How To Fix Math In America Essay

How to Fix Math in America In America today, we have a problem with math. America is not doing well globally with math. For some reasons most American students do poorly in math. As a country this is a serious issue that needs to be fixed. American schools should fix the way we teach mathematics by asking critical questions, changing the textbook examples, and changing the way we come about the right answer. American students are struggling greatly with mathematics. This is a huge concern for our country. One way we can fix how mathematics is taught in America is by asking critical questions. In the article The Art of Asking Thought Provoking Questions in the Mathematics Classroom, by Carmen Bellido, Uroyoán R. Walker Ramos and Keith Wayland, they state how “Questions that lead students to understand must start at their current understanding and provoke them to think forward to the mathematics at hand,”(Bellido, Walker, …show more content…
Today textbooks just have an example that is similar to the problems students are doing. This does not help the student because they are basically just replacing the numbers and not understanding what the problem is actually asking them. In The Art of Asking Thought Provoking Questions in the Mathematics Classroom, they state how “Besides asking how and why in order to focus on the mathematics behind a procedure, ordinary run-of-the-mill textbook questions can also be modified to target a higher cognitive level” ( Bellido, Walker, and Wayland). This quote is stating how it is more important the understanding the how and why, but to understand the procedures that are behind the problem. In the Ted Talk Math class needs a makeover by Dan Meyer, he states “how in math we don’t problems that prompt to students to stop and think” (Meyer). This is showing how are textbooks are inadequate. They don’t push students to stop and think about what they are