Slashdot Mirror
Encouraging Students to Drop Mathematics
Coryoth writes "The BBC is reporting that students in the UK are being encouraged to drop math at the senior levels. It seems that schools are seeking to boost their standing on league tables by encouraging students not to take 'hard' subjects like mathematics, in favor of easier subjects in which they are assured good grades. The result is Universities being forced to provide remedial math classes for science students who haven't done math for two years. The BBC provides a comparison between Chinese and UK university entrance tests — a comparison that makes the UK look woefully behind."
This is a symptom of a greater problem. It seems, nobody is willing to do the hard work needed to accomplish great goals, because it makes them look .... bad when they fail. There is this whole mentality of "gotcha" in the world, where everyone blames everyone and everything else for "failure". Everyone is out to "get" the person who screwed up, so every effort is made to lower standards so that more people "succeed" even though, the real measure of success hasn't changed.
The craziness of this all is not based upon reality but rather on "feelings". Can't "hurt" the "feelings" of the poor souls who can't do something by actually being truthful and saying "You suck at that, let's try something else".
So, we've raised a generation (or two) of wimpy girly people, who wear their emotions on their sleave, and base everything on said emotions. "He offended me" waaaaaa. Grow some backbone people, and quite being a two year old.
A university of athletes gets shot up and murdered, while an 81 year old man was the only man, "Man enough" to do something. The stud athletes were jumping from windows. How pathetic is that?
Four airplanes are crashed into buildings while passengers sat like lambs doing nothing. One airplane had some REAL MEN and took out the hijackers.
We've lost our gung ho, wild west attitude, it as been pussified from our society. This is what happens when you let women and girly men run things. "Don't take the hard math, because it makes us look bad". "Don't fight back", "don't try and fail, better to not try at all".
I'm sick of it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Run for the US presidency, you are a definite step up from the current guy.
You can't handle the truth.