Yesterday, I had an overlook at the blog, the list of posts to write and fixes to make, and so forth. It doesn’t mean I’ll do any of it, but at least I’m thinking about it.
When deciding what to write upon I’m driven of course by whatever interests me, but also by some queer sense of obligation: this or that thing should be written about and it likely won’t be, or at least not enough and not forcefully enough, so I’d better do it. If ACARA or VCAA is screwing up (or, on occasion, doing well), then I figure it is my job to write upon it. If Albo is seeking to strengthen Australia’s already too strong censorship regime, or if some born-to-rule clown wants to defend a Robodebt asshole, then I feel an obligation to say something.
This means that there are continually topical posts to write, which may or may not be written, but which occupy most of my pondering and writing. But naturally many ideas for non-topical posts occur to me or are suggested to me,1 and if I cannot quickly dash off the post then I’ll add the idea to the to-do list. Which has become disorganised and very long. So, yesterday I did some revision and some pruning, and reminded myself of long-forgotten topics. I got it down to about a hundred ideas that I think would be worth the effort. Some would take a lot of effort, and it may (will) be a while before I get to them, while others are quick ones that I just never got around to doing. Here is a quick one.
Back in 2017, Burkard told me about a video Monash Education was going to do with him. Monash Education had apparently been granted a bucket of money in order to make videos promoting “STEM“, and they were filming Monash’s star lecturers giving cool STEM lectures. Burkard is, of course, a star among stars when it comes to making mathematics meaningful and engaging.
Burkard was in no rush to tell me about his Education video, and it is easy to see why. The video has Burkard delivering his excellent content in his excellent and engaging manner. The video is very polished with top production standards. And, the video is as boring as dirt.
It was not just Burkard. Norm Do and Kate Smith-Miles, both excellent presenters of mathematics, suffered the same fate at the hands of Monash Education. I haven’t checked, but it is a good bet that all the lecturers did.
Monash Education must have spent tens of thousands of dollars on this absurd project, garnering a total of a few thousand views per year.2 Meanwhile, Burkard is using Mac Keynote, Adobe Illustrator and a little sticky tape to produce his excellent Mathologer videos,3 which invariably obtain over 100,000 views.
How is it that the Education people can know so little about education?
1) I’m always open to suggestions.
2) The total number of views (whatever that means) for each of the twenty-three videos over the 5+ years is: 483, 471, 1.3K, 519, 28K, 3.1K (Kate), 925, 1.4K (Norm), 556, 322, 151, 368, 7.2K (Burkard), 335, 319, 36, 284, 279, 243, 524, 106, 149, 165. (04/10/24) Commenter For what it’s worth has noted that Burkard’s video also appears on the Monash Faculty of Science website, where it has had about 200K views.
3) To be clear, I think Burkard’s videos are evil, but at least they are excellent evilness, with a purpose.
“To be clear, I think Burkard’s videos are evil, but at least they are excellent evilness, with a purpose.”
We know that Burkard has been your long-time collaborator, and is among your dearest friends. So if your judgement (‘evil’) is not a joke, we can presume that you have principled criticisms that you have explained to him and that he well understands. Could you share those with us?
BTW, “evil” is a bracing and invigorating word. Much underused.
I thought you would never ask. It’s on the list …
Simple formula – bureaucrats probably decided and they do what’s easiest to prove they’ve done something. Box ticked and move on. It’s hard to make interesting things through a bureaucratic process and unlikely there was much consultation with people who might potentially be interested.
If they really cared about STEM, they’d be analysing why, for example, Spesh student numbers keep dropping. But that could cost real money and raise difficult questions … Sigh …..
Right analysis, JJ, wrong scenario. These are not government education people, these are education academics. Yes, there must be some level of some Vice Associate Dean clown deciding what would be a great idea, but this is still well and truly in the heart of education academia.
It is notable that the organisers chose mathematicians to promote mathematics rather than people from maths ed
True. They could have been stupider. Just not much.
That would make them surreal?
More Hieronymus Bosch than Salvador Dalí.
But also John Conway
I watched Norm’s video from start to finish. Very nicely done and this guy clearly knows a lot about his topic.
I don’t think I learned anything from it though. Topology is a vastly difficult concept and to give him credit, Norm does a brilliant job of giving an outline of what some of the ideas look like on a very surface level.
But beyond this… I’m not sure it really inspires me to go and read a pile of books, realise even they are too difficult to understand, read a bunch of less-difficult books and maybe in a couple of years be ready to learn about topology properly.
Sorry Norm – you clearly love your topic and I get what Monash is/was trying to do. I don’t think it worked.
I suppose that Monash was trying to imitate TED.
Obviously efforts to promote STEM have been successful. More and more students want to study health sciences such as medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy, nursing, psychology.
Yes, that is obviously a consequence of the efforts to promote STEM?
I was being sarcastic.
OK.
