An Old Post From the Founder of Mathnasium

Aug 17, 2019 | Columbus Bradley Park

This is a blog post from Larry Martinek's blog Larry Talks Math

 

I have often talked about the problem of “Algebra Too Soon,” that is, the situation where students are programmed into classes for which they lack the prerequisite knowledge necessary for success in the class. 

This creates a "trap."

The “trap” is that students are under such tremendous pressure to perform in the current class that they don’t have the time or the interest to acquire the “missing” knowledge that will make future success possible. When confronted with the stark reality that genuine learning is not taking place, many students, parents, and school counselors con themselves into believing that if we can “just get past this hurdle, everything will be alright.”

This is an illusion whose consequences are not manifested for many years to come. Here is a quote from The Mathematics Association of America website outlining reality for far too many students.



“We begin with a familiar story. A student, we call him Tom, arrives at the University, happy to begin his college adventure. Almost immediately he is confronted with the Mathematics Placement Exam, designed to see if he is ready to enroll in a general education mathematics course (or in a credit-bearing course required by his major). The results of the Placement Exam unfortunately indicate that Tom is not prepared for the course he wants, and he must instead take a Developmental Mathematics Course. The results: he faces adelay in completing the needed mathematics course, he must take (for no credit) a course that he feels he has already taken, and to add insult to injury, he must pay an extra fee for the developmental course. Unhappiness, frustration and despair set in, the course is treated as a lowest priority (and often failed because of it), and an angry and frustrated student emerges.”
(//www.maa.org/features/112103devmath.html)

This happens thousands of times each year to students who have “passed” all of their required high school math courses, many times with good grades, only to discover that they are being placed in a “Developmental Math” class (a non–credit course) because they lack the knowledge and skills necessary for success with college–level math courses. Many colleges and universities are now giving student a maximum of one year (one semester in some cases) to “catch up” or else be required to leave the college or university until they are “ready” for college–level work.

Not surprisingly, the curriculum of most Developmental Math courses is exactly the material that students and parents choose to bypass years earlier so that te student could “get ready” for college. The “inconvenient truth” is that all of the dire warning about a “lack of foundation being a real problem in the future” are in fact more real than many are able to admit.

 

**Larry Martinek, Chief Instructional Officer of Mathnasium Learning Centers, has devoted his career to explaining math in ways that make sense to the learner. In the process, he and his son Nic developed the "Mathnasium Method," used world–wide to help students of all ability levels succeed in math.**

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