Talk:Saxon math

Untitled
This is nonsense. The phrase "Anglo-Saxon math" is a wholly-invented fantasy of Arthur Hu.

I don't understand what the criticism of Saxon math for lacking creativity is. Why would you need creativity for high school mathematics textbooks. NikolaiLobachevsky 20:59:28 1/25/2007 (UTC)

I'm changing the introduction- speciffically the part which introduces how the program works, because I know from firsthand experience that the program changes as the book levels progress.Pickled Cookie 06:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I am a Home schooler and this is my second year with Saxon Math. It has been very interesting. Instead of just stating a thing matter of factly, they cause you to think for yourself. It clearly walks you though the prosses of learning. PS: Niky Saxon Math is very creative, and you need creativity to engage students. Pickled, it's the student that is learning not the teacher! --63.19.197.124 15:38, 1 March 2007 (UTC)Michael Morgan age 12 1 March, 2007

I taught middle and high school math from the Saxon texts for 5 years in a private school. There are several problems with this approach: 1)The Saxon series teaches incrementally. At some point the mind wants subjects and topics to categorize what it has learned. I contend that after Pre-Algebra the Saxon method of teaching is slower. When I tried to teach the precalculus course using Saxon, the students couldn’t learn, because they needed to immerse themselves in a subject for a period of time until they could master it and understand it. Small incremental learning does not work at that age and stage of development. Math in high school should prepare students for college consequently it should have the same look and feel with topics and chapters, not incremental lessons. Saxon advertises it as strength, but I think that after the 8th grade it is a weakness.

Actually the Saxon series doesn’t teach incrementally, but confusingly. It advertises that is mixes subjects so as to teach the skills need to reach the next level, but actually if you follow the subjects and what is needed to master a topic, you see that is only intersperses the subjects with little rhyme or reason. Because it intersperses its subjects it looses efficiency and consequently depth. It consequently becomes a confusing jumble. Who would study Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar by reading jumbled excerpts, or Beethoven’s Ninth by studying single phrases? Who would study physics by interspersing topics on light, gravity, and motion? Math is not as incremental as one would think. Please refer to John Allen Paulos book called “Innumeracy”.

2)The Saxon series is boring. It is a monotonous droning on and on with the same methodology and problems in every lesson ad nauseum. Although it repeats the problems until the students “get how to work them”, by the time they have worked enough problems to get it, they are tired of the idea. Bright students then become bored with the same types of questions. Other math texts have much more varied and challenging problems included with the easier or standard questions. It is these very questions that challenge the human mind to be creative and require the student to understand the subject so that it can be applied. When traveling cross-country, I love to go through the pass or round the bend. A Saxon text is like traveling cross-country where all we do is keep going up, but only ever so slightly so that we hardly perceive that any elevation is gained. Saxon is the “Kansas” of the high school textbooks and all the roads are crooked so you can’t pick up any speed! What is needed to interest students is 1) A more hands on approach, 2) a focus on pattern recognition, 3) More height and depth at every turn, the “Colorado” of math if you will.

3) The Saxon series is not challenging our best students. It has little to challenge them with. The problems are repetitious and too numerous (but not numerous enough when a concept is first introduced). Usually the problems come in groups of 2-3 right after a subject is learned. But the future problems are the same in nature. Other texts usually have more questions right after teaching the subject as well as a variety of questions ranging from the basic review type questions, to the elementary application, to the more challenging, and lastly to the creative, insightful and extended application.

