Robots and Math

This is an interesting article which proposes that robots can turn around declining math scores.


Robots: America’s Answer to Dwindling Math Scores

The United States of America may lose its supremacy as a superpower if our children of today can’t grasp the technologies of tomorrow. The trend has already been set. High-level engineering jobs are currently being outsourced to other nations, not only because of cheaper costs, but inadequacies of filling them in the states.....

Many children in this “superior” country just view mathematics as something needed to pass a proficiency test. Its value is discarded. The implementations are unseen. The desire of children to follow this type of career path is decreasing. Obviously, these future implications are disturbing and may some day be detrimental to the foundation of our country. However, I believe nurturing children’s enthusiasm in needing to use math may be the answer. Not surprisingly as stated in Robots for Kids, “Robots rank right up there with dinosaurs when it comes to grabbing the attention of elementary school students…” [1 p. 232]. Hence, I predict an interest, active participation, and proper guidance in robotics will increase nationally recorded math scores.

This is a long article with many concrete suggestions. The author, Nick Cherney, has an ambitious plan laid out for grade school, middle school and high school.

In our household, we've tied the study of math to money and investing. I think my kids would be interested in robots, as long as they could make a little robot family. (My daughters would only play with building blocks if they were making a bed for their doll or something like that.) Mr. Cherney also noted that the "robot approach" has been more successful with boys than girls.

I suggest that they try a little robot romance with a wedding and baby robots and the girls will get with the program.

Overall, I think Mr. Cherney has an idea worth looking at. Whether in school or homeschool, it looks like a fun idea.




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Related Tags: Robots, math scores, teaching techniques, Nick Cherney, school, homeschool