Sinai’s innovative Peer 2 Peer summer program got off to a great start (although not without a few glitches such as a traffic jam and a dead car battery). The program aims to combine summer school with a fun camp experience as well as an opportunity for students to earn a bit of income through helping their peers to catch up on their subjects. Instead of the usual, boring and generally unproductive summer school, Peer 2 Peer lets students study one on one with another student and then participate in fun and exciting activities, sports and trips. The best of both worlds so to speak. After we “jump-started” the big van, we all headed out to the Pole Position Race Track in Jersey City for an exhilarating go-carting trip.
Microsoft’s annual Imagine Cup student technology competition in its 10th season held its today in Sydney, Australia. This time the first prize was awarded to a team from Ukraine for their design of sensory gloves that translate sign language into voice.
Here we see a member of team quadSquad from Ukraine showcasing the winning project, Enable Talk, a software solution that transforms sign language into a form of verbal communication through sensor-equipped gloves and a mobile device.
More than 350 students from 75 countries traveled to Sydney after competing in local and online events, representing the best and brightest selected to compete in the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals. Cash prizes totaling approximately US$175,000 were awarded across eight competition categories.
Math is a subject that generally tops the charts of student boredom. Although some students have an easier time with the subject than with other less structured and less “true or false” type of educational exercises, most students think of math with fear and / or general antipathy. Why is it that the queen of sciences gets such a bad rep in the classroom?
I recently stumbled upon a great article that laments the sad state of affairs in our schools when it comes to math education. I highly recommend giving it a read; it is not only poignant but quite amusing as well.
I believe that the make-up of the math curriculum has a lot to do with the age of mathematics. Unlike many other branches of learning which had their renaissance in more recent history, math is as old as the human race and has been developing and growing for thousands of years. As such a student of mathematics in order to be up to date to the contemporary level of knowledge has a greater distance to transverse in the quite short years of schooling. Think about it: a high school student that studies calculus is learning something that was not understood until its discovery by two of the greatest mathematical minds in history, namely Newton and Leibnitz. And yet today it’s only a beginning, an introduction into the many uses and applications of calculus concepts which is basic to so many advanced professions in the world of science, technology, economics and finance.
On the other hand Economics and Psychology are two examples of branches of knowledge that continue to develop even today. There are concepts in these that are named after their discoverers who are still alive today. (Think of the Case – Shiller Index.) Students of Economics, Psychology, and of course the many Technology based subjects which are in midst of their renaissance, feel like they can still create an impact, can express their individual take on an issue and leave a legacy. (The importance of leaving a legacy for students has been the subject of a TED Talk about a year ago here.) Even Literature – a subject that is as old as Math – gives a greater window for self expression. Trillions of trillions of words have been written, and yet trillions and trillions more will continue to be published and widely read. Math discoveries on the other hand are indeed rare. (Although, every once in a while we are encouraged by a massive breakthrough.) Even if in reality, the world of pure mathematics is continuously developing as any other matter of human inquiry; those developments, however, can only truly be appreciated by those already in the inner circle.
Another challenging byproduct of the above is the human obsession with nomenclature. (I call it an obsession simply because calling a thing by a name be it a math concept or a pet, is a basic human need.) Naming a phenomenon is helpful in referring to it without having to describe it over again. Once you understand the concept of gravity, the term “gravity” when you hear it becomes a natural and automatic link to everything you know about it. But note the order: we first discover the concept, understand it well and only then do we crown it with its name. How often in school do we reverse this order? What percentage of a test in any subject consists of definitions and other memorization of nomenclature? Not that nomenclature isn’t important; it most certainly is. In fact it is essential for a well educated person to call a thing by its name. However, rote memorization is synthetic and is often difficult for students who have just touched the surface of new material. Scalene, isosceles triangles; complimentary, supplementary angles – the names are simply conveniences for the underlying math concepts.
The process of name giving should ideally be a natural one. When an idea or a concept is so vivid in ones mind that it begs to be named, when a name simplifies and solidifies the material learned, that’s when it finds its own appropriate place in a student’s mind. When a metaphor and a simile are literary devices as distinct as an apple and an orange or at least as a Granny Smith and a Macintosh, that’s when the two terms are as welcome as a rest stop on a long highway.
In a certain sense, we can say that all schooling is synthetic. Naturally learned concepts are picked up by students through their own observations or through their own research – questioning their peers or grown ups in their lives. A student need not go to class to learn how to use his or her cell phone. A school’s curriculum in math or in any subject should aim to create synthetically a natural learning environment. We should look back at history to see how our species arrived at the knowledge that we possess today – what were the stepping stones, and structure our curriculum based on this natural progression. We should nudge (and perhaps only lightly push) our students to inquiry and then discovery on their own. It may not always be possible, but this should be our primary strategy.
The discussion regarding coed and non-coed education is in the news once again. It seems more and more public schools are offering gender segregated instruction, Associated Press reports (See article in Washington Post).
The debate over the pros and cons of keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom is a long standing one. Despite the seeming distance on the issue between the two sides, it must be acknowledged that there are pluses and minuses in each method. Girls generally tend to be the more studious, especially in the younger grades as they develop faster than boys, and as such raise the bar for the entire classroom. On the other hand, and especially in older grades, hormone budding distractions can invite unnecessary challenges to the already vulnerable education process.
The ACLU which questions the legality of this new development believes that it does nothing but promote stereotypes and is discriminatory at the core. Proponents of the separated instruction argue that the unique characteristics of each gender is readily accepted by all and as such crafting the curriculum and its delivery to be more gender specific will increase the success and improve the impact of learning.
In the world of private education which includes Jewish and Parochial schools, this debate, although less threatened by the legal actions of such organizations as the ACLU, has been central to the development of the widely varied Jewish school system that we see today. There are coed and non-coed Jewish schools some completely and some partially. Sinai Academy today remains a boys only school. We continue to believe that the benefits of gender specific instruction outweigh the negatives. It also gives a greater flexibility in planning extra-curricular, which are just as important if not more so, activities for the students.
