"College Kids and Monkeys About Equal on Math" is an eye-catching title of an article posted by MSN Health today, (PDF copy available here if it is missing from the MSN Site: LPT_PDF02142009).
Elizabeth Brannon, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University is studying how human adults and infants, lemurs and monkeys think about numbers without using language. She is trying to identify which parts of the brain house "number sense" and the she is trying to determine how this math skills develop.
Among other things, she found college students and macaque have similar speed and accuracy (!) when doing a rough sort of math by summing sets of objects without actually counting them! As an engineer who speaks "math", I found it very interesting that math skills are apparently inherent to primates!
When I first saw the title I was prepared for an article on the sad state of math skills in our college students. So while it didn't turn out to be that, it got me thinking about why students fight math when it is such a critical tool for college and life success.
I regularly have students tell me they are picking their college major based on NOT wanting anything with "math in it". I have also lost count on the number of times one of my solid "B to B+" students ended up in a remedial math class in college - a situation which added time AND costs for getting their undergraduate degree!
I started my college planning career with college funding and scholarships, then added admissions, then majors and careers, and eventually added test prep. But over the last 15 years it has become apparent that focusing on those 4 college-related steps with just high school juniors and seniors was not addressing the real needs of my client families. Something was missing in their tool kits for success in college and for life!
Basic math skills are critical in the increasingly high tech economy. Math is needed for personal financial literacy. A lot of our current economic problems can be blamed on people's inability to understand their personal cash flow. That is because virtually all the studies show our students are NOT getting what they need for math success.
I am not going to point fingers at anyone in the education "system" for failing to create math "literate" students. Blaming schools, teachers, parents, administrators, and/or the government is not the way to find solutions. Instead, I went looking for PROVEN TOOLS to make basic skills accessible and successful for more students regardless of the system. I wanted to find something for teaching 21st century students using 21st century technology.
I am taking an engineering approach to building a SYSTEM for success in education available to anyone with internet access. I am proud to announce the launch on March 1 of a new initiative from Linda P. Taylor's Insider Secrets: "Creating Access to Higher Scores and the Education Edge" (CAHSEE).
CAHSEE is designed to pull together the tool kit that middle school, high school, college, and even adults need for learning success! I want to give families access to the FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS we ALL need for a lifetime of success.
I will soon announce the CAHSEE program for creating mastery in Math and English Language Arts (ELA). But in the meantime, I want suggestions from readers about what other needs and especially what tools, programs, and systems you think should be included. PLEASE send me comments, suggestions, ideas and referrals to make CAHSEE rock!