The same video is uploaded on Monash University Faculty of Science channel and has almost 200k views.
You mean Burkard’s video? That’s very interesting. Thanks, FWIW. (The video still sucks.)
If you have a link(s), I’ll update the post tomorrow.
Here is the link to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqQaqbvDZUA&t=6s
Thanks. I’ll update the post. It’s a lot of views. One wonders why.
In your update you put it as September but somehow it is already October!
Sigh. Fixed.
On the topic of suggestions, have you ever looked at the IB Middle Years Program. I have heard you praise the depth of the Senior Program but don’t think you’ve mentioned MYP? A lot of it seems to be framed in terms of inquiry based methods and which I’d normally see as a red flag (and code for not taking the fundamentals seriously).
e.g.
Click to access inquiry-based-teaching-and-learning-summary-eng.pdf
If you fancy elaborating on the value of inquiry and independence in math education I’d be interested to hear that too!
Thanks, YT. I don’t quite understand your final suggestion/request. What do you mean by “the value of inquiry and independence in math education”?
I don’t know a lot of about IB, and less about IB since it was tinkered with recently, apparently for the worse. The Higher Level stuff I saw 5-10 years ago was excellent, and I got no whiff of inquiry garbage. The textbook for the subject, by Haese, was also very good. Last year I did a little tutoring of the Standard Level and, while nowhere the depth of Higher Level, it seemed to be sensible and solid, a million miles saner than either Specialist or Methods.
However 1, someone recently sent me bits of the current Oxford text for IB HL, and it was appalling. It definitely had a Methods smell of idiotic exploration and the like. I don’t know how much of that is the perversion of the new IB HL, and how much is the perversion of the Oxford authors.
However 2, I know essentially nothing about IB below the senior years, but I have been told a few times that Primary IB is very heavily idiotised with inquiry garbage. I have not checked myself.
I think one thing is certain: everything is getting worse. The “higher thinking” snake oil merchants are everywhere, with plenty of suckers willing to buy it. Thus, PISA replaces TIMSS, IB sinks lower, more places adopt idiot boxes like CAS, and so on. There are local signs, at times, that some people are waking up, but mostly, globally, things are getting worse.
Thanks Marty,
I have some hope things will turn around but there is quite a lot of turning required.
RE: What do you mean by “the value of inquiry and independence in math education”?
I think I understand that you would in general reject the idea that children should learn maths by “independently” inquiring into topics or applications of interest.
For example this website has a suggested example:
“Building an Ice-Cream Business: An Authentic Inquiry Into Fractions”
https://www.pypteachingtools.com/blog/integrating-inquiry-based-math-in-the-ib-pyp
I have no doubt there are many such examples and projects going around.
However, at some stage the students do have to take responsibility for their learning and discover new things independently. A few examples:
1. I remember chasing down some rabbit holes by myself during secondary maths prompted by some new or interesting idea and I would see that as valuable.
2.Doing AMT type questions, little mathematical experiments help you flesh out what you need to do.
3. To classes with bright and interested students I often liked to give quick snapshots of new ideas (say the Taylor series for sine or cosine in a Specialist class) and hope they would pick them up or go a bit further by themselves.
So I guess the question is, when is it a good idea to have students look into new ideas and work things out by themselves. I’m guessing your answer is going to involve some version of “when they have good enough foundations?”
OK, thanks, YT. I get what you’re on about now. (It sounded like the ice-cream nonsense, which, knowing you, seemed unlikely.)
Yes, of course I think students have to develop independence, and so at some point you have to deepen the problems and loosen the reins. It’s not an aspect of teaching I think I understand well. I didn’t grow up with “problem-solving”, in either the good-Gardiner or the bad-ACARA sense. So, although the goal is kind of clear, and it is obvious that one should avoid the “real-world” swamplands, I’m far from sure on the practical details.
I do plan to write on and ask about this, but I don’t have much general to say at the moment. This excerpt of Tony Gardiner may be of interest.
A more interesting question for the university could have been to ask what might potential students find fascinating/useful – and likely to get them engaged. They might have asked some maths teachers of course and heaven forbid some actual students. Who knows what might have eventuated. A forum curated by a mathematician, where students could ask questions, a virtual maths camp, some interviews with AFL data people etc etc. Even just trying a few things and seeing what got them going would be not horrendously expensive and might really generate some interest. Little chance of that happening of course!
Rather than attempting to replicate what is often already available for free (eg I find the 3Blue1Brown videos rather interesting), as a teacher, I’m much more interested in curation. I look for short (2- max 5 minute) maths context videos usually to introduce a topic. One of the best I’ve found is this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93RImC-by4 – which explains to Year 9s why triangles are so important and useful in video games. I would even appreciate a curated list of interesting videos I could use to motivate students. Alas – also little likelihood ….
Or, they could be a university and prescribe a proper textbook and teach some mathematics, and then test it. Either or.