Home | Community | Message Board
You are not signed in.
Sign In New Account
Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery

Sporeworks
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

General Interest > Science and Technology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Myyco.com Golden Teacher Liquid Culture For Sale   MagicBag.co Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags, Contam-Resistant All-In-One Grow Bags

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1 | 2 |  [ show all ]
The Math Myth.
    #24995271 -

I was reading that Algebra 2 as a requirement for a high school diploma is a major reason for high school drop out rates. Some are advocating for changing the curriculum for math to something more practical for people who won't be using Algebra 2 after high school. What do you think?


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: kent101] * 1
    #24995308 -

I don’t think that lowering standards because whiners and dummies think it’s too hard is a good idea, it’s algebra not rocket science. People should apply themselves and get extra help if needed, not drag down the entire rest of society to their level.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: kent101]
    #24995412 -

Who requires algebra II to graduate from high school? All I could find online was California and Florida and they don't require it.

    When I took algebra I freshman year the teacher handed out slips of paper telling you what math to take next year. Mine said no math. He was just a bad teacher. In graduate school I received awards for teaching excellence (in statistics) my last 4 semesters.


--------------------
"The Rolling Stones will break up over Brian Jones' dead body"    John Lennon

I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either.

Simulacrum
The truth which conceals that there is none

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: kent101]
    #24996077 -

If people aren't smart enough, just lower the standards, not. :archiebunker:

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: kent101]
    #24996259 -

kent101 said:
Some are advocating for changing the curriculum for math to something more practical for people who won't be using Algebra 2 after high school. What do you think?


I'd say that a course on formal logic and basic set theory should be a standard requirement for graduating high school. I had to take such a course for my CS program in the first year, and I think it helped my reasoning skills quite a bit outside the arena of math.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: psi]
    #24996291 -

psi said:
kent101 said:
Some are advocating for changing the curriculum for math to something more practical for people who won't be using Algebra 2 after high school. What do you think?


I'd say that a course on formal logic and basic set theory should be a standard requirement for graduating high school. I had to take such a course for my CS program in the first year, and I think it helped my reasoning skills quite a bit outside the arena of math.


I totally agree, the socratic method and critical thinking skills are extremely important.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: psi]
    #24996456 -

psi said:
kent101 said:
Some are advocating for changing the curriculum for math to something more practical for people who won't be using Algebra 2 after high school. What do you think?


I'd say that a course on formal logic and basic set theory should be a standard requirement for graduating high school. I had to take such a course for my CS program in the first year, and I think it helped my reasoning skills quite a bit outside the arena of math.


I took two semesters of predicate logic and another class had a lot of set theory.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: xzylocybin] * 1
    #24996464 -

I don't know about high school requirements, I never went. But I think there is too much math required in college. I like math, took more of it than I needed, got a minor in it and almost a major. But I like it. I never used one lick of it professionally. Not one bit. And I work as an engineer.

For a non-STEM major the algebra requirement is too much I think. It's all preparation for Calculus as though that is some type of pinnacle or standard but its not. Its a type of math they will never use. It would be better to teach them probability and statistics rather than matrices and logarithms.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: DieCommie]
    #24996505 -

when I went to college after high school, I took two a bunch of math. I didn't get a degree. I went back 35 years
later to finish my degree. I told the department head that I didn't remember any of the math I took, he said I didn't need to.

:archiebunker:

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Crazy_Horse]
    #24996552 -

I've been bad for putting off a lot of my math requirements. I took Calc 1 over 10 years ago and I'm pretty fuzzy on it, but I haven't really had much need for calculus in courses I'm interested in. Linear algebra comes up a bunch on the other hand. Not having done the courses for that yet has definitely set me back, but I've been able to wing it enough to do ok in some courses that rely on it.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: psi]
    #24996588 -

I liked math classes,  but why do they make you take and then tell you you don’t need it.
I would have used some of it if I had a different specialization.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Crazy_Horse]
    #24997684 -

I thought the old guy articulated his points very well.  I can see from both sides on the issue.  It does seem inefficient to make people study something they wont remember or use, but that's often used as a convenient excuse by people who are lazy.  Some might also make a slippery slope argument, that the requirements will be stripped down more and more until it becomes too much. 

On the other hand, presenting people with "rigor" just for rigor's sake does seem stupid, especially if it's in a subject area that doesn't translate to fields that they will work in.

Perhaps math classes like Algebra 2 could be substituted by classes of equal rigor in a different subject area, but at the end of the day when you graduate high school, you are getting a general ed diploma.  There's no major or specialization attached to it.

Another question to ask is why people struggle with math so much.  The math I learned in high school seemed to be very easy.


