Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by MotherofToddler
I'd like to know exactly what percentage of children are completely incapable of learning long division with one-on-one help. Who cares if someone learns more slowly and takes longer to master long division when that person could live to be 100 years old? It would be great if slow learners and fast learners could work at their own speeds and everyone could maximize her own potential.
The skills taught in elementary school, such as reading and arithmetic, are intrinsically important. Many subjects and skills taught in later grades and in college are rarely used, and employers value credentials such as the high school diploma or bachelor's degree to signal a certain level of intelligence and discipline, not for the specific knowledge acquired. Some pre-professional majors such as engineering or nursing may be exceptions.

Long division of numbers is almost never done in real life -- we use calculators. It is important primarily as preparation to do long division in algebra. Most people don't use algebra on the job or at home, either, and the people who really struggle with long division are especially unlikely to. My general point is that intensive efforts to teach certain parts of the post-elementary curriculum will have limited benefit, because weak students will soon forget what they have been taught, and because the correlation of academic achievement with positive outcomes such as high income is largely due to the correlation of IQ with those outcomes.

With all due respect, MOST of the STEM fields are mastery-oriented and distinctly dependent upon mastery (80%+, I'd say) in order to learn at higher levels-- particularly in the physical sciences. Basically, the entire first three years of undergraduate education there is about learning what each tinker-toy can do, and then advanced study is about applying your knowledge creatively toward problem-solving and discovery. But you can't ever do that if you can't retain mastery of what amounts to 4-6 years' worth of material for the average, successful chemistry, mathematics, or physics student.

This is, IMO, probably why most efforts aimed at improving education there at the secondary and post-secondary levels are dismal failures. By then we've trained kids that learning isn't operating on a mastery model. Only-- surprise!-- it is.


No, not everyone has the raw cognitive material to be a rocket scientist, economist, or mathematician. But I still think that we're not even giving some people who COULD be remarkable even in that cohort a fair set of opportunities to try in the first place.

I'm not sure what to do about that, but it does seem like a pretty darned important problem for us as a nation/society.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.