Most of the students find math classes extremely hard. And usually, as it comes to math homework, they get confused, lost or even stressed. Generally speaking, STEM subjects are not the most popular in the US, but among common math classes, one seems to be the worst. That’s CPM, which is supposed to prepare you for college-level courses implying self-education.
General Issues with CPM Homework Most Students Have
- It’s not led by a teacher.
- The books are confusing.
- They have to do a lot on their own.
- The resources are kind of limited.
American kids are used to their teacher leading the class, preparing lessons and giving them everything for the test. This is the way most of the classes go, and changing for something else is tough. In CPM the role of a teacher is strictly limited, as kids are supposed to learn on their own. Even if they need some CPM homework help, they’re supposed to do it by themselves.
If you decide to open a CPM book, you’ll see it immediately. It looks like a theory book, with plenty of words, explanations and vague examples. This is really confusing, as you expect to see formulae and the example of how to use it. But what CPM does here, it makes you think. Also, it refers back and forth to lessons in different paragraphs, so it kind of creates this link between your study areas. This is interesting if you can pull it apart and understand, but kids find it annoying.
Usually, when a student says something like: “I need help with my homework” – they know they’ll get it. The same is when they don’t understand the class, but the core meaning of CPM is to learn to come to conclusions yourself. Research yourself, read a theory on your own, apply logic. This is why in a regular book there aren’t even any answers to the problems.
CPM is a new subject, they barely started teaching it about 7-8 years ago. It’s still not really popular and in many schools, you won’t even find it. This is why, when a child thinks “I need to do my homework, and I need an example of how it’s done” – in many questions for CPM there is no example. You still have to come to that conclusion yourself.
Reasons Why We Are so Bad at Math
All of the reasons explain why CPM is particularly hard for the students, but if you look at data, you’ll see that other math classes like Algebra 2, Geometry are also hard. They usually score 257, when the international level is 269 (scale 0-500). Media wrote more than once that Americans seem to do poorly at math, but what are the reasons for that?
- The educational system.
- Internet as student’s homework helper.
- Plenty of distractions.
- Lack of meaning and motivation.
The Common Core or just the educational system in the US is flawed and unbalanced. It has plenty of issues about it, and it’s obvious that it emphasizes liberal arts. STEM subjects are limited and they are not usually popular. While this is a big problem later on, no-one tries to deal with this and interest people in math or math-related subjects.
Many students grew kind of lazy, and solving their homework on the Net when they can’t find an answer themselves is pretty common. On one hand, it shows how to solve a problem, which supposedly enables students to work with similar ones later, but they don’t think.
Math required more than a spur of fantasy and reading. You won’t succeed unless you understand the inner meaning of the things. This is especially obvious with CPM. No-one really needs you to just solve problems without seeing the meaning of those.
This is the issue of the 21st century when motivation among the students is really low. The costs of colleges and student loan crisis just add up to that. While you need some enthusiasm to get to do your math and devote some time to understanding it, they can’t find that. Also, math seems to be very torn from the real life and most of the teachers are not trying to reconnect it.
It’s possible to interest students in math and even in CPM. A teacher can even make it so much easier and more meaningful for them. The first thing to do is to reconnect math and vague observations to real life examples. This would show the students the meaning of it all, spurring their interest and making them want to think. Everything else will come on its own.