We have an exchange program with a small town in Germany, so yesterday I was greated in 7th period by16 new smiling faces in my probs and stats class. They will be in the states for two weeks or so, and part of the deal is that they take classes just like they would back home. Therefore, they got books are expected to do the work just like my other students. They are equivalent to our 11th and 12th graders, but in Germany they actually have a 13th year of school so they still have a couple of years before they can got to "University." One interesting thing yesterday, I was asking which calculator they used and if it was the same as our Texas Instrument graphing calculators. The response that I got was that they are not allowed to use graphing calculators and must learn to do everything by hand. I thought this was pretty cool and wish we put less emphasis on the calculator. I believe there is a place for technology in the classroom, but good grief, I have to review with juniors and seniors how to add/subtract/multiply/divide fractions because they've been doing it on their calculator for 2 years.
I was thinking though, do you think they get back and everyone is like, you went to the US, where did you go? They say Wisconsin, only to receive puzzled looks, like where is that? I was explaining to them that I am from Alabama and they had no idea where that was, or maybe even that it is a state. Of course, I don't know much about Germany's geography either.
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I agree with the Germans. I had a talk with a guy after class today. I handed back the midterms and went over the test. After the test this guy, who bombed the test, wanted to talk about his grade. I had a problem that required integration by parts. He told me he had calculus about 20 years ago (he's a bit older). he went on to tell me that he used mathcad at work to perform all the math he needed. I told him that might be ok for testing, but if he ever designed anything, he had better know the math behind the model. Otherwise it won't ever work. I really wanted to tell the guy the he should never have gotten this far without basic engineering math skills, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I still want to encourage him to relearn what he doesn't know.
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