Math homework asks slavery questions

Yeah math is kind of hard for integrating curriculum. You would have to do it with well known historical figures, like "George Washington needs to cut down a tree to make a bridge during the Revolutionary War. How tall does the tree need to be if the river is 3 feet wide." The only way you could incorporate math is with economics.

Well, basically anything war-related brings out massive unfortunate side issues.

For example, "there were 300 Spartans and 1,200 other Greeks (first unfortunate implication) at Thermopylae. How many enemies would each of them have to have killed to win the battle if there were 50,000 Persians fighting them (second unfortunate implication)?"

And since kids just don't get into history without a good teacher unless it's about the war stuff, you'll lose them rapidly when it comes to the math.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Math may not be the best subject for it but that's the topic being taught in social studies this year. One of the central complaints about the way math is currently being taught is that it is too divorced from real life. Teachers give students "pizza party" math and students are turned off by it and lose interest in math early in their schooling because those questions aren't relevant to their life. "Math is useless", "I don't need math, it has no connections to my life", "Math doesn't matter". Those kinds of apathy towards math is what math teachers face from their students right now. One of the biggest challenge for a good math teacher is how to link what you're trying to teach to what matters to the students. Without cross-disciplinary input, math becomes boring and sterile and hard for students to connect with.

Some teachers are trying to tie social justice issues to math with teacher aids like this: http://www.amazon.com/MATHTHATMATTERS-Teacher-Resource-Linking-Justice/dp/0886275121/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326573034&sr=8-1

edited 14th Jan '12 12:32:03 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Math would mesh best with science, I think.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

But not everybody is interested in the science. How do you reach the humanities students?

Make them mandatory.

Edit: Wait, reading comprehension fail.

I dunno, personally. I'm a humanities student who hates math.

edited 14th Jan '12 12:40:36 PM by Flyboy

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

lol, and I bet somewhere along the line of your schooling you thought that math was boring and useless and doesn't seem to have anything to do with what you think was important.

And this is what math teachers are trying to fight by reducing the amount of "pizza party" math and injecting questions that has to do with real world situations. So once again in all seriousness, how would one go about making a math lesson relevant to a class of grade 3s who is doing slavery in their social studies?

edited 14th Jan '12 12:49:30 PM by nightwyrm_zero

The only time I've really, honestly thought the math we were doing was useless is when we do really theoretical shit. For example, imaginary numbers.

In any case, I dunno. You could do less controversial things. For example, the Space Race. Math is too sterilized to integrate social science with properly.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

At my school, the math professors use the word problems as a way to make Take That! statements about the other math professors.

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

Probably the best way to get the humanities kids interested in math is to use economics. Most people like making money, right?

Economics is kind of hard to get into initially and the math behind it is wonky, though.

That would work for higher-level students, but unless we're talking about really basic shit like counting money (which everyone does anyhow), most people before about junior or senior year of high school won't work well with economics unless they're already into that specific field.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

A lot more kids would be interested in math if they taught it in an interesting way.

About the topic, there's a proper way to integrate subjects (especially math, which many find distant). This probably wasn't the best way.

The proper way is to introduce sufficient context so that it's actually a historical inquiry rather than a math problem. Only that when the math is actually required, the historical inquiry investigates it in mathematical steps.

An analogy: In an introductory quantum physics books I've read, in nuclear physics section, there's a chapter devoted to nuclear weapons. It talks about World War II and the historical development of nuclear weaponry and proliferation, and as it does, it explains (in physics terms) what kinds of weapons there are - atomic bombs (fission) and hydrogen bombs (fusion) mainly. And it explains what kinds of nuclear processes those bombs go through to explode and generate energy.

Now using Trivialis handle.

Well even if you didn't go into supply/demand curves, you could go for cost of production versus profit and whatnot.

I wouldn't know. I use math all the time as a knitter and a consumer trying not to get ripped off.

