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The Case Against Algebra
HughPickens.com writes: Dana Goldstein writes at Slate that political scientist Andrew Hacker proposes replacing algebra II and calculus in the high school and college with a practical course in statistics for citizenship. According to Hacker, only mathematicians and some engineers actually use advanced math in their day-to-day work and even the doctors, accountants, and coders of the future shouldn't have to master abstract math that they'll never need. For many math is often an impenetrable barrier to academic success. Algebra II, which includes polynomials and logarithms, and is required by the new Common Core curriculum standards used by 47 states and territories, drives dropouts at both the high school and college levels. Hacker's central argument is that advanced mathematics requirements, like algebra, trigonometry and calculus, are "a harsh and senseless hurdle" keeping far too many Americans from completing their educations and leading productive lives. "We are really destroying a tremendous amount of talent—people who could be talented in sports writing or being an emergency medical technician, but can't even get a community college degree," says Hacker. "I regard this math requirement as highly irrational." According to Hacker many of those who struggled through a traditional math regimen feel that doing so annealed their character while critics says that mathematics is used as a hoop, a badge, a totem to impress outsiders and elevate a profession's status. "It's not hard to understand why Caltech and M.I.T. want everyone to be proficient in mathematics. But it's not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar. Demanding algebra across the board actually skews a student body, not necessarily for the better."
Or just show them to us!
Math should be banned and replaced with something more practical in the USA... like watching reruns of Seinfeld, or learning on how to turn off the ceiling fan if the batteries in the remote die.
something tells me mr Hacker flunked his math test
..because yes, what the world needs above all else is more sports writers.
A decent statistics class isn't any less difficult than an algebra class.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I will agree to this as long as they remove foreign language requirement for engineers! The accountants and poets don't like high end math, I don't like foreign language requirement (and I am fluent in more then 1 language and an engineer)!
There are plenty of good arguments to be made for moving the math curiculum to statistics, combinatorics and other areas, but "making more people pass the exam" isn't one of them.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
How about a course in logic, particularly Boolean logic? I agree, very few people really need to understand logarithms or even polynomials. But learning how to think, and solve problems is important.
As soon as you replace a number it a calculation with a variable like cell A1, you have jumped into algebra.
First of all: Relavant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1050/ Second: The reason math is so crucial is not because many of us use abstract math in daily life but that it is such a good determinator of other skills. If you are bad at math you are probably bad at CS and engineering as well. It is in fact a basic skill, and a crucial part of a good education for any person in what they call STEM. And where if matters, college, you don't have to take math if you don't want to. Getting rid of Algebra II is good though, Trig/Elementary Caculus should be the high school standard. Taking Algebra II recently gained me nothing anyway.
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=math
So many here get their underwear riding up because they have to solve an abstract math problem?
Okay, say we do drop Algebra and higher from the common curriculum. Then we're going to go even lower in the list of math rankings by country. Perhaps it's because of the way it's taught, not because of the material. I distinctly remember hating word problems because they were always so inane. "If the flag pole is 10 feet tall and the sun is at a 30 degree angle, how long is the shadow?". I also remember having the teacher assign 50 problems in one night (2 through 100, evens only since the answers to odds were in the back of the book). Now, with this common core nonsense (no idiot left behind), we are just cramming more of this crap down kids throats.
What was lacking for me was the true application. I hated math growing up, and ended up being an engineer. It wasn't until I started to realize the cool things I could do that required math, such as tinkering in OpenGL, that I really started to latch on to it.
I'm curious, how is it taught in other countries that routinely get higher rankings in math/science? Is it a matter of teaching? a matter of culture? How do the Japanese view math? The Germans? Chinese?
Speaking as Lazarus Long "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
It only works if one assumes that this level of school is merely job training. Some could argue that education is about broadening knowledge and exercising the brain, not just 'how am I going to use this in real life?'
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Nobody needs algebra. There are plenty of jobs at McDonald's and algebra is just a waste.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
We should probably also dump gym since most students are not going to be in the NFL. While we're at it let's drop learning some Shakespeare, practicing arts, learning world geography, and hearing history. Mike Judge really is the prophet!
"We are really destroying a tremendous amount of talentâ"people who could be talented in sports writing or being an emergency medical technician, but can't even get a community college degree," says Hacker. "I regard this math requirement as highly irrational."
I would prefer EMTs to be able to think mathematically, and be able to extrapolate in the head whether it's safe to administer emergency medication based on prior intake, or whether emergency evacuation is needed, or a boatload of other stuff that depends on understanding maths beyond adding numbers.
Sports writing? Similar. You should at least be familiar with statistics, and how asymptotes work. But I'm not as fired up about those being math-stupid as an EMT being so.
The only reason why maths is hard is adults keep telling children that it's hard.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
.
Why even bother having school at all. It would be a lot easier to just play throughout your childhood.
Apart from algebra being an intellectual hurdle to be jumped which may help separate people academically I have thought this for about the last 30 years, and no I didn't "flunk" maths. As a matter of course we don't teach people medicine or geology or Latin, these are specialisms which people with an interest study as they refine their possible future choices. So why algebra? I am an engineer in an advanced engineering company writing engineering software and I "do maths" about once a year at most. Yes there are people here who do a lot more than me but there are also people who do a lot less so why does the average Joe need to know about quadratic equations?
The suggestion to study statistics seems very sensible, it might help people understand when the politicians are lying...
Art is the mathematics of emotion
I picture Justin Long playing the doctor from the movie "Idiocracy"....
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
disclosure: Im a systems engineer, and have never had trouble with basic algebra.
in the US at least, we seem to have this fever-dream mentality when it comes to education and employment. Namely, that we presume so long as everyone can "code" and learn maths, that they can one day successfully achieve gainful employment and become a productive member of the workforce to lead a meaningful life. We assume little johnny needs to code because thats what his employers want, but it couldnt be further from the truth. Most businesses want a few engineers, but they dont want to spend a lot of money on them. They want the nuts-and-bolts sorted out so that reproduceability obsoletes them and permits them to hire cheaper workers because truthfully business is a job-creator as a last resort.
the issue we need to sort out as a nation is how we value work in general, whichs seems to have gone off the rails since the early nineties and NAFTA/CAFTA. Cooks, carpenters, welders, EMT's, and auto mechanics are all incredibly important --and in some cases in high demand -- professions for people to consider. However the pay and hours in these fields is a form of misery not seen since the old testament. You cant raise a family on any of these careers, and for some of them retirement isnt really an option. we use education as a whipping stick for these careers to insist theyre worth "less" than they really are, or at least so we can justify it to ourselves. If you want to see this self-fulfilling prophecy of underemployment in the real world, just look at the trucking industry. Perpetually understaffed, underpaid long-haul tractor-trailer drivers that get no vacation, sick leave, or retirement fund yet are in such ridiculous demand that most trucking companies like Dart or Swift will pay the driver to finish their CDL education. The demand is so high, drivers with a good record can quit a job and be hired at another in the same day.
So, If you want to obsolete maths like algebra, I propose we obsolete the puritanical tradition of shitting on trades that dont always rely on it. And while we're at it, lets take a sobering step back and realize that not everyone needs to code to lead a fulfilling life.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Idiocracy was not meant to be a documentary, nor a roadmap for the future.
So, reducing the math burden on students is okay, but reducing the liberal arts burden on STEM students isn't?
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
You don't solve a problem by simply ignoring the results or breaking the measuring tool.
Basic algebra, trigonometry and calculus are not difficult. If the students can't handle it, they are dumb, even if that doesn't please you. End of the story.
