Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for October 18, 2006 DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY...

...and DUMB!

Could it be that the old saying is true...that "ignorance is bliss"?!

Don't bruise their self-esteem...lower your standards so that they can meet them! Ah...the "feel good" society! And, now, WE are under the NCLB gun because students aren't learning! Bad, teachers!!!

We, the people, of the US of A need to decide what we want...happy kids who are under-achievers or challenged kids who might amount to something "when they grow up"!

(Guess it should be noted that the researcher is named "Loveless"...which should probably tell us that he wouldn't be high on "happiness".)

Oh, well...here's the rest of the story from CNN.com...

Confident students do worse in math; bad news for U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Kids who are turned off by math often say they don't enjoy it, they aren't good at it and they see little point in it. Who knew that could be a formula for success?

The nations with the best scores have the least happy, least confident math students, says a study by the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy.

Countries reporting higher levels of enjoyment and confidence among math students don't do as well in the subject, the study suggests. The results for the United States hover around the middle of the pack, both in terms of enjoyment and in test scores.

In essence, happiness is overrated, says study author Tom Loveless.

"We might want to focus on the math that kids are learning and just be a little less obsessed with the fact that they have to enjoy every minute of it," said Loveless, who directs the Brown Center and serves on a presidential advisory panel on math.

"The implication is not 'Let's go make kids unhappy,"' he said. "It's 'Let's give kids better signals as to how they're performing, relative to the rest of the world."'

Other countries do better than the United States because they seem to expect more from students, he said. That could also explain why high performers in other nations express less confidence and enjoyment in math. They consider their peer group to be star achievers.

Even efforts to make math relevant may be irrelevant, says the study, released Wednesday.

Nations that try to teach math in terms of daily life have the lowest test scores.

All this is not easy to compute. Math teachers typically don't avoid enjoyment, confidence and relevance in their math lessons. They strive for those things.

Speaking on behalf of those teachers, one educator took exception to the study's conclusions.

"If I'm a math student and I don't perceive myself as confident, you think I'm going to major in it? The answer is no," said Francis "Skip" Fennell, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and another member of the federal math panel.

"Is enjoyment important? You bet it is. Is confidence important? You bet it is," Fennell said. "If we don't have those variables, we can't compete."

Yet Loveless says pleasing kids has come at the expense of mastering skills.

His findings come from the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a test of fourth-graders and eighth-graders across the globe. Along with answering math questions, students were asked whether they enjoyed math and whether they usually did well in it.

The eighth-grade results reflected a common pattern: The 10 nations whose students enjoyed math the most all scored below average. The bottom 10 nations on the enjoyment scale all excelled.

Japan, Hong Kong and the Netherlands were among those with high scores and lower enjoyment or confidence among students.

Within a given nation, the high-confidence kids did better than their peers. But that changed when students were compared with a different peer group. Even the least confident students in Singapore outscored the most confident Americans.

Loveless is not suggesting it makes sense to undermine kids' confidence or make math revolting. But he says the U.S. should rethink "the happiness factor," as he puts it.

Math textbooks in the United States, for example, tend to have colorful photos, charts and stories to please kids, he noted. In other nations, the texts strictly have math.

Fennell said engaging, relevant lessons are important. But he agreed with Loveless that every lesson should be about teaching math, not simply providing a fun class activity.

And...from the Washington Post...

U.S. Lags Behind Countries That Don't Emphasize Self-Regard

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer

It is difficult to get through a day in an American school without hearing maxims such as these: "To succeed, you must believe in yourself," and "To teach, you must relate the subject to the lives of students."

But the Brookings Institution is reporting today that countries such as the United States that embrace self-esteem, joy and real-world relevance in learning mathematics are lagging behind others that don't promote all that self-regard.

Consider Korea and Japan.

According to the Washington think tank's annual Brown Center report on education, 6 percent of Korean eighth-graders surveyed expressed confidence in their math skills, compared with 39 percent of U.S. eighth-graders. But a respected international math assessment showed Koreans scoring far ahead of their peers in the United States, raising questions about the importance of self-esteem.

In Japan, the report found, 14 percent of math teachers surveyed said they aim to connect lessons to students' lives, compared with 66 percent of U.S. math teachers. Yet the U.S. scores in eighth-grade math trail those of the Japanese, raising similar questions about the importance of practical relevance.

Tom Loveless, the report's author, said that the findings do not mean that student happiness causes low achievement. But he wrote that his analysis of the international math assessment, the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, shows that U.S. schools should not be too quick to assume that happiness is what matters in the classroom.

"It is interesting that people grasp this notion in other areas of self-improvement -- eating healthy foods, getting exercise, saving for retirement -- but when it comes to education, for some reason, the limitations of happiness are forgotten," Loveless wrote.

Several countries in Asia and some in Europe tend to beat the United States in math scores, even though their students show less satisfaction with performance and less love of math, and even though the lessons they receive are less "relevant," the report found.

The report is likely to stoke a debate over teaching math and other subjects that has divided the United States for at least a century. Progressives say that what students choose to study and how they feel about education should matter as much, or more, in the classroom than test results; traditionalists say that gain requires some pain and that tests matter.

Alfie Kohn, a progressive author and lecturer, questioned the findings. "Let me get this straight," Kohn said. "Kids who get higher scores on standardized tests are unhappy and self-doubting, so that means we should question the importance of happiness and self-confidence, rather than the importance of these tests?"

Gerald W. Bracey, an educational psychologist and columnist for the education journal Phi Delta Kappan, said the report overlooked countervailing trends in Japan, Singapore and other countries that do better than the United States on eighth-grade math tests. Officials in those countries say their education systems are not yielding graduates who have the same level of creativity as American graduates. Some Asian nations have begun to copy aspects of U.S. education, including the emphasis on letting students search for answers rather than memorize them.

The Brookings report notes that in most countries, including Korea and the United States, students who like math and think they are good at it have higher math scores than those who don't. Perspective matters, Loveless wrote: Japanese students who would be considered good at the subject if they were in the United States think that they are not so good when compared with their peers in Japan.

The international test results from 2003 and related surveys from 46 countries show that the world's most confident eighth-grade math students are found in the Middle East, Africa and the United States. Of the 10 countries with the highest levels of student confidence, only Israel and the United States scored higher than average on the international test, and their scores were far below those of the much less confident students in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The surveys asked teachers in each country whether they relate math lessons to daily life at least half of the time. In Chile, 87 percent of teachers answered affirmatively, the highest mark on the relevance scale. Japan was at the bottom of the list.

"The more relevant the math, the lower-scoring the nation," Loveless wrote.

Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the D.C.-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, said the report shows that schools need not be fun to be effective. "Schools should work on academics, not feelings," Finn said. "True self-esteem, self-confidence and happiness are born of true achievement."