Remember the infomercial from years ago-“stop the insanity"you should see if you can license the slogan Malkin.

With all that talk on critical thinking they obsess with it`s amazing what the teachers swallow!

“But while international tests say that our kids and our high schools are tops, there’s compelling evidence from universities and colleges that paints a very different picture. “[High-school] students have done math programs that are supposed to have prepared them for post-secondary,” says Memorial University mathematics and statistics professor Sherry Mantyka, “and they’re desperately not prepared.” Before students at Memorial can take a math credit course, they must take a math placement test; each year, 25 per cent to 50 per cent score at a Grade 6 level or lower. A study of more than 10,000 students who entered college in 2006 in the Toronto area showed that 35 per cent earned a D or an F in first-term college math.”

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/11/17/ready-or-not/

The next link, is Professor Mantyka’s link, at Memorial.

http://www.mun.ca/mlc/research/

The MacLeans’ article is very interesting to me.
What shocked me is that is a well-known fact that high marks in high school do not mean that the students are well prepared.

The parents I’ve talked to, while saying that high school is different and less demanding than their high school was, do put put quite a bit of trust in the marks.
Again, people judge by comparison. If everybody is in the same boat - read: if all the kids are dumbed down - then all that matters is that you are a bit better than the others. There is safety and comfort in numbers!

The other funny thing about the MacLeans’ article was the mention of mathematics olympiad.
Well, .. while I was trying to find which schools were good schools I was looking at the results of Canadian math and physics competitions.
Try out of curiosity to look up the names.
Do you really think that the top Canadian students in math and science are a product of canadian public schools?
My bet is that the great majority of them attended elementary and high school at least partially in China, Korea, India or Pakistan, Eastern Europe or are students of elite, selective private schools or a combination of both.
It’s not just math. Look up anything related to science: physics, biology, chemistry.
We, the society at large do not value hard skills and hard work.
In popular culture we often call these kids geeks and nerds and we consider them unusual human beings who were born that way and that their performance has nothing to do with what us - regular humans - could ever dream to achieve because ... “math is not my thing”.

For readers’ convenience, I refer you to an earlier post on this topic. /index.php/blog/read/kumon-math-anyone/

“In fact, the received wisdom of Ontario educators is exactly wrong. A solid grounding in arithmetic leads to advanced math understanding and the ability to solve difficult problems, while a premature focus on higher-order learning runs the risk of blocking advanced performance.”

Very true statement.

Math is easy if taught properly.  I think my son may be an example of what Europe is talking about.  When he was around eight I was astounded by the fact that he could look at groups of numbers and add, multiply, divide faster than a calculator—he’d be roaring through a room, and if I were working with a calculator, I’d ask him what the answer was, and he’d blurt out the correct answer without missing a beat.  He was introduced to fractions in grade one, and was working in the same by grade two.  He began his schooling in Asia.  He’s no smarter than any of the kids here in NA—he was just lucky to have started his education over there. 
By contrast, I was quite shocked by watching the video of teenaged students from Alberta who were learning fractions by using coloured strips of paper! This is the top performing province in Canada?!?  (This video, btw, is on this blog.)  Also on the video, the teachers from Alberta were talking as though they were giving their all, because they were now dealing with charter schools (competition) and had to really hunker down and do a good job at educating their students.  If teachers from Alberta nowadays consider that they’re doing a good job, yet their teenaged students don’t understand fractions, I’m more scared than I was previously for the next generation.  These kids will be competing in a global economy, with our academic standards so incredibily low.  What grade equivalent are NA kids at internationally?  Grade two.  No—in other countries, grade two students are literate, so are they preschool?  So—what are teachers unions doing about it?  They’re fighting tooh and nail to maintain the status quo.

“By contrast, I was quite shocked by watching the video of teenaged students from Alberta who were learning fractions by using coloured strips of paper! “

I regret to inform you, that coloured strips and other such pre-elementary methods, are still being used at the high school level, in most provinces. I lay the blame on the educrats inside the teacher colleges.

“Using this data, Lawson has been able to support several hypotheses regarding children�s early understanding of math. Most significant is the detrimental effect of rigid algorithms. Clip after clip of Lawson�s shows children as young as Kindergarten/Grade 1 being able to solve basic division problems. And yet we know that upon reaching the older grades where the �standard� division algorithm is taught, many students struggle to solve problems that are slightly larger, but fundamentally the same. With the simpler problem, the children are being asked to rely on their own, intrinsic, understanding of numbers. With the larger problem, they are expected to plug numbers into a formula. In other words, says Lawson, children are being taught not to think. She anticipates that students in the research project will not have the same difficulties, but instead, will continue to develop a stronger than normal mathematical capacity.
Lawson hopes that her research will be used by teachers to develop and encourage their students� natural mathematical abilities. For now though, she�d like to move beyond the one-on-one style of interviewing she�s been using, and observe how children work toward mathematical solutions as a group. Preliminary data is scarce, but seems to suggest that these instructional methods are just as beneficial to those who are struggling as they are to those already fluent in math. Whatever her eventual findings, Dr. Alex Lawson�s work will surely lead to a greater understanding of our budding mathematicians.”

http://agora.lakeheadu.ca/agora.php?st=120

You should see the research on fractions coming from the teachers’ colleges, because it is the reason why they are using coloured strips at the high school level.

It is so sad to see that Ontario’s education system is failing in so many levels.  I can’t believe it is carrying through into the colleges.  It wasn’t until I came across your website  that I realized how poorly college students are doing in Ontario.  I wonder if they would get a better education in another country or via and online program?