They are dumb, and that's a problem. You're not going to solve the problem by bending reality and saying basic abstract maths are difficult and that they are not dumb. You are just ignoring the problem, which may (will) have unintended consequences in the future. Actually, if you want to solve the problem, you should invest more energy in the process that is failing. That could be more hours, less student per teacher, or researching a new pedagogy that makes the acquisition of such simple and fundamental concepts more successful. Or anything else that doesn't imply lowering the expected outcome.
It has nothing to do with the jobs they will do in 30 years, simply because nobody can predict that. You are just promoting the race to the bottom.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
advanced mathematics requirements, like algebra, trigonometry and calculus
That is not advanced mathematics.
That is just about basic mathematics.
However, the curriculum needs to be revised with modern tools. Computer algebra systems makes a lot of what is taught in these courses obsolete. Courses that use CAS then start pulling in advanced content to fill up the time.
This is analogous to what the calculator did. Nobody knows how to even calculate a square root by hand (ok a few people) and nobody does long division. There are so many things in math classes that simply need to just go away like long division.
May need a calculus workaround for this. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/C...
I do EE work and barely touch algebra.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A non-mathematician that uses statistics is arguing for statistics, not algebra, as a filtering mathematical standard. And, this individual then argues that "coders" (I guess programmers?) won't need things like logarithms.
Yep, sounds like a poli-sci major to me.
--#
Algebra is easy.. it's all about getting X alone in the corner, so you can find his value. Geometry should go, along with the foreign language requirement.
How do you promote STEM without promoting algebra? There are many things taught in school that many people never use. When was the last time you needed to dissect a frog? Or how about the last time you need to diagram a sentence? Maybe we should go back to just teaching girls Home Ec and boys Shop, because if you keep dumbing down education, that is all that is going to be left to them.
as in what an idiot. only a reporter would suggest we dumb down education. if they are bound for trades or humanities then they shouldn't take math beyond the algebra that is required. in any case one cannot understand statistics without understanding algebra. it's supposed to be hard. solving problems is hard. welcome to life.
nothing to see here - move along
If imposing math reduces the number of philosophers, sports figures, and poets... I unconditionally support us becoming a lot more focused on adding math requirements.
Sadly, I don't think it will do anything of the kind.
But it was still amusing to read. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There is a reason we expose young people to intellectual pusuits rather than just putting them where they'd be useful like in diamond mines or in chimney sweep jobs. There brains are particularly plastic and need stimulation to develop. Math is among the pursuits they need for their intellectual health. Leaving it out would be like leaving running out of physical development.
What does Andrew Hacker say to the coder who discovers a love of mathematics at say 20? Not knowing advanced algebra and calculus would make it damn near impossible to switch over to mathematics at the university level. This is precisely what happened to me, and now I have a PhD in math and a post doc at an R1 university.
Maybe the problem is with how it is taught? Back in the day, high school math teachers tended to have a degree in mathematics (and biology in biology and chemistry in chemistry, etc.). Then in the 1970s this notion of certifying teachers came into being. With certification you were taught many things, like classroom management, child psychology, etc., but no longer was being a math or science teacher based on a demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter.
For anecdotal evidence, I had an excellent organic chemistry teacher in high school. When my state passed new teacher certification rules, she was grandfathered in (or would that be grandmothered?). She often quipped that since she didn't have a certificate, it made no sense that she could teach us as freshman in college, but not seniors in high school. BTW, she finished her dissertation the year after I graduated and continued teaching in high school, without a certificate for an additional 20 years.
Anecdote #2. I have a very good friend who is now a retired teacher. Math was her worst subject. However, the school system needed somebody to teach junior high math and she had a teaching certificate, so that is what she was hired to do. She would often say how grateful she was for the instructor's guide for the lesson plans, because without it she would be lost.
In short, if you want kids to learn math and science, they need teachers that know math and science. My wife is a teacher, so I type this with some trepidation, but maybe instead of dumbing down the subject matter taught to students, we should quit dumbing down the requirements to teach them in the first place. If you want kids to learn, then need teachers who have mastered the subject matter.
I was going to use my mod points, but there are too many good comments (and plenty of modders anyway).
However, one point no one seems to have made yet: TFA seems to worry that, without Alg2, you won't get a college degree, and the world will be denied the next talented sports writer or EMT.
To me, a better question is: Why in the world would you expect a sports writer or an EMT to have a college degree? Those are both fields that require a certain amount of training, but a college degree seems to be the wrong kind. What is it with the US (this is very US oriented), that everyone is expected to go to college? The simple fact is that most people don't (or shouldn't) need a college degree for their careers. And by forcing everyone to go, you only water down the contents of a college education, so that everyone can pass.
Also: I agree with the Ms. Goldstein's husband: you require high school students to do math for the same reason you require them to read Shakespeare. High school is a generalist education that should expose students to an essential broad cross section of academic and cultural studies.
Finally, Ms. Goldstein hits on a key problem with math education in the USA: "American teachers, especially those in the elementary grades, have taken few math courses themselves, and often actively dislike the subject." Might just make it hard to learn...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Sure, teach statistics before Calculus. But the reason students struggle in math is the teachers themselves do not know math. There is an illiteracy in math that is handed down generation to generation, analogous to the language illiteracy in the descendants of American slaves that is handed down generation to generation (stemming from when it was made illegal to teach blacks how to read and write). Math, including Algebra II and Geometry, teach logical thinking, something that is sorely lacking and that is greatly needed in today's culture which is soaked in misleading media on the one hand and marked by rapid changes in technology and culture on the other, both of which requiring critical and logical thinking to sort it out and to not get led astray by fads and lies.
Where this simply a case for statistics. I'd support it... But Algebra underpins it all — there are good arguments for introducing children to Algebra before Arithmetic (Robert Heinlein, actually, floated this idea decades ago).
Oh, wow — just when America started doing something right about Math, someone wants to mess with it. So, if people drop out because of it, it should be abolished? The logic sounds sort of like that about narcotics — people keep doing it despite efforts to the contrary, so it should become legal. Oh, he only talks about Algebra II — the "complicated" stuff... Well, how elitist of him — what about the poor kids, who fail basic Algebra en masse?
But, hey, how about we abolish the "Common Core" instead and allow the decisions on what to teach be made at the local level — and compare the results? Yes, some schools will be in error, but not all — while national curriculum created in Washington carries the risk of forcing everybody to make a mistake...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The Entropy is high in this dude's head.
Exactly. There's no reason for every student in highschool to be learning calculus, algebra, or statistics. When I went to school in Ontario about 20 years ago. We only needed 2 or 3 math courses in total. Same goes for science. There's little point in learning basic science and math if you aren't going to be using them in your future career.
Here's the current requirements for graduating school in Ontario
4 English (1 credit per grade) *
1 French as a second language
3 mathematics (1 at the Senior Level)
2 science
1 Canadian geography (Grade 9)
1 Canadian history (Grade 10)
1 Arts credit (any of visual arts, music, drama, dance)
1 health and physical education
0.5 credit in civics
0.5 credit in career studies
1 English, French second language, or Co-Op
1 in PE, Arts, Business, or Co-Op
1 in science, computers, tech (auto, wood, etc.), or Co-Op
Max 2 Co-Op
12 Other Credits in whatever you want
40 hours of community involvement activities
Basically, we make sure the students are very literate, that they can read and write at a good level in the English Language. Then they get some basic science and math education. And they have a lot of other credits they can use to pursue their interests. If you actually want to go to university to take engineering, you're still going to have to take calculus, algebra, and a bunch of science courses. But for those that want to become accountants, science isn't going to be high up on their course list, and for those that want to do car mechanics, algebra and calculus aren't going to get in their way. We have a good graduation rate, and the students seem to be doing quite well when they get out into the real world.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The author is a political scientist, so why wouldn't he propose reducing the math curriculum.