--------------------
Funny Video              Pokemon But With Animals Instead              B

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Celestial Traveler]
    #24997721 -

Back in my grad school days, I found out that the fail rate in the general chemistry courses was about 60%. I also found out that a group of undergrads were planning on suing the school, after failing those courses. I laughed at them to their faces.

I taught the organic chem labs, and I remember one semester I had an interesting situation. Third lab in, so fourth week of school, a girl raised her hand, and asked me why I was teaching off-textbook. I was a little confused, and asked to see her textbook. I didn't recognize it. Then she asked me: "This is nursing chem 1204, right?", when I had Chem 2132 written at the top of the board every lab period.

I think a major assumption in this thread has been that school is for teaching you the things you need to be good in your field. It is not. School is about becoming a rounded enough person to be able to master anything, and excel in anything that you choose. School is also for weeding out the type of people that shouldn't be there. You want that girl from the above example to be your kid's nurse? Your parent's? It took her four weeks to realize she had been going to the wrong class, do you want her in charge of your health?

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Kryptos]
    #24998213 -

Kryptos said:
School is about becoming a rounded enough person to be able to master anything, and excel in anything that you choose.


Sure, and I think teaching general reasoning skills in a mathematical framework serves this end well.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Kryptos]
    #24999118 -

Kryptos said:
I think a major assumption in this thread has been that school is for teaching you the things you need to be good in your field. It is not. School is about becoming a rounded enough person to be able to master anything, and excel in anything that you choose. School is also for weeding out the type of people that shouldn't be there.


I appreciate what you said and have heard similar stories as well.  I don't take a strong stance in either direction on this, but your definition of the purpose of school is somewhat arbitrary and subjective.  From an economics standpoint, it may not be pragmatic to spend time and resources on teaching students things that they won't need, remember or use.  I think there may be a way to preserve rigor/difficulty of classes while still narrowing curriculum to what is needed.  In the example you gave, that student would probably be (and probably eventually was) filtered out as long as the classes she took required half of a brain cell to pass, regardless of what subject category those classes fit into.

As I said, I'm not even necessarily arguing one way or the other, but just that your idea of what school is for is subjective and arbitrary.  Also, perhaps rigor can be preserved at the same time that required curriculum is narrowed and concentrated.


--------------------
Funny Video              Pokemon But With Animals Instead              B

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: DieCommie]
    #25000063 -

DieCommie said:
It would be better to teach them probability and statistics rather than matrices and logarithms.


Hey, now. Logs are useful.

How many bits wide do I need to make this counter for it to take this long to roll over? log(time*clk_freq-2)/log(2), that's how many!

Uh... Yeah, that's about it.


--------------------


Living on a no-Flash diet is way easier than you think. Give it a shot.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Celestial Traveler]
    #25001452 -

Celestial Traveler said:
Kryptos said:
I think a major assumption in this thread has been that school is for teaching you the things you need to be good in your field. It is not. School is about becoming a rounded enough person to be able to master anything, and excel in anything that you choose. School is also for weeding out the type of people that shouldn't be there.


I appreciate what you said and have heard similar stories as well.  I don't take a strong stance in either direction on this, but your definition of the purpose of school is somewhat arbitrary and subjective.  From an economics standpoint, it may not be pragmatic to spend time and resources on teaching students things that they won't need, remember or use.  I think there may be a way to preserve rigor/difficulty of classes while still narrowing curriculum to what is needed.  In the example you gave, that student would probably be (and probably eventually was) filtered out as long as the classes she took required half of a brain cell to pass, regardless of what subject category those classes fit into.

As I said, I'm not even necessarily arguing one way or the other, but just that your idea of what school is for is subjective and arbitrary.  Also, perhaps rigor can be preserved at the same time that required curriculum is narrowed and concentrated.


What you are arguing for here, is trade schools. Vocational education. I have nothing against them-they exist to teach specific skills for specific jobs. Wanna be a mechanic and nothing else? Go to mechanic school. Wanna be a master plumber? Go to plumbing school.

That is not what general education (i.e. high school) is for. That's why they call the equivalent degree a GED-General Education Degree. A high school degree is specifically supposed to give you a rounded set of skills that are widely applicable to any field. Vocational schools, and to some extent college degrees, are a form of specializing towards a certain field. And sure, they may be more economically pragmatic, but they are much worse in the "well, I thought I liked this job but then I did it for a year and I hate it" field, where many people are stuck. As a matter of fact, I think that mindset right there is why vocational school attendance has been dropping like a rock since the 1970s in the US. It also likely plays a role in the fact that less high schools offer vocational classes now, focusing instead on general education.

