Exploratory Essay

On the 2015 PISA, a test given around the world designed to assess education systems, the U.S. ranked 36 out of 65 countries on the math section. That is worse than half of the countries in the world. I am convinced this was not caused by dumb students, but by bad teaching. The teachers are not to blame. They were taught the same way, and they were trained to teach this way, so this is the only way of teaching they know. However, it doesn't have to be this way.

I have loved math since first grade. However, through elementary school, I hated my math class at school. It repeated the same topics every year, it moved way too slow, and it felt too easy. I would have complained, but I thought that was the only way to teach math. Then, in 5th grade, I took pre-algebra, and I realized that math could be taught in an interesting way. Since then, I have wanted to fix math education, and help students learn math better.

First, many high paying jobs require math. Most of the top 10 jobs, based on income, stress, work environment, and other factors, require a lot of advanced mathematics. Also, even if you don't go into a job that requires math, getting a good math education will give you good problem-solving skills, which will be very useful throughout your life, no matter what job you get. So, if math is so important, what is wrong with it and how can we fix it?

There are two problems with math education in the U.S. First, math is taught as a list of facts to memorize. This makes math very boring and difficult. In 2005, a study had some students learn a mathematical concept through rote memorization, and other students learn it by understanding why it is true. The study found that the second group of people both learned the formula better and could apply it better. Second, math is taught too slowly. A basic concept, like the distributive property, can take as much as two to three months to go over in a standard U.S.