It is vital, for people to get along with each other, that all students are required to do serious mathematics. Many people think that mathematicians and scientists do no real work at all. Many are also deluded and think that if they buckle down a bit they could excel at math. The simple truth is that if they dedicated every ounce of their being to being able to work as a mathematician or scientists that mostly could not cut it. The social effects are awful. High school math teachers are not highly paid nor are many college professors. After all, why would the public support them when the public opines that anyone can do this stuff well. We also have such deep literacy issues that many parents want college to really degrade itself into being a trade school. The cost of education is so high that parents want to turn college into a get even, money- wise, experience. I would like to see advanced mathematics as an absolute requirement for any high school diploma. Hopefully at least, to beginning calculus for all students. Students not capable of academic life need to be moved to job training or trade schools. We need to support our intellectuals at far higher levels than we currently do. It is tyhe whiz kids that will make America prosperous and strong. The rest can cook French fries as KFC or some other menial task.
And (simple) polynomials appear in basic things like kinetic energy.
On the other hand, some statistics and probability theory is useful.
You cant raise a family on any of these careers
That's a pretty hefty assumption. I know plenty of welders and EMT's that have large families and are very financially secure. Of course my evidence is anecdotal, but so is yours.
Namely, that we presume so long as everyone can "code" and learn maths, that they can one day successfully achieve gainful employment
I would counter that parent's seem to presume that Little Johnny doesn't need math because he's headed for the NBA/NFL/RIAA anyway.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
This
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm not sure you can argue a long-haul driver as skilled labor. I know some cooks, carpenters and mechanics and none of them live in utter poverty as you describe. They aren't millionaires but most have immense job satisfaction (its what they want to do) and a decent living. I'm not sure were you are coming up with this biblically underpaid nonsense.
I'd argue the fever dream nowadays is these just graduated college students who think they can enter the work force at 6 figures and be a millionaire by age 30. But be damned if they have to work to get there. That woman from Yelp is a prime example.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Very well said. There is a tremendous bias against jobs that involve working with your hands and far too many people are encouraged to "go to college" in order to obtain some apocryphal "white collar" career. I would say that a lot of the IT problems many companies have originate with this blue collar bias, with the belief that IT employees are somehow not quite white collar.
I had a conversation with the maintenance supervisor at a client who told me about his son. In the top 10% of his class in high school, he told the school counselor he didn't want to go to college. The counselor requested a meeting with his dad and basically beat him up for not making him go to college (the kid ended up getting some kind of 2 year drafting education, and works for a kitchen equipment maker travelling to job sites to review kitchen construction plans to make sure the planned designs and installations will work -- the guy said he makes close to 100k).
As far as I can tell, all the "go to college" rhetoric has done is build college administration empires, make oodles of money for the student loan industry and probably dumb down traditional academic courses that vocationally-minded students have no interest in.
And what's the end game, exactly? $100k in a debt so you can make coffee? We've flooded the market with half-educated college graduates aspiring to a mythical middle class lifestyle that's becoming increasingly unobtainable even by well educated graduates.
One thing that kind of counts against a lot of skilled trades is the abysmal, old-school hostile management-labor relationship. I worked closely with journeyman electricians as my last job and while the benefits they had seemed great, the work environment seemed really unpleasant. Draconian, authoritarian management schemes, forced overtime and work rules that make a $20k a year cubical job seem pleasant.
Learning math is part of an essential education, along with reading, writing, developing critical thinking and analysis skills, learning at least one foreign language, not to mention learning history, geography, etc. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and almost all of the great philosophers throughout history were skilled at mathematics. In Descartes' case, his work had a profound impact on mathematics. To say that philosophers don't need to study math only reveals the paucity of Hacker's own knowledge.
Our senses were developed to let a heterotrophic organism survive.
Galilei quote:
"The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth."
You want to let kids choose between acting out like a chimp or study mathematics?
BTW: reading is not adding letters in words, words in sentences, application of grammatics...
It's recognition of patterns which just happens to be the essence of mathematics.
Mathematics is easy peasy if you learn your definitions - as much a vocabulary thing as anything else.
But the problem is you can't see that if you never studied it - or better, understood it's essence!!!
So here I see a big problem in education: always the stress on analysis.
But analysis is a chicken without a head if it's not followed by synthesis, a creative exercise to put things back in perspective.
jeeez, why couldn't you have just said:
"the average segment of the population who can variously pass stats, algebra Ii and calculus is 18.81%"
About 80% of the time, that would have been perfectly sufficient. I'm 140% sure of that, pal.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I've made a similar case against teaching students all about fiction, poetry and drama in so-called English classes, as nobody needs that crap except future English teachers, authors and poets. (And if we make this change, even future English teachers won't need to study fiction, poetry or drama.) We should replace all that useless garbage with reading comprehension (using NON-fiction exclusively), writing (again, non-fiction) and critical thinking studies. Our current educational emphases come to us from a distant past and seriously need revamping. We need critical thinkers far worse than we need people who can create fiction.
However the pay and hours in these fields is a form of misery not seen since the old testament. You cant raise a family on any of these careers, and for some of them retirement isnt really an option. we use education as a whipping stick for these careers to insist theyre worth "less" than they really are
You're making a claim here that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Specifically, you're claiming that those vocational careers aren't well paid because we "insist" they're less valuable than others that require more education. But such perceptions have little to no effect on wages. What drives wages is supply and demand, and those fields aren't well paid because the supply of people able to do them is high relative to the demand for them.
If you want to see this self-fulfilling prophecy of underemployment in the real world, just look at the trucking industry. Perpetually understaffed, underpaid long-haul tractor-trailer drivers that get no vacation, sick leave, or retirement fund yet are in such ridiculous demand that most trucking companies like Dart or Swift will pay the driver to finish their CDL education. The demand is so high, drivers with a good record can quit a job and be hired at another in the same day.
The fact that a driver can get another job easily, and the fact that trucking companies are willing to pay for training, don't indicate that truck drivers are underpaid relative to the economics of the industry. Truckers can change jobs easily because their skills are highly mobile: Driving a truck for one company is no different from driving for another. There are slight differences in procedures and paperwork, but they're trivial, so friction is low. The contract nature of trucker employment also helps a lot; because the company can easily terminate any driver who turns out to be a problem, they don't have to be very careful about who they hire.
As for training, trucking companies have found that it's cheaper to pay for training than to pay higher mileage rates, because that allows them to draw from the large pool of unskilled workers available and because the training is easy, a legally-required formality more than a challenging skill development exercise. If the training were longer, more expensive and more difficult, then they'd undoubtedly find it better to raise pay scales and let the higher pay encourage people to take on the risk of obtaining training themselves.
If you're going to college to "become a poet" or a sports writer, you've already failed math. You've failed to do even a trivial cost-benefit analysis on your "investment". If the math hurdle keeps a couple more dummies from throwing their money away, I say it's a good thing.
f(x)=ae^-( ((x-b)^2) / 2c^2)
Howdy folks,
The problem with the math curriculum is how much ground high school kids are expected to cover in one or two classes per year. Just look through older posts: algebra; polynomials; logarithms; stats; calculus; trig. That is a massive amount of material to cover. Further, since math builds upon prior concepts, if you had a teacher who skipped over part of the curriculum or you simply had trouble with earlier material, you're boned once you reach the more advanced concepts -- and things can get exponentially worse unless you either get tutoring or have a sudden epiphany.
