I suppose I'll have to learn this stuff myself if I ever hope to become the particle physicist I want to be. I am however thankful that I have such wonderful teachers. My maths teacher is incredibly nice and doesn't hesitate to help if people want to learn new things, and my physics teacher is a callous bastard who gets people to think on their feet with barrages of questions which are designed to make them feel bad for not paying attention. Between them I should have a chance at getting by.
It's funny that this article should come up a scant few days after I was discussing this with my maths teacher. Over the last 15 years it's clear that the Ontario school board has been hacking away at maths. She explained to me that when students come back to see her they often ask things like "But why didn't you teach us integration, or Euclidian geometry?" These are essential concepts for studies in science and engineering, and now students don't get the opportunity to learn them. However though the fault was initially in the high school segment, universities are not doing much to improve the situation, in that they assume anybody still going into those courses would know how to do that kind of stuff. As an aspiring physicist I find it imperative that schools should get back on track with math, because the way things are going Calc won't even be taught in high school anymore, and I wouldn't want to be the sad bloke who has to teach it to himself from an old text book just to pass his university science course.
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I suppose I'll have to learn this stuff myself if I ever hope to become the particle physicist I want to be. I am however thankful that I have such wonderful teachers. My maths teacher is incredibly nice and doesn't hesitate to help if people want to learn new things, and my physics teacher is a callous bastard who gets people to think on their feet with barrages of questions which are designed to make them feel bad for not paying attention. Between them I should have a chance at getting by.
It's funny that this article should come up a scant few days after I was discussing this with my maths teacher. Over the last 15 years it's clear that the Ontario school board has been hacking away at maths. She explained to me that when students come back to see her they often ask things like "But why didn't you teach us integration, or Euclidian geometry?" These are essential concepts for studies in science and engineering, and now students don't get the opportunity to learn them. However though the fault was initially in the high school segment, universities are not doing much to improve the situation, in that they assume anybody still going into those courses would know how to do that kind of stuff. As an aspiring physicist I find it imperative that schools should get back on track with math, because the way things are going Calc won't even be taught in high school anymore, and I wouldn't want to be the sad bloke who has to teach it to himself from an old text book just to pass his university science course.