We could apply an educational system modeled after Germany's: Standardized testing at a young age determines whether you will go to college, or even General Education high school versus a trade school. That puts a lot of pressure on fifth graders, though.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Kryptos]
    #25001645 -

Concerning college, you are correct that a vocational school fits what I was describing more closely than a four-year university does.  And I think vocational schools are better than four-year universities in some ways, depending on what you are trying to achieve.  A lot of people are going to school with the sole purpose of making a living, and vocational/tech schools are much better suited for that.  Also I like the idea of getting a wholesome education that cultivates the mind, but some question whether or not most four-year universities do that anymore, and when tuition costs are as expensive as they are, you absolutely have to see some return on the investment.


As for your point about Germany's educational system, I'd like to provide a personal anecdote about standardized testing.

I was identified as mathematically inclined at a very young age.  Between grades 3-5 I lived in a small town and went to an elementary school that wasn't considered extraordinary.  In 3rd grade I was allowed to skip Phonics class to join a 4th grade math class, where I had the highest grade (we compared our progress reports with each other).  By 5th grade, I was doing 7th grade math one-on-one with my own teacher.

Halfway through 5th grade, I moved to a bigger city and went to an elementary school that was labeled Five-Star by someone, and they had signs at the front of the school declaring how proud they were of that rating.  When I enrolled in this school, I was put in the same classes as everyone else, took the same math, etc.  They also had a "problem solving" class separate from math, where they gave you simple word problems and had you solve them by drawing "T-Boxes", where you dissected the problem into teeny-tiny bites and separated it into four quadrants. 

I'm convinced that they forced us to do those because it was meant to help average students pass the standardized tests, which was the reason for their five-star rating.  It might have helped some of the other kids, but for me it was the most tedious thing ever, and a complete waste of time.  They didn't exempt me from doing the stupid T-Boxes and it made me spend five minutes showing how to solve problems that I could do in my head in ten seconds. 

Moral of the story is, the flashy school that touted its five-star rating and focused on passing standardized tests was far worse for my academic development than the much smaller school.  There are many arguments against curriculum/objectives based on standardized testing.


--------------------
Funny Video              Pokemon But With Animals Instead              B

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: Kryptos]
    #25027634 -

I went to a chemistry class one time in the 11th grade. Once I saw the effort it would require out of me I quickly dropped it and found something a lot easier. That says a lot about people when 60% fail out of a chemistry class and they didn't have the intelligence to know they couldn't handle it after a few days in class. I failed my last year of high school because I was ditching school and smoking marijuana. Then I finished during that summer and joined the U.S. Army. When I go out of the Army I went to community college and got a associates degree in general liberal arts and sciences. But my GPA was only 2.5. I could have gotten a B.A. from a University of California, but I would have graduated with a around the same GPA. I tried for a few years, but it was too much for me so I dropped out.

Also, I never took algebra 2 in high school or college. Algebra 2 was a pre requisite for statistics in the behavioral and social sciences. At that time they let me skip the pre requisite. So I did and managed to pass the statistics class with a C grade. That was a close one because that class was the hardest one I ever took. They gave us 2 hrs to solve 3 statistics questions. I think what gave me the  motivation to pass was that I saw the class as being useful to my life and future.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: The Math Myth. [Re: kent101] * 1
    #25028815 -

kent101 said:
I went to a chemistry class one time in the 11th grade. Once I saw the effort it would require out of me I quickly dropped it and found something a lot easier.


And there's the problem in a nutshell.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1 | 2 |  [ show all ]

Shop: Myyco.com Golden Teacher Liquid Culture For Sale   MagicBag.co Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags, Contam-Resistant All-In-One Grow Bags

General Interest > Science and Technology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Math Kick Mephistophelian 2,068 16 08/18/10 10:51 PM
by PxFunk
* Shroomery programming/math/etc. self-study peer(s)? If you want to mentor, that's fine too.
( 1 2 all )		 seek 3,029 22 06/03/14 11:41 PM
by Satira
* Is this a group? math people YidakiMan 1,089 8 09/12/07 03:56 AM
by SymmetryGroup8
* To anyone who is decent with math RedNucleus 1,547 17 07/05/05 02:48 PM
by TheCow
* Help me with math? Heffy 636 8 07/19/10 04:56 PM
by Heffy
* The Amazing Math Thread isaacein 2,802 11 10/23/09 04:11 PM
by isaacein
* All math pre-calc. texts fazdazzle 310 1 02/23/10 02:37 AM
by DieCommie
* is anyone really good at doing math in their head?
( 1 2 all )		 Epigallo 2,827 34 07/31/08 10:48 PM
by isaacein

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: trendal, automan, Northerner
1,377 topic views. 0 members, 0 guests and 3 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2026 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.041 seconds spending 0.011 seconds on 18 queries.