I actually don't know what the solution is. I know a couple old school Ph.Ds in biology who have had to take crash courses in stats the last few years as they work through DNA analyses. Their joke is that they went into biology because it was considered math-light 25 years ago. But then, I also know people with solid math backgrounds who stumble on figuring out tips (it's not just the % -- there are social norms involved that influence the calculation). Most math curricula are light on doing everyday math mentally.
If you breezed through math in high school? That's freakin' awesome. I honestly wish I was better at higher math -- my job options would've been wider post-graduation.
But ... we're taking an accelerated math curriculum and throwing it at everyone, regardless of ability or, importantly, regardless of prior education. The one size fits all approach is kinda' crazy in a subject that, essentially, builds a scaffold from scratch.
Anywho ... with regard to "useless" classes like gym and the arts ... gym and music have pretty solid evidence showing they help raise academic scores (especially with regards to boys and doing something physical). Ditto for having green spaces for kids to spend time in during the day. Humanities classes, done well (trust, just like math and science, they often aren't), also teach critical thinking, but of a type that places value on being able to read emotions and placing events in context. The emotional IQ thing, as current thinking holds, is essential in making effective teams -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...
Basically, we should be teaching kids 50 hours a week, giving them time to burn off energy, in environments with green spaces, with fully involved teachers, including individualized learning regimens (with private tutors, as needed), with music instruction (especially in groups) all in a cost-effective manner. IME, we're kinda' asking the impossible.
Here sort these items by the 3rd row in the even columns and the 5th row in the odd columns. (Proceeds to start cutting and pasting with the mouse.)
" Perpetually understaffed, underpaid long-haul tractor-trailer drivers that get no vacation, sick leave, or retirement fund yet are in such ridiculous demand that most trucking companies like Dart or Swift will pay the driver to finish their CDL education. The demand is so high, drivers with a good record can quit a job and be hired at another in the same day. "
No worries. Once the self-drive technology matures, this industry will be the first to adopt it. If you're currently in the Trunk Driving industry, it is highly recommended to start prepping for this unavoidable reality in the near future. This goes for all driving based jobs ( Taxis, delivery, etc. )
I'm appalled by the general sentiment of most other commenters. It seems like a lot of people are missing the point. The core argument is that you don't need to be good at maths to do most jobs. I'm an engineer myself and I work on some pretty advanced stuff, but I don't need algebra in my daily work.
It seems like a lof of commenters take Hacker's proposal as an affront to their intelligence. "I passed the test so everyone else should pass the test". This shows a serious lack of empathy. Slashdot visitors are most university engineers, we are the top 5% of the world. It's important to realize that 95% of the world are not as academically smart as you. This doesn't mean they can't do many of the jobs we rely on.
The irrationality Hacker aims at is that advanced maths is not something most people need in their working daily lives. So why have it as part of a standardized exam? It's not about being smart or dumb, it's about gauging the relative usefulness of skills.
Screw statistics, if you want practical bring back Home ec and teach basic accounting, teach about credit cards, checking, saving, mortgages, etc. That's far more useful to force upon everyone. That said if you can't get through Algebra II with at least a C in high school you probably aren't cut out to tie your shoelaces let alone become any of the professions the article mentions.
Nothing i have to say is worth saying.
They should just go ahead and remove all academic requirements and replace them with a yoga class so we'll be able to bend over and kiss our asses goodbye.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"*political scientist* Andrew Hacker"
Well there's your problem. From "science" that is softer than a new born's bowel movement. [/snark]
"I regard this math requirement as highly irrational."
I see what you did there...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's talk personal finance and economics which will give you basic algebra (pre-algebra) as well as basic statistics and some sense of when to use debt and not!
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
I am skeptical. I understand that stats are not well understood and are easily twisted to correlate almost anything.
But as a graduate engineer with lots of Calculus, Algebra, Stats and Probability in my past, I personally found probability and statistics a lot harder than Algebra.
To think that people who can't handle 2x + 1 = 3x -1 are going to 'get' statistics is highly improbable to me.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Imagine algebra being the driving school and practical statistics as driving a car. You can hardly drive a car in an urban environment unless you've gone to driving school and know how the system around you works.
Sure, the end result is where everybody wants to get, but there are (sadly) no shortcuts.
-SR
Perhaps teaching algebra, geometry, and such isn't so much about the UTILITY of the specific skills, but more about teaching kids a methodical, procedural, deductive method of thinking and problem solving?
Not every answer in their lives will be found by 'googling' or 'asking their friends'.
Sometimes, there are going to be hard problems - and not just math-related ones, although likely there will be plenty of those - where having some experience in methodically stepping-through the issue's component parts and rigorously analyzing the thing will be the only way to come to a good conclusion.
-Styopa
Why?
God, I was so bored by slow math progression in grade school. Even though I accelerated two years and eventually went to MIT, I feel I could have accelerated math another 2 or 3 more years. I know plenty of bored stiff people too.
Forget algebra, how can you teach stats to someone with zero exposure to calculus?
You can do a basic stats class for people who haven't had calculus. I know because I have taught and tutored people in stats who haven't had calculus. You will find very few stats classes that will require you to actually have a deep understanding of calculus. Sure, if you do know calc you can go deeper into stats but it isn't vital to start with. You can teach Bayes theorem, conditional probability, and lots more without ever doing a derivative or integral. I made my living doing statistical simulations and none of it required me to actually do any calculus to get useful answers.
Probability theory can't be described without limits and infinite summations, i.e. you can't comprehend it without calculus.
Not true, at least at the introductory level. Most people can understand a bell curve just fine without ever having taken a calculus class. Just because they can't derive the formula for the curve doesn't mean they can't understand the concept it represents. It's no different than intro physics in that regard. Plenty of people take intro physics prior to or concurrently with calculus. It's when you want to go deeper that you might need to understand some calculus but most people will never get there.
So, we're saying that we should education people less because we are too stupid/lazy to use the basic building blocks of engineering. Okay, What was it Oscar Wilde said in "The Importance of being Earnest"? " “I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.” -Lady Bracknell
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
My choice for an alternate math course would be economics; and I don't mean the monetary theory stuff, just basic budgeting and calculating loan amortizations. You would not believe how many people out there think they are financially responsible because they are making the minimum payment on their credit card debt every month.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Might the students who succeed in that be also those who would do well with math?
You can't understand statistics meaningfully without algebra and calculus.
What Andrew Hacker seems to be saying is that students should be taught the kind of pseudo-science that passes for "statistics" among social scientists. Perhaps they should be, but that takes a few weeks, not an entire high school curriculum.
You probably know how to drive a car or even a reasonable sized truck. Driving a large rig requires even more skill and a special license to measure that skill. I do not see how it would not be seen as skilled labor.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's also useful to detect how someone's data is misrepresented. Can anyone lie with statistics to a statistician?
To a statistician? No.
But we aren't talking about making everyone a statistician, we are talking about teaching them just enough statistics that they will be MORE susceptible to misleading statistics, not less.
Someone without statistical training will at least use common sense to act as a check against misleading stats - someone with limited understanding of statistics will buy into a lie much more readily, convincing themselves it is true because they "understand statistics".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Language God Talks -- Richard Feynman
A quote from the book with the same name, both in print and in audio, by Herman Wouk about his conversations with Feynman while doing research for his two volume magnum opus on WWII. According to Feynman the language is Calculus
Especially that rope-climbing bit, I could never do that. Or gymnastics. The lighter quicker kids were always better at that. OTOH I could lift more than they could, and beat any two of them at a tug of war. So, horses for courses.
Turns out there's far less intentional "lying with statistics" in politics than you might think. Truth is, they just can't follow the math.
No, you must take algebra before you take statistics or probability. If you didn't, the teacher would be able to cover only the most rudimentary concepts in stats or prob.
