*nods* I get a lot of that too. I treat teaching math as an exploratory, interconnected lesson, with roots in art and science and music and real life, and my students go away with a firm foundation. But I know - because I've discussed it with them - that their grade six teachers simply aren't able to keep that up. Their skills in teaching literacy are excellent. Their skills in teaching math, well, aren't.
I think part of the problem is the pool from which teachers are drawn. In Ontario, education is a second-run bachelor's degree; that is, you have to have a degree in another subject before you can get into the teaching program. Those planning to teach high school need teachables in two subjects, which usually means a major and a minor in their first degree, or a double major. If you're going to teach junior-intermediate, as I did, you need only one teachable (mine is French) and if you're going to teach primary, you don't officially need any. So people who are going to teach primary have first degrees is psychology or English, and probably did quite well in them because it's really hard to get into the B.Ed program. But they took very little math. Most of the math/science people end up teaching high school because that's where they're going to get to teach to their degree subjects. So primary/junior education is full of people who aren't that comfortable with math themselves and have never taken an extra course in how to teach it.
Now, I used to think of myself as a language person. My degree is humanities where it crosses with social sciences (French: language, linguistics, and translation stream, and a minor in history.) I didn't recognize until quite recently that I was subtly disencouraged from pursuing math and science, in part by my teachers.
no subject
I think part of the problem is the pool from which teachers are drawn. In Ontario, education is a second-run bachelor's degree; that is, you have to have a degree in another subject before you can get into the teaching program. Those planning to teach high school need teachables in two subjects, which usually means a major and a minor in their first degree, or a double major. If you're going to teach junior-intermediate, as I did, you need only one teachable (mine is French) and if you're going to teach primary, you don't officially need any. So people who are going to teach primary have first degrees is psychology or English, and probably did quite well in them because it's really hard to get into the B.Ed program. But they took very little math. Most of the math/science people end up teaching high school because that's where they're going to get to teach to their degree subjects. So primary/junior education is full of people who aren't that comfortable with math themselves and have never taken an extra course in how to teach it.
Now, I used to think of myself as a language person. My degree is humanities where it crosses with social sciences (French: language, linguistics, and translation stream, and a minor in history.) I didn't recognize until quite recently that I was subtly disencouraged from pursuing math and science, in part by my teachers.