Optimal Functioning - positive psychology & physical health » Education

TED Talks – Formula for Changing Math Education by Arthur Benjamin

Hans Rippel — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:44:58 +0000

We should teach more statistics & probability and earlier while we should teach less calculus and later.

Arthur Benjamin is a mathematician and in his pithy TED Talk, Formula for Changing Math Education (2009), he calls for this re-emphasis of math education. He argues that we as a society would greatly benefit from a better understanding of statistics and probabilities which would help us make better decisions about risks, rewards, randomness, and understanding and evaluating data in our everyday lives.

Take for example, few of us would use calculus on a daily bases but most of us are faced with making decisions about car insurance plans, student loans, mortgage rates, credit card interest rates, payment plan options, interpreting polls, planning our income investments and expenses, making decisions about bank loans and interest rates, stock market investments, interpreting results from scientific studies, analyzing trends, predicting the future, gambling, and so forth. This is just a short list I came up in the three minutes I watched Arthur’s presentation and I think it is fairly obvious that some of these are be very serious decisions that can have long lasting effects on our lives. They can mean the difference between unmanageable dept and a financially healthy lifestyle. And since education is supposed to prepare us for making the best possible decisions about our own lives, I think it only makes sense to include more of such important foundations for sound reasoning such as those that come with understanding statistics and probabilities.

I don’t know about the education you had but mine has not covered statistics or probabilities in any applicable way to the everyday life, nor do I know of any that does (please let me know if you do). The closest it got was in college and that was more geared towards understanding and conducting research, which isn’t necessarily everyday stuff. I think statistics and probabilities are one of the big missing ingredients of both primary and secondary education systems and should be a required educational component. And teaching these shouldn’t be too difficult since the very same reasons that make it so relevant can also make it easy and fun to teach to children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhMKmovNjvc

Here is Arthur Benjamin’s other TED Talk appearance but this time as a Mathemagician titled Lightning calculation and other “Mathemagic”

Reference:

Benjamin, A. (Speaker). (2009, February). Arthur Benjamin’s formula for changing math education [Video]. TED Conferences. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhMKmovNjvc

Benjamin, A. (Speaker). (2010, February). Lightning calculation and other “Mathemagic” [Video]. TED Conferences. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vqr3_ROIk

What is psychology graduate school like?

Hans Rippel — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:03:35 +0000

How can you know what graduate school will be like as a psychology major? For prospective students, like myself, this is a difficult question to answer even with the whole world wide web at our finger tips. The good news is that the great folks at Jonathan Haidt’s lab at the University of Virginia’s social psychology program have given an example of what such an answer should look like.

They have put together a five-page document, How to be a Grad Student in Social Psych, outlining what it means to be a graduate student in their program. This isn’t one of those rattled down to-do-lists of all your official requirements such as courses, exams, and deadlines needed for a successful graduation. They go beyond these general and rather bland facts by painting a mental picture of what you’ll be doing, when you’ll be doing it, and why. The emphasis is more about the gradual steps in the process, while official requirements are merely used as landmarks. In other words, it is told as a story of what to expect and what your years in their grad school program will be like. Granted the specifics will vary greatly from one program to another, nevertheless, having such a blueprint to work from has been very helpful to me and hopefully will be to you as well. It has given me a better understanding of what to expect and look for in graduate programs as well as how to ask more relevant questions.

Questions I asked myself after reading the article:

In the big picture, what will the program offer me? What will & won’t I be trained for? What is my perspective; what are my goals; and how do they align with those of the overall program and the relevant professors?
What are the career choices with the training I will have received?
What would a year by year outline of my studies encompass? What should I expect to be doing and when? What is the process from entering as a newly accepted student to graduating successfully and finding a job? Include official requirements such as courses, exams, dissertation, and deadlines as well as more elusive but important aspects such as the department’s attitudes, atmosphere, workload distribution, unofficial expectations, faculty-student and student-student interactions/collaborations.

For me this has become an important addition of finding programs that may be potentially a good fit for me. You should give it a try, if you haven’t already, and hopefully you’ll share what has been helpful in your search for grad school programs.

Some additional advice I have been giving myself:

It all takes time: Don’t think of all the requirements for graduating from grad school as happening simultaneously. Stretch them out into a timeline. Be aware of how you will learn and grow throughout the years and develop the skills needed to face tasks that seem daunting at the moment. In hindsight, you would have probably given yourself the same advice when you started your undergraduate degree. So don’t forget to do it now.
Listen to others’ experiences: It is easy to paint a distorted picture of what particular grad school programs are like. Getting as much information as possible by talking to professors and students will help to create a more representative and hopefully accurate image.
Focus on the ordinary: Try to keep the big picture in your mind. Wherever and whatever you’ll be studying, what you will be doing on a daily basis will determine how much you will like your graduate student life and program. As any prolonged experience, graduate school will be filled with a diversity of challenges, while largely made up by “ordinary” routines. With the input of current students, you can know what their routines are like and possibly infer what yours might be like as well.
Assume as little as possible: We can be quick to assume we know something already or infer too much. It might be better to double-check facts or ask more than one student/professor. It can only help you in the long run.