Without knowing polynomials, how would you deal with an unknown standard deviation when the known variance is not a simple square? You're stuck. And without knowing logarithms, how do you understand a logarithmic axis on a plot? Or a log likelihood? How would you appreciate that every kind of probability distribution is based on a formula that's expressible only using exponents AND polynomials.
Learning statistics and probability without algebra II would dumb them down so much that they'd lose their mathematical roots. They'd become merely conceptual... sterile disembodied factoids to be memorized en masse and regurgitatied by rote... never usable and soon forgotten.
Math was something I enjoyed and was quite good at. But for many people it was a real struggle in high school. I saw it as being similar to music. Some people, no matter how hard they tried, could not play an instrument to save their lives. It doesn't mean they are dumb, it's just that some people are wired differently. The difference, or course, is that you could get through high school just fine without ever taking a music class. Not so with math.
So I agree somewhat with the article but I'm not sure that Statistics is the answer either. Personally, at the high school level, I would prefer that people are taught more practical things. Like how to open a bank account, how to balance a checkbook, how to make a budget, how to cook, the basics of investing, etc. For most people high school is as far as they get in formal education. Only something like 25% of Americans graduate from college.
There is the argument that math teaches you how to think logically and how to solve problems - both important skills. But we should not be creating barriers to success just because someone has trouble with algebra.
Think about xkcd 1050, the one which has the text "It's weird how proud people are of not learning math when the same arguments apply to learning to play music, cook, or speak a foreign language."
I think that the problem is that every math class in school, after Algebra feels like it's being taught because every student needs math every year, and they already learned the material from the previous year, so what's left to teach them? It has a feel of trivia to it, but it's frustrating because you grasp trivia, but this math thing feels like it is supposed to be used somehow but you never get to apply it to anything.
When a student asks "Why am I learning calculus?" the closest answer which feels remotely right to them is "In case you decide to teach math in High School, you'll need to know calculus".
What to do about it? Drop pre-algebra for Intro to Computer Science. It'll really be some basic programming, but still. Even tell the students that they get a years break from math. Many will love that, and those that don't will get over themselves quickly. Then do algebra, and then possibly even drop algebra 2 for more programming. This will create a balance in the students minds of learning mathematical principles, and then actually getting to apply them. They'll become better at math.
And if many students start to get good at programming, it might even be worth it to drop calculus, and trigonometry, for more statistics or even machine learning. I know that there are professions which use calculus, but there are so many more which use stats. And more and more, every business is going to using machine learning.
I say this as someone who loved math in school. I honestly think that by balancing out theoretical math class with some math application (programming) more students will do better at math and be more prepared for the future workforce.
I say get rid of it, but at the same time I would like to see completing college Algebra as requirement to vote.
Frankly if you can not comprehend something that easy then you probably don't have the brain power to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth.
More poets and philosophers. I heard Donald Trump talking about this just the other day.
Actually, it was Nancy Pelozi that advised all Americans to go on welfare (government dependency) and become writers and poets. Because all good liberals know that what we need, more than anything, is more misspelled crap bereft of any grammar and / or punctuation whatsoever, flowing out of America's basements.
These days its called 'blogging' and apparently its a career path.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"But it's not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar. "
I was a Philosophy major in college and I did Calculus... I do agree that I hardly use more than basic algebra. Perhaps a real life math class and statistics are more useful. I find doing stuff like figuring out a mortgage and 'how long will it take me to pay off my credit card' is pretty useful.
Peace, or Not?
Mathematics - and not particularly advanced math - is hard to learn for a lot of people. That doesn't mean it should be dropped from a high school curriculum. So, what else that's hard to learn for a lot of people? Science? Classic literature? History? Writing? Should any of the other "hard to learn for some people" subjects be dropped from the HS curriculum? Maybe reading of anything that contains more than five letter words should be gotten rid of. Let's eliminate some not often used letters from the alphabet in learning to write. All those terrible symbols for chemistry should be dropped. English is a perfectly good language so let's drop any foreign language instruction. As far as history is concerned don't go back to the study before 15 years ago. Comic books would be sufficient reading for English classes. Strive for the lowest level of achievement. We'd certainly increase HS graduation rates and turn the population into a collection of incompetent ignoramuses.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
You can add carpenters to the list of viable jobs. Maybe the framing carpenters that are just cutting and nailing 2x4's together aren't rolling in it, but I knew a construction manager more than a decade ago who was having trouble finding a finish carpenter and was offering $30 an hour to start.
I don't think many parents really believe their kid is going to be a rock star someday. They probably have realized though that they haven't made practical use of much of their higher math education. Consequentially they don't see the sense in fighting with their child to make them learn it, if it falls outside their interest.
I agree with Hacker that 1) algebra II and trig are not often used by most adults, 2) statistics and probability would be more useful skills, and 3) a course in 'mathematical reasoning' would be much more useful to 85% of srtudents than the HS math that's taught now.
But I think poor pure math skills in America is the tip of a much bigger problem, which is only going to get worse as life on Earth becomes increasingly virtual and computer based. It seems Americans are losing their ability to think and reason abstractly. And lowering the bar for math skills isn't going to fix that.
Math and logic are the principal tools to think abstractly. And Americans increasingly suck at it. This is very bad, since everything you do on a computer is essentially abstract. At best, clicking a mouse on a button is a surrogate for some physical activity (meeting socially, traveling by map, turning a knob, etc). But increasingly, computers require us to think abstractly about how stuff works and how it *might* work. A GUI desktop is an analog for a real desktop. The thought process required for any physical action must change when the act is done virtually. If this virtual analog is unintuitive, then the user must think abstractly about how they *might* solve the problem, given the limits of the virtual world of Windows/OSX. In a reality like ours is becoming -- a fusion of virtual+physical reality -- if you can't back up a step and think abstractly, you're dead.
I don't remember any of my statistic classes being any easier.
In other words, this is coming from a dumbass who couldn't get a real degree. Who the fuck cares what he thinks about anything?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The mathless people want their place back. Too long have they suffered those 'engineers' taking all the well-paid jobs. Too long since those 'engineers' were simply irritating people confined to the basements of fortune-500 companies.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
The inability of people to use the algebra they've studied is a big part of why its seen as useless. It's not necessarily a lack of opportunities for using algebra. Look at all the vocational programs out there which teach students "spreadsheet skills". Anyone who's ever had to use a spreadsheet for its intended purpose (rather than as ad hoc databases) has to understand enough algebra not to implicitly divide by zero.
I once helped a guy at work who had a hobby of making high end penny whistles (the kind they use in Celtic folk music) figure out the right length to make an A-natural pitch whistle. He knew how long to make a B-flat whistle, and had a formula that given the length of a whistle told him how long to make one that was a half-note higher, so all I had to do was invert the formula then double-check my results. Now this was a pretty smart guy; he'd just successfully defended his anthropology PhD thesis. He had no trouble at all following the algebra I used, but when I asked why he hadn't tried it himself he said it hadn't even occurred to him to use the algebra he knew. He'd done well enough in algebra to get into prestigious college, but it was as if he'd been taught to recite Homer in ancient Greek without ever having been taught what it means.
I agree that people should know more statistics (and probability), but the same problem applies; people don't know how to apply the statistics and probability they've been taught. At some point in their school career they were dragooned into performing the mechanics of basic descriptive statistics, but it doesn't stick with them because the way they've been taught it's just a meaningless ceremony full of incomprehensible gibberish.
People's practical math skills need bootstrapping. They can't use those skills until they understand them, and it's hard to to understand them until they can put them to some use.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When did algebra become advanced math? I was 11 when I took my first algebra course.
We certainly don't use any of that here on Slashdot.
