MSU students in mathematics classes have a tradition of having a harder time with their courses than they should.
University officials admit grades for math classes are often lower than for other courses, if the students even pass. The failure rate is alarming, and many blame the math department’s shortcomings for the poor performance. But the blame should not lie on the university alone.
People don’t often understand why they are taking the course they’ve enrolled in. Too often students complain they’ll never need the math they’re learning, and often it’s because they just don’t want to. The university should take an active role in bettering students’ awareness of the need for their math requirement.
And if that can’t be done, then perhaps there should be a different requirement. Students’ math courses must somehow apply to their lives after MSU.
Math 1825, for example, is intermediate-level algebra. The average person should have some knowledge regarding the content before they arrive in college. And despite what some may want to believe, it does get used in day-to-day living.
Math department officials urge students to talk to their professors when they need help. But sometimes a foreign professor or teaching assistant becomes the reason for poor class performance. Some students say their professor is hard to deal with, or can’t be understood and has a tenuous grasp of the English language.
If a professor is harsh and unwilling to help, then certainly there is a problem that needs to be attended to by the math department. But there is little excuse for using foreign accents as a scapegoat. There are many ways for students to get around this obstacle, ranging from the Math Learning Center to simply sitting down with the TA or professor during office hours.
These same resources are available for students who just need more help, language problems aside. The responsibility merely lies on the students to actually use them.
In the same vein, many students readily admit to simply not doing the homework or not taking advantage of the extra avenues of assistance that are made available.
The university and its students need to shoulder some of the responsibility together for the students’ success in math.
Students need to make sure they use the help they have access to and actually do the work, instead of simply brushing it aside. The theory that practice makes perfect can hold true here as well.
But the university needs to do a better job of teaching the material and making the purposes of the curriculum known to students. Instead of accepting that math grades are generally lower than grades in other subjects, it would do well if officials took steps to find out why this is so and rectify the situation.
Math doesn’t need to be the monster people make it out to be.
