Political Science Prof Asks: Is Algebra Necessary?

Capt.Albatross writes "Andrew Hacker, a professor of Political Science at the City University of New York and author of Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It, attempts to answer this question in the negative in today's New York Times Sunday Review. His primary claim is that mathematics requirements are prematurely and unreasonably limiting the level of education available to otherwise capable students ."

Comments

Good point, education is mostly useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

School is mostly about teaching kids to fall in line, believe everything they are told and follow orders without question.

Then you have University which is the new indentured servitude where people take on massive debt because it makes them attractive employees. Attractive because with massive debt they will have little choice but to accept any bullshit the employer demands.

I loved math. Did great in school. Then I finished and realized I'd wasted the most productive years of my life.

My sister travels teaching English since there are no jobs in the first world, and she talks about how children are taught actual jobs with the perspective that that is somehow a bad thing. Most kids here spend 12+ years in school and don't know fucking anything useful after.