Have gnu, will travel.
Scrap math entirely, and let people spend that time watching "Ow My Balls!" instead.
That would be more in tune with the swiftly deteriorating IQ level of American society.
In the past most people ignored how to read and write. Scribes were upper class people able to help them handling documents and letters, for money of course.
Fortunately the obligatory school system has elevated the skills of most people regarding reading and writing so that scribes are no longer necessary. This represents a huge empowering of people, and actually has allowed the emergence of democratic societies. People can read by themselves and *think*: societies then count millions of thinkers instead of a few hundreds, that's a huge progress. In modern societies people lacking such an education are called illiterate, and are considered as handicapped.
A similar concept applies when dealing with quantities and numbers. Nowadays even well educated scholars may struggle with numbers, innumeracy is actually widespread. For many journalists millions and billions seem synonyms. The innumeracy neologism was invented by John Allen Paulos, who in 1988 wrote the book "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences", a recommended reading. Innumeracy is endemic and actually handicaps many aspects of common life, starting with mastering the house budget. The insufficient proficiency regarding quantities and numbers then leads to more difficulties when dealing with higher math, like algebra and calculus.
In my opinion, the problem with math education is not algebra or calculus, but the insufficient mastering of the elementary math levels, starting with arithmetic. Statistics and probability are in no way simpler conceptually than algebra and calculus. Lowering the general math level has for effect of preventing people to be empowered by math. Since US students already under-perform at the international level, I would say the proposition to reduce math education is a sure recipe to weaken the country on the long term.
It also appears that the proponent hasn't really considered that Statistics as an option has a pretty darn low uptake. Why? Apparently because it's harder than Algebra 2 etc, and that it might be a useful requirement or recommended course of study for entry into (relevant) university programs has either not been considered or more likely has been rejected as unnecessary for some reason (rational or not).
Math by itself helps, but the inner, "Oh that sounds wrong", dialog box is the real start.
Regardless, the changes I'd make would be to improve the quality of algebra teaching, and maybe add more math.... Kids deserve to have a robust tool set that can take them anywhere they may find themselves wanting to go. Why limit them from the get go?????
Don't step on the baby.
How about give a few options rather than make a single subject be the bottleneck. For example, give a 3-path choice:
1. Algebra (probably I and II)
2. Statistics and probability
3. Discrete math: logic/set-theory, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
Math is the only subject in which just about anybody can go from absolutely ignorant to genius, at more or less the same pace (Math prodigies aside). That's a simple fact.
Given, that pace may be notably slow and for most it's a torture to deal with things they simply don't understand - *until* they understand them, that is - but it's possible. Boolean Algebra can make you cry if you fail to get a grasp on it. Once you've understood it, it's so trivial as to be just about childish to ponder about it.
A cleaning lady who can't speak one correct sentence can learn serious algebra and get to degree heights. No joke. I've seen it happen. Simlletons with little grasp on life or social interactions can rise to unseen height in math.
I've also seen assistant programming tutors who were total n00bs in progging but about the best in math on campus.
Most other subjects require some sort of skill that needs to be aquired in the environment one lives and grows up in - such as versatility of language. Math is basic, and can be learned by a bum.
Which brings me to my point:
I think math is taught wrong most of the time and that perhaps different people need different approaches to the subject.
Example: I remember asking my math professor about a decade ago for a reference on mathematical symbols and explainations of what they mean - which mathematical operation they represent. He looked at me like I was an alien. Every PL has a reference, and how good a PL is, is often measured by that reference. Math? Not so much. Each guy writes math differntly and you have to already understand math to then know what he's actually writing down. Not a good prospect for learning or passing on a field, if you ask me.
For one, I suspect that math as a subject matter would make a huge leap forward if people could come down on one normalised math notation, so one can understand what they are writing about. That alone would improve math teaching and learning by spades. In terms of notation, Math is a subject still stuck in ancient times.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
As universities offer two types of 4-year degrees, B.S. and B.A., it might make sense to have high schools do something similar. I know many schools have a separate college prep path, but maybe the split needs to be more nuanced as college becomes more common for all students. Or maybe at least common core standards need to reflect what most educational institutions already say some people are better at Mathematics and some are better at Language, Maybe graduates needs to do 2 years equivalent of both and 4 of one or the other. Though all students should have the option of doing 4 of both if they want.
Who gets good pay for trades work may be regional. In parts of the Northeast, at least, a plumber who doesn't flood the house and leaves it in better shape than when he arrived will do just fine.
Don't step on the baby.
A political scientist wants to teach statistics without algebra or logs? Instead of "math," the political scientist wants to teach the Consumer Price Index and other political tools as science. Wow.
That's dumb, but the arguments being made in the NYT article go beyond dumb and are dangerous: Not all employers need people with algebra. Ok. So we shouldn't teach algebra. Oh, ok.
A reasonable follow up question: Do employers need people who have read canonical American literature, or have any appreciation for history, art, or poetry?
Well, I am an employer, I can answer that question. I don't NEED my employees to know any of that stuff. None of that goes onto the job description. During a job interview, I will never hear "this Research Biologist job looks great, I'm super qualified for that, but I've never read Hemmingway." It's not important. I would be very concerned if someone had no interests or studies outside of their job, but each individual subject is not important.
TFA says "Instead of investing so much of our academic energy in a subject that blocks further attainment for much of our population, I propose that we start thinking about alternatives." That line of thinking leads to full time work-study. Work ethic, punctuality, experience being managed in a job... there are some skills directly applicable to EVERY workplace, and it doesn't require ANY difficult academic subjects. Tailoring the educational system to job postings is stupid and a pathway to a very poorly educated population.
Math should be relevant to "real" people. That's not controversial. So let's judge math education based on real-world applicability for everyone, not just "employers."
People should be able to handle their personal finances, and understand what they're signing on to when they sign a loan or a job offer. Algebra *should* be enabling that, but we teach it poorly and people cannot apply it to their lives.
These are the kinds of things everyone should be able to do with math:
Assume you need to put a $1000 on a credit card for a year. Evaluate three different (real) credit card offers and determine which will require you to pay the least amount back.
Assume you get a job offer with a $40k annual salary. This offer comes with a 401k retirement plan that you will own. Your employer will pay into your 401k account the same amount you pay into it, up to 3% of your salary. How much money are you paid annually for this job if you submit 3% of your salary to the 401k?
You have two job offers for temporary work, and can only take one. The first is for 25 hours at $15 an hour and the second is at $18 an hour for between 15 and 25 hours. How many hours do you need to get at the $18/hour job to get paid the same total amount as the $15/hour job?
If people can't do these problems (and many can't), then I agree that it's pointless to try and teach polynomials and logs, and that's really a bad thing!
People in liberal arts and social science need to think about that this is math that is 400 years old. In the 1600s, people thought this was important enough to work on and use. This is math that was useful in the Renaissance, and we have built on it and increased it's utility since then (notably: basic statistics...). This is "advanced" and "modern" in the same way that novels are (a 400 year old art form). No one would suggest that reading novels is an impediment for graduation, and anyway, not important to the workplace, so we should be more modern and just read blog posts in school.
Yes! Understanding FIRST!
Don't step on the baby.
The only problem is that now when I am in a country that speaks a romance language my mind ends up defaulting to French, even if the language is Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.
I have a related disability: At various times in my life I have been conversationally fluent in Spanish, Japanese, and German, but haven't used any of them to an appreciable extent in 20 years. However, when I do happen to visit a country speaking one of these languages, and need to say something (usually, "excuse me"), there's no telling which of the three languages will come out of my mouth. It's as if the brain has classified languages into "English" and "everything else", and merged all knowledge of foreign languages into one file.
