remembered my high school math classes which consisted of exactly the same topics, taught without much explanations. No wonder everyone hates math...)
From a comment I made elsewhere re: Mathematics: It's not just that -- introductory Calculus at even community colleges is designed to weed students out instead of emphasizing on teaching and comprehension. With tactics like curves, rushed test-taking, unrelated material on exams, poor lectures, teachers with obscenely varying grading tactics, and a "learn it yourself or die" attitude it's clear that many types of different learners are not given a fair shake.
That is to say, many bright students who may be good at Math someday (like Hadamard or Birman or Smale or Hubbard) are unceremoniously kicked out of Math fields because of the sink or swim nature of teaching today either through lack of confidence or simple inability to muster the proper grades that are based off the (often times) whimsy of the teacher/professor.
This makes you wonder: how many potential geniuses in Mathematics or other STEM fields are we losing due to darwinian teaching tactics? I suspect many more than we're willing to admit. Let's put it this way: why invest in the infrastructure of teaching core concepts in math, chemistry, biology, physics, etc. to raise everyone to mastery-levels of performance when you can just throw the students to the wolves and see who excels on their own?
And I don't believe math is a proxy for "general intelligence" any more than having a big vocabulary (another metric the SAT uses) does. When taught properly, anyone can go from illiterate in math to mastery. And this is just calculus, which is an introductory course in most 4-year institutions.
How are going to compete with the rest of the world like this when we're so bad at math when compared to say, Singapore? To put our rank in perspective: we beat Kazhakstan by a hair. Kazhakstan? Seriously, America?
The upshot? Most of schooling in course subjects like calculus is sink or swim, with little emphasis on good pedagogy.
This would be useful... if universities know how to actually help people who they thought were in danger of failing. As it stands "help" is usually "creating a paper trail to prove to the feds that we tried", it's basically like getting fired in the real world with the main difference being that in college you at least have a sliver of hope even after the paper trail exists.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 77.0 ms ] threadI mean this is completely backwards. "The computer is telling us you may have difficulties."
In my case, it was because I was embarrassed. I mean, we know you know the grades. You looked at the work. I guess it was actually looking the prof/TA in the eye when you got a 30% knowing that the only people to blame for your failure is yourself.
Hell, there was a time I took a quiz that I know I bombed. Instead of turning it in hoping for partial credit, I just walked out with it, balled it up, and threw it in the trash. What sense does getting a flat 0% make when you know you can get at least something by turning in some work?
Makes you wonder.
[1](http://icahn.mssm.edu/education/medical/admissions/flexmed/r...)
I wonder what's going on here. Perhaps math ability is just a proxy for "general intelligence," which is useful in all fields? Or simply correlated to the quality of student's schooling prior to arriving at university? Or perhaps it is indicative of character traits like perseverance and self-confidence?
As a math author, I can't help but think that unblocking people fear of math could lead to significant improvements in society. It sometimes feel like basic math is a "gatekeeper subject," that decides student's academic outcomes. Can't memorize these stupid facts that are being drilled into you at the age of 10? Then you will never finish college/university! It doesn't need to be this way...
The things I consider abstract were literary analysis papers, "identify the mystery element based on these lab results" chemistry problem sets, etc. where you had at most some small procedures to string together, not a single given procedure that would solve the whole task.
(At first I wanted to reply and say how the procedural math skills you outlined in your comment are not what "real math is like" but then I remembered my high school math classes which consisted of exactly the same topics, taught without much explanations. No wonder everyone hates math...)
That is to say, many bright students who may be good at Math someday (like Hadamard or Birman or Smale or Hubbard) are unceremoniously kicked out of Math fields because of the sink or swim nature of teaching today either through lack of confidence or simple inability to muster the proper grades that are based off the (often times) whimsy of the teacher/professor.
This makes you wonder: how many potential geniuses in Mathematics or other STEM fields are we losing due to darwinian teaching tactics? I suspect many more than we're willing to admit. Let's put it this way: why invest in the infrastructure of teaching core concepts in math, chemistry, biology, physics, etc. to raise everyone to mastery-levels of performance when you can just throw the students to the wolves and see who excels on their own?
And I don't believe math is a proxy for "general intelligence" any more than having a big vocabulary (another metric the SAT uses) does. When taught properly, anyone can go from illiterate in math to mastery. And this is just calculus, which is an introductory course in most 4-year institutions.
How are going to compete with the rest of the world like this when we're so bad at math when compared to say, Singapore? To put our rank in perspective: we beat Kazhakstan by a hair. Kazhakstan? Seriously, America?
The upshot? Most of schooling in course subjects like calculus is sink or swim, with little emphasis on good pedagogy.