References:

Haidt, J. (2003, August 26). How to be a grad student in social psych. [free full text Document]

Claremont Graduate University Hosts Conference on Positive Psychology to Improve Society

Malcolm Forbes – Quotes

Wendy Wang — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:05:56 +0000

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm Forbes [quotes]

Mark Van Doren – Quotes

Hans Rippel — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:04:52 +0000

“Our best chance for happiness is education.”- Mark Van Doren

When is the Right Time to Teach Children about Sex?

Wendy Wang — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:30:18 +0000

I think that one of the main issues in sex education is timing. I have always wondered when the appropriate time is to teach children about sex and sexuality. Timing is important because it is part of the proactive approach to sex education. It may seem like common sense that children and adolescents receive comprehensive sex education. However, societal taboos on the discussions of sex are big hindrances; and consequently, parents are reluctant to be sex educators. If children are being taught about sex, it is incomplete if what they learn is limited to the process of conception. As Frankham (2006) called it, there is heteronormativity in only teaching children about penis and vaginal sex for procreation.

Whether parents are willing to talk to their children about sex or not, children will receive certain messages regarding sexuality from their parents (Geasler et al., 1995). When I was growing up, my parents never talked about sex. It was a subject that was treated as bad and forbidden for children. Even though they never told me anything about sex, I received the message that it was not to be talked about (at least not with them). I think that the issue of parents being the sex educators is only secondary to children receiving sex education at all. According to Geasler et al., it is uncommon to have parents who talk to their children about sex. Of course, there are numerous issues when it comes to parents being sex educators, such as their level of knowledge, their willingness to be open to the child, etc.

I personally believe that any form of education begins at home. Instruction from the parents is the start of a child’s education. I am not referring to home schooling the child, but I am talking about the parents motivating the child to learn and creating an environment where knowledge is valued and where the child’s curiosity is encouraged. I think that the same attitudes can be applied to sex education.

Schools often times fail to provide the sex education that children need. It has been shown from research that abstinence teachings are not effective (Sharpe, 2003). In fact, more unwanted teen pregnancies and STI transmissions occur when abstinence is the only source of sex education. I know personally that abstinence teachings are a dead end because they create guilt/shame in wanting to know more and reinforce the notion that sex is a forbidden subject. I think that it is a flawed assumption to think that children or adolescents will be encouraged to engage (and indulge) in sex just by telling them about it. I think that comprehensive and honest discussions with youth on sex and related issues will help them make informed and responsible decisions.

I would not be surprised to know that it is the parents who actually become uncomfortable when talking about sex with their children (Geasler et al., 1995). Parents generally like to believe that their children are pure beings (apart from some fundamental Christians who believe that everyone is basically evil/sinful) and should not be tainted by sexual messages (Frankham, 2006). I think the problem here is that there is the belief that knowing about sex will take away a child’s innocence, as sex is considered dirty. The real concern is when to teach children about sex. There needs to be a balance in the timing so that it is not too early for them to comprehend it yet not too late that they have already learned about it in the wrong contexts (such as from peers or the media, which I think can easily mislead the child with incorrect or inappropriate information).

In Frankham’s (2006) study on how parents conveyed sex knowledge to their children, the parents said that they answered their children’s questions honestly and openly as they came up. The author had a criticism to this approach and said that it was too reactive and not proactive. This may be one perspective, but I believe, like with most issues, it depends on the context when considering how to approach the topic of sex. For example, in the case of a very young child, let us say a four-year-old, I think it is only appropriate for the child’s level of understanding to be only reactive and not proactive about sex education.

I personally know what is it like to know about the process of conception at an age when I was not ready for it. I heard a nutshell version of the conception process from my grandmother. My mind was blown away, and I just did not comprehend how that was possible at all: the penis and the vagina and some eggs. That approach may have been directive, but I do not think that it was done responsibly. I did not know that babies were born through the vaginal canal until I was thirteen. I felt embarrassed at the time that I did not know, yet, looking back, I had never any formal sex education up to that point and not until I was fifteen.

From a personal perspective, it is extremely foolish for the parents and the school curriculum to keep children out of the “sex loop.” In addition, I think that sex education should encompass sexuality issues other than just sex-for-reproduction. Children should also learn about different types of genders, sex and gender roles (my opinion is to teach them to challenge traditional gender hegemonies), responsible sexual practices, and sex for pleasure (including self-pleasure). Of course, the timing of those topics is contextual as well.

My main concern is when the right age is to start the basic level of sex education. There may not be a right answer. I think it depends on the child’s level of maturity and the overall environment. This may be an issue that is up to the parents’ discretion. In the ideal scenario, the parents are the first sex educators in the child’s life; and schools must provide comprehensive sex education as well.

for a more detailed look –> Let’s Talk About Sex: Discussions with Adolescents on Their Sex Education

References:

Frankham, J. (2006). Sexual antimonies and parent/child sex education: Learning from foreclosure. Sexualities, 9(2), 236-254.

Geasler, M. J., Dannison, L. L., & Edlunk, C. J. (1995). Sexuality education of young children: Parental concerns. Family Relations, 44(2), 184-188.

Sharpe, T. (2003, April). Adolescent sexuality. The Family Journal, 11(2), 210-215.