I have to stop to think what the correct response would be and, nearly always, the social situation needing my response has passed by the time I complete the context-switch into the needed language. Maddening.
In any case, by definition, competitive colleges have "barriers" to entry, and requiring all their students to know basic math and science (and that's what algebra and calculus are) is a reasonable barrier for them to have. If anything, colleges should be requiring more science and math literacy, not less.
Hacker is a professor emeritus from CUNY in Political Science. He has a new book coming out right now, his second on the subject. He personally gets a lot of publicity for the "Man Bites Dog" headlines that can be written about the professor-who's-against math. (Also, he's a regular book reviewer for the New York Times, who usually start off his PR tours by publishing an op-ed from him.) On the other hand, CUNY administrators have plans to get rid of even the most basic math requirements (7th-grade level) for any of their degrees, so as to boost retention/graduation rates in the face of a tidal wave of unqualified open-admissions students from NYC high schools. Hacker gives them political cover for that project by writing stuff like this. Journalists don't know any better... heck, the writer of the Slate article actually thinks that pi is 3.14!
Counterargument from the mathematics side -- MadMath: Lower Standards are a Conspiracy Against the Poor
Counterargument from the political science side -- Gin and Tacos: A Very Stupid Argument Gets the FJM Treatment
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Let's dumb down the general level ?
No thank you.
Instead of making knowledge easier students should be pushed to learn to learn, train their brain, the most they can.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Sounds like he was forced to settle for Poli Sci because he couldn't handle Algebra.
The schools should stop teaching everything. Modern education is a complete failure and are pushing out students that cannot handle cold cereal.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
And if you have to ask why, then double no.
Most of those things you mention used to be part of standard high school educations: geology, Latin, etc. I had those in my public high school in a rural state in the 1980's. Now folks want to get rid of 7th-grade algebra because that's too hard. I have community-college students, NYC high school graduates (Hacker is from CUNY), who can't do 6th-grade arithmetic (fractions, negatives, read a decimal) or even 3rd-grade (times tables, read an integer).
The real thing that's happening here is a shell-game of certification deflation, so that we can pretend everyone has a college diploma, when their skills are not the same as high-school diplomas from 50 years ago. I honestly wonder: How much lower can we push the bar?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Learning to use chopsticks might not be useful every day to the average Anglo-Saxon diner, but the dexterity acquired by proficiency in their use might help a surgeon or EMT have a better success rate. I don't care if my doctor consumes Asian food or not but I care that his skills be the best possible for very obvious reasons. There are many tools available to improve mental acuity - mathematics is one such tool. Algebra helps develop, among other things, the ability to think in the abstract and develop or hone logical thinking and problem solving. At the same time, I do believe that certain curricula are loaded with irrelevant requirements that extend the duration of study for graduation solely to support greater revenues for the institution.
This is tying people to the lowest rung of understanding
Ridiculous. Teaching intro stats before calculus does nothing of the sort.
Perfectly fine if you want a nation of data consumers who believe what you feed them instead of analyzing it themselves
We already have that. Frankly statistics is not given nearly as much attention in our schools as it should be. Requiring an intro level stats course could not possibly make it worse. All you get by requiring calc before stats is more people with a poor grasp of statistics because relatively few will ever take calculus. I don't know that we should dump Algebra for stats but I have no problem with requiring most students to take a basic stats course.
What comes next, people griping that nobody should be allowed to use higher math because it is too hard for them to understand?
Got any more strawmen you'd like me to burn?
If we were really looking out for the next generation, we would be teaching them all Post-Apocalyptic Maths, along with how to knap flint and distill alcohol for fuel.
Because 99% of them are fucked already.
Let them do it, but for those taking this route, give them all participation ribbons instead of diplomas.
Just another day in Paradise
Stats is 'memorize and regurgitate'/'plug and chug' before calculus.
Only if you aren't paying the slightest bit of attention. If you don't know how to explain Bayes Theorem in a real-world useful way without invoking integrals then you don't really understand it sufficiently. I've personally taken over 15 statistics heavy courses when I was in college (both undergrad and grad school) and I think we actually got into integration in maybe 2 of them. The notion that you need calculus to understand or do useful things with statistics is demonstrably nonsense. It helps but it's not remotely a requirement for comprehension.
Of course for most people who are destined to never pass real calculus, all math is 'memorize and regurgitate'.
That is not unique to math classes. Our entire academic system rewards people who are good at memorize and regurgitate. Actual analytical ability is routinely discouraged both directly and indirectly. I know plenty of people who did pass calculus who were very good at memorization but not so awesome at logically reasoning their way through problems. Medical schools are positively loaded with them. Skill at memorization is hugely rewarded there. It is FAR easier to get good grades by being good at memorizing while having modest analytical abilities than it is to be great analytically but pedestrian at memorizing.
Here's the thing, a good welder can do algebra and trigonometry. It takes algebra to determine missing dimensions. It takes trigonometry to do anything at an angle. A good truck driver can do algebra and calculus. Figuring out how far you've traveled when you go various speeds along various parts of your journey is integration. I will pay a lot more for a welder/fabricator who can do these extra mathematical gymnastics than I would for one who can't.
I don't disagree that statistics should be taught, to some extent, in high school. I just don't know that it should be at the expense of the existing curricula. At my high school you could choose between AP Calculus, AP (I think) Statistics, or any other elective. Since I was in three musical ensembles, I didn't get to take an extra math class senior year. I am glad I didn't, because learning it in college from a super-inspiring professor (who wrote her own book) was a great experience for me.
I misread your subject as "Preach tactical math." Was not disappointed with your post, though!
Another shite post from this douchebag.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
At least he didn't spell it as naval gazing like 99% of the twats round here.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But most of what a typical welder does is the kind of practical trigonometry that doesn't involve actually knowing trigonometry per se, it's more intuition and experience in figuring out some angle necessary to complete a part or something, perhaps with the aide of a square or protractor or some kind of a precalculated table.
A good baseball outfielder is practical expert in physics, too, even though they have no idea how to do the math.
isn't that algebra?
I have long thought that basic propositional logic, syllogisms and the like, should be taught alongside elementary algebra, in the same way that arithmetic is taught alongside grammar. They are extremely analogous; when I first saw a syllogism I literally shouted "it's like algebra with words!", and solving a system of equations is very much like completing a syllogism, where each equation is a premise and the solution is the conclusion. A basic course in logic at a young age could go a long way toward improving the general populace's critical thinking skills.
And then to complete the trifecta... or if you will, the trivium: after grammar in elementary school and logic in middle school, some basic rhetoric should be covered in high school. And, to come back to the topic of the article: after arithmetic in elementary school and algebra in middle school, some basic statistics should be covered in high school. Rhetoric and statistics are again closely analogous, as both are employed heavily and often misleadingly in arguments, and all adults should know at least rudimentary defenses against that kind of bullshit.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
90% of all topics in school are not difficult because it is inherently difficult (the what) but it is either difficult in how it is taught (the how) or when it is taught. Bottom line a good teacher makes a lot of a difference.
I agree that in university (I studied computer science) math was overrated and only used to make students drop the topic. Failure quotients of over 96% make no sense at all. I passed (in the second attempt) ... but never need the math in real life.
However looking at the summary: trigonometry should be dropped? Seriously? WTF is so hard to grasp on that? What exactly is there to "grasp"? You look out of the window and you see trigonometry and geometry ...
