She sees students like that quite regularly-- it's not that they are dumb, or that they can't do the material, and superficially, if she shows them the procedural method of working some type of problem, they can follow the scripted method, but the real problem is that they don't understand the foundational skills that came three or four years previously. They can't really understand what they are doing in the here and now in Algebra or Geometry because they don't understand stuff they should have learned in 3rd and 4th grade (but didn't).
Yes, exactly. I hear and read this sentiment frequently, and the problem isn't just in mathematics. People who teach in the humanities have the same complaint: student thought processes are linear.
We had the highest rejection rate ever at our college last year, yet nearly all of my freshman English students think in a one-dimensional way. Many American students have no concept of how to think about something and come up with a solution that hasn't been scripted.
For example, in English, they're hampered by the kinds of problem that
Master of None outlined here. DS's AP US History class expected essays written in a particular format that regurgitated material in a particular way. A private school we toured a few months ago proudly announced that they teach students how to write by following a script:
exactly n sentences per paragraph, structure the paragraph
exactly this way, and so on.
Follow the formula.Too much stuff and too little substance.