I'd say the solution would be to add maths to other subjects rather than to try and add other subjects to maths. So instead of the kind of questions in the OP you would have integrated ones based around another subject. So say you are doing Genghis Khan in history. Instead of just doing the history you can mix in maths by doing what percentages of his army formed what parts, how large the army was in comparison to his baggage train the rough ratio of Mongolian solders to that of their enemies. Hell toss in some geography as well. I reckon that would be a good way to mix subjects. Not by throwing mathematical questions at kids that are based in history without giving them any background info.

edited 14th Jan '12 4:08:20 PM by Silasw

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Telling kids how many of his soldiers did what (edit: and in general describe things like that in mathematical terms) sounds kosher, but I'm not sure if giving them math problems to solve on history lessons is how I'd teach history, let's put it this way.

edited 14th Jan '12 4:17:58 PM by lordGacek

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

O I agree that in a perfect world each subject would have its own class and there would be no need to mix. I am assuming that the mixing of subjects is due to finical reasons and not because someone went "You know what would make history cool? More sums!"

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

That's what lasers and explosives in chemistry are for.

Pointy sticks.

Some people will simply lack an interest in certain subjects. While you can convince a lot of people to study something if they see an interest, others won't care about it. At which point you have to cut your loses.

As for making math more interesting, you're doing it wrong. Math is fairly dull because it's just covering the basics of the language and how to describe things. If you're trying to teach social studies in a math class, you are not teaching math, just as teaching the history of a scientific theory is not teaching science. The only real integration you need is into science, and that should help with science as well since you can't talk about science in a meaningful way without math, because you can only cover theory.

edited 14th Jan '12 4:33:29 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

I would have a fuckton of fun going through the math of the American War for Independence.

"So, America had X, Y, and Z. And Britain had A, B, C, D, E, F, G..."

"Why did we win?"

" Because we're awesome. Because we're lucky as balls and because France and Spain."

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Agreed.

I don't know how they envisioned this type of crap to integrate different disciplines. All it seems to do is normalize the idea of slavery as something that happens as opposed to something that is horrific and dehumanizing.

You are a blowfish.

What kind of Physics class teaches kids in imperial units?

In any case we had just weird questions...

"A car is travelling at 31 m/s on a frictionless road. Assume that no other forces act on the car. It stops 2400 m away. Assume deceleration is uniform."

It appears the Department for Transport has mega-money, and... this car shouldn't really be able to stop in 2.4 km anyway.

...

Ahem. Well, cross-referencing is a great idea. We did that a lot in primary school. Except the teacher told us we were crossreferencing. I wouldn't take action, but at least add some context.

The awesome kind.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Admittedly, I'm not clear from the article if this was a separate lesson, or immediately in conjunction with other lessons on the horrors of slavery. The questions, by themselves, are poorly-phrased word problems which, if not for their subject, would not even be out of the ordinary. Written better, and combined with a good history/social studies lesson, it would be an excellent teaching tool. Some people have an easier time taking in information when it's quantified.

Of course, written the way they are, and taught in isolation or in conjunction with a poor lesson plan, they are practically pro-slavery.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

@ Flyfudge (I really like doing these). Awesome, you say?

Without the use of a calculator, convert 200 miles to yards.

Then, convert 23 094.87 cubic centimetres to litres (i.e. cubic decimetres).

Ugh, complex mental math...

1 mile = 5280 feet x 200 = 52,800 x 2 = 105,600

105,600/3 = ...

105,600 = 90,000 + 15,600

90,000 / 3 = 30,000

15,600 / 3 = 5,200

200 miles = 35,200 yards?

As for the second question, I dunno, 230.487 liters? I just got through with a chemistry final involving metric; I've purposely purged my mind of all that shit for the new semester...

Edit: Wait, shit, I forgot a zero.

It's 352,000 yards.

edited 14th Jan '12 8:27:08 PM by Flyboy

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."