Are you sure you have not a mental illness if you can not grasp stuff like geometry and trigonometry? Or are the teachers in the US realy that bad?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
My department develops imaging inspection software that relies heavily on abstract math. You better believe it is a required skill for coders we hire. Another example of a political scientist who has no clue to the needs of the industry and has no business defining the curriculum of grade school.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
This is a philosopher, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I have four children The oldest has an English PhD, oldest son has a law degree and is a contract manager at a Fortune 500 company, youngest son is in last year of college getting a business degree and his older sister is a hairdresser, not that there is anything wrong with that.
Two years of me helping with homework every night, tutoring classes, summer school. The tears, the moaning, and it still took her five time to pass Florida's math assessment test to get her diploma. She was an honor graduate, straight As in every other subject but after surviving high school she said she would rather jab her eyes out with a sharpened #2 pencil than take another math test.
Now she is a very good cosmetologist and was top of her class at the tech school. I just think she could have done so much more if college math requirements were less stringent.
I want to follow up on the comment that referenced Shakespeare.
If you can argue that everybody should read some of Shakespeare before they exit high school, then there is at least some argument for them learning Algebra II. But let us assume for a moment that good knowledge of Shakespeare is not required to exit high school, is there any other case that can be made for Algebra II being a required subject for high school graduation or admittance to college? I have not seen one yet.
On the other hand, when I hear the phrase "high school statistics class", I hear in my mind -- non-challenging class designed to allow anybody to pass with only a minimum of anything in it that one would consider to be "math".
If you want to destroy the country, it's hard to find a more effective method than insisting that tomorrow's creators spend the 3 or 4 years of high school cooking pot roasts and subtracting columns of numbers. Fit the curriculum to the student.
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Feel free to live in a house designed and built by a statistician, or drive the car he designed and built, or fly in the airplane. I'll go with stuff the trigonometry expert did. Good luck - you'll need your statistician to evaluate your chances.
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That is so foul. Hey slave, go out and perform 40 hours of government-approved charity work.
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Don't most universities in the United States require four years of foreign language in high school, or four semesters at the college level?
That's what the requirements were when I went to the University of Illinois in the mid-90's.
Common Core obfuscates math. Other subjects differ in their particular problems, but rest assured that political bias is injected where possible.
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then what are all these people doing, who stand at the counter in dunkin donuts, trying to optimize what they can buy with a $5 bill?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Did the so called political scientist offer any data that suggested the magnitude of the problem? Poverty, not algebra, is behind whatever educational problems the Hacker dreams of engineering away.
High school algebra and calculus aren't abstract mathematics. Try real analysis, topology or abstract algebra, dear professor...
deltaS>=0 (c.s.)
Start by teaching students to make change without needing a cash register or calculator
So is pi. Maybe we could round it off to 3 so we can finally square the circle..
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I keep having flashbacks to the Talking Barbie who when you pulled her string, said "Math is hard!"
Because the entire gist of th e story is thatbecause algebraII is hard, and some peopel drop out because of math being so hard......
Get ready for it......
We must make school so easy that no one is even remotely put upon. That's the takeaway.
I pretty much sucked at algebra. Turned out I had possibly the worst algebra teacher in the world.
But after a different, non math class where teh instructor taught us how to use slide rules, a miracle happened - I became rather good at it.
Point is, I'm not saying that we have to learn how to use slide rules - although they do illustrate a mathamechanical concept that really worked for me - th epoint is that perhaps it needs taught better.
One thing I do know, the common core mathematics children are being taught today makes the very basic maths darn near incomprehensible, and can turn the simplest problems into gobbledygook. http://toprightnews.com/insani...
http://twitchy.com/2013/10/04/...
While the far right has gone nuts over CC, the fact is that the simplest forms of math should not be so insane.
But I digress.
For as much as I hated algebra and my poor grades in it for one year, I use it on a daily basis now. And others might too, because who among us can say with certainty what skills we learn in our education will be needed in our careers and lives.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah, if something is hard, let's drop it from the curriculum. Oy. I taught my children and now my grandchildren: You must study to learn, learn to know, know to understand, understand to judge.
This opinion has been expressed many times, years ago. Good old slashdot for reporting old crap, yet again.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
BlueFox: I've been reading through your comments, and you've got a lot of really intriguing/fascinating views on the human brain, memory, and learning, which has caught my interest.
Is there any means to contact you more directly to have a conversation? I was wanting to gleam more insight into your mind, and your mental processes -- in the hopes to be able to improve my own, or at least to give inspiration on how to improve my own modes of thinking.
Sounds good - outsource prosperity to China and join the third world.
What's with the idiot that thinks you can do much with statistics without some algebra and calculus to go with it?
Logarithms are important to know, they are used in many scales and units, such as Richter scale and AWG. I think this is just another ploy to keep people Smart enough so that they do not have to be on welfare, but stupid enough so they are happy with baseball and six packs and do not ask any tough questions.
The problem is a misunderstanding in the objectives of education.
While people usually (and wishfully) think of "education" in the Trivium-like meaning (also sometimes called Medieval Education, if one is unabashed by the now-negative "Medieval" adjective) instead of what governments want, which is "national, compulsory general-knowledge education" (sometimes also called Prussian education system).
As is usual, both education systems have their advantages, but emphasis in the former is dwindling. Myself I believe that we should focus on the former but pass a little in the latter to let students have contact with all types of knowledge and then choose what (and how many) they like most.
As a teacher I had said once: "If a student is good at something and bad at something else, should we focus on what he's good at to reach maximum potential or should we focus on getting better where he's deficient, so he'll have a broader set of skills?"
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."
-Lazarus Long, via The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Algebra as some kind of gatekeeper to a good, well-rounded, liberal education is fucking absurd. This was probably the most idiotic assertion I have seen on slashdot in the last dozen years.
One can't really understand much about economics without understanding logarithms.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
School Algebra are just basics, who cannot learn them should not get the grade.
Don't know much about human nature, do you? :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As Mark Twain popularized, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
I had to take 2 calculus courses before I could take statistics in college
Not my fault women and some minorities (Asians and Indians put the white people to shame.) seem to have a hard time with basic math.
Either they are dumb or lazy, which is it? It's not bigotry, math hates everyone equally.
School systems have 12 years to teach math to kids. In that time, they have to learn elementary arithmetic, algebra and maybe algebra 2, precalculus, and for a very few, calculus. What do they do with all that time? Why does it take seven or eight years to teach arithmetic? We're talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, division (sometimes long), fractions, ratios, percentages, and maybe word problems. I think that the big problem is that we tell kids that they need to learn algebra - calculus without really explaining why they're useful and why these subjects are interesting where the usefulness of this stuff comes into play in your university science courses and in a few other places. The attitude is seen in college too. My son was taking Foundations of Computer Science and one frustrated student asked why do we need to study this stuff? So my son explained to him where it's useful - but that's only because I explained where it's useful when he was a lot younger. If kids have some kind of map or something to show them why what they are learning is useful or will be useful, they might be more motivated. My son tutored college math and science courses and his comment on kids having problems with calculus and physics is that a lot of students have poor proficiency in algebra. They understand the concepts of calculus or trigonometry but they have problems on exams because they didn't learn algebra well or they learned it and forgot it. We clearly have problems with math in our schools - I really don't know what they are but I'd guess that it had something to do with motivation. BTW, what do you suppose the reaction to his topic would be in Singapore?
School curricula are determined by various levels of government. Since many of these politicians are influenced by their own religion, we have always had some compromise between teaching and not teaching Scientific Method. The result is that it's just assumed that Scientific Method is learned along the way in Science classes. It's seldom taught explicitly. I think the reason is that it undermines religious faith. The most subversive idea of Scientific Method is that it demands uncertainty. It even demands that you explain and try to quantify the certainty of any experimental result. That's where statistics come in. Faith means you either believe something or you don't. This conflict is one of the most fundamental and divisive aspect of politics.