4) The Saxon series is too narrow. Other textbooks provide alternatives, applications, and more variety. When I covered precalculus I noticed graphing of rational functions is conspicuously missing from the text! (Graphing of linear functions is crammed into 1 or 2 incremental lessons, and yet graphing is not only the most important way to look at a line, but also the pictorial way; without the picture, the study of linear equations is incomplete. Saxon presumes to have the right way to do something, but the human mind benefits from multiple approaches to the same topic and gains insight from each approach. Some students can only learn visually, and Saxon many times omits the visual aspect in teaching in increments. What is it that student to do until the visual approach is taken? The program provides little deviation. New ways bring new ideas. Each approach has its strengths, so why not vary the approach? Many educators recommend teaching Calculus by teaching it numerically, graphically and algebraically at the same time so that one can gain a full understanding of each topic . 5) The Saxon text provides few proofs or discoveries and consequently “doesn’t address why”. It doesn’t even have a geometry course where students are first introduced to proofs. Although students shy away from proofs, they are a standard technique in math classes that helps students to understand ideas and the logic behind them. Bertrand Russell states that logic and math are inseparable and actually are the same thing. To omit the logic that explains the theory and instead only teach “how to solve a problem” is to turn from math itself. One must ask at the high school level, “What then are we teaching them if we are not teaching them logic?” Mathematics is logic, and logic is deductive reasoning. It is from a large base of such deductive reasoning that creative ideas are born. Understanding is the launch pad from which creativity takes off. It is historically the launch pad for all of human scientific thought. Students should be taught how to argue using indirect proof, or inductively, as well as deductively. They should be shown how to disprove using counterexamples and how to patch up their logic by making further assumptions that rule out the counterexamples. Consequently we should… 6) Require Geometry. Students are currently allowed to skip Geometry because Saxon supposedly incorporates geometry. That is not a good idea in my opinion. Geometry is a special course with some great insight and problems. It has a rich history in human thought and development and therefore should not be skipped. (“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”) This will eliminate more redundancies and stop students from skipping one of the most insightful and creative aspects of math and teach it in a way that explains why and fosters understanding. Geometry was developed almost entirely without Algebra and the insight gained is still reaping rewards in current human thought. One of the world’s foremost physicists accomplishes most of his important results using geometry.

7) Saxon series has lots of built-in redundancies. Sometimes a redundancy is needed as an introduction to a subject. But leaving it to the teachers will teach unneeded redundancies. In addition to the built-in redundancies, we have added more and are about to add more. Geometry is included in Saxon, so by adding a separate course of Geometry in high schools, we are building in more redundancy. The redundancy in Algebra I slows the course down so that the quadratic equation is not reached until Algebra II. But to take a proper Geometry course, students should know the quadratic equation. Therefore the geometry course suffers.

Because of redundancies our competitiveness suffered. We repeat and can’t go as deep or as far as other curriculums. The jumping around does not allow specialization and depth.

8) Saxon series is different from most of the other high school courses that follow a traditional sequence: Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Precalculus. If one adds a geometry course then with Saxon Math, the curriculum is essentially Algebra I with Geometry, Geometry, Algebra II with Geometry, Precalculus with Geometry, and yet we don’t really teach geometry as formulated by Euclid’s Elements (which is the basis for all of today’s high school geometry texts). Being this different makes it more difficult to incorporate students from other high schools.

9) Saxon stifles creativity. By requiring one to follow the program, it doesn’t allow for creativity of the students or the teachers. If the core courses are trimmed to their essence, then we can add ideas according to the teacher’s strength and the student’s interests. [Agreed.  Kids in our area learn creatively!  Now they have no grasp of actual math of course, but at least they aren't bored!! ]

10) Saxon lessons when it introduces a new idea don’t have enough practice immediately following the instruction. What coach would show a student how to hit a backhand and then ask him to practice it twice. By the time students will have worked 10 problems on the lesson, at least 3 weeks will have passed and 5 new ideas are introduced. Students don’t get feedback immediately that they don’t understand it, because they are able to do 75% of their homework. Before they realize that they are getting lost they are on to other things and don’t realize why they are lost. The instruction becomes too far separated from the practice. This is totally unlike sports where the thing taught is practiced until it becomes second nature. Then when they go on, the concept has been incorporated at a sufficient level to use the concept in other places.

To summarize, the Saxon Math Series does not follow the standards established by the NCTM and is jumbled, confusing, boring, unchallenging, monotonous, narrow, redundant, different, and stifles creativity.--Appropo (talk) 16:13, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

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US specific
I think it should be mentioned that Saxon is United States specific (i.e., has only a market in the US) as math education is generally very different (including all the social experimenting) in the US vs. other countries such as UK or Switzerland or Finland.

Neutrality
Sorry, I'm unaware of conventions on how to question the neutrality of an article. However, this article is very pro-Saxon, both in language (none of the oft-leveled criticism of Saxon math is ever mentioned), and in that it gives examples of student improvement using Saxon math, but none of the studies done where no improvement is found. A quick googling finds a careful summary of case studies in : "Effective Programs in Elementary Mathematics:  A Best-Evidence Synthesis." by Robert E. Slavin, Cynthia Lake, Johns Hopkins University. I recommend balancing the article somewhat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.216.13.75 (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

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"By the mid-1800s?"
The paragraph at the heading "Replacing standards-based texts" starts "By the mid-1800s..." This does not seem to make sense in context, as the only date mentioned in the paragraph is 2007. Could someone have meant "by the mid-1980s?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:400:8000:7625:D804:DD7A:A05A:C8CB (talk) 22:32, 17 June 2017 (UTC)