Adventures in Kiddie Math

I spent this past fall semester enrolled in an education class, which was, in theory, "how to teach math to elementary students." I was excited by the prospect of this class, because while I remember my own elementary school days, and I must have been taught math, I don't actually remember that. If I trusted my own memory, I would think I just happened to be born knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. So, "Good," I thought, "I'm glad this class exists, because I don't have the slightest idea how I would go about teaching something to children that is so deeply ingrained in me, I don't remember learning it."

Unfortunately, it didn't really work out that way. Instead of learning how to teach elementary math, we learned elementary level math. I don't actually blame the professor for this, and not only because the class was dropped in his lap at the last minute when the scheduled professor had to be replaced for some unknown reason. Preparedness aside, when he got in front of the class, or at least when he got back the first quiz, he had to face a grim reality: the math was beyond a lot of the students.

Let me repeat that. Elementary school math was beyond a lot of these college students.

It's almost 15 years now since I graduated from high school, so I was sharing a room with a lot of students a fair bit younger than myself, and I have to ask myself, "What happened to math education in those 15 years?!" I'm a bit rusty on my algebra and I'd be completely overwhelmed if I tried to saunter into a calculus class, but for pete's sake, I can't help feeling like any college student should be comfortable with doing long division and adding fractions.

After our first big exam, the professor's consternation was palpable when he informed us that the spread of grades on the exam had ranged from a few people in the 95-100 range down to the 20's, with most people scoring in the 60-70 range. I wish I knew what to think. What's to be done if our next generation of teachers are college students who fail tests in elementary math?