In Oklahoma, the requirement usually is up to “algebra 2” - this is mostly domain and range, finding roots of polynomials, and logarithms.
IMHO, the world would be better if calculus was a required part of the high school curriculum. Like yeah, most people aren’t going to need the product rule in day to day life, but the fundamental ideas about rates of change seem like they’re something that everyone human deserves to be exposed to.
I think statistics is far more important for people to know than calculus.
Nah, I already know the odds. Each time I lose, the chance of winning the next time goes up! Never fails!
I mean, who needs both their kidneys?
Some other countries build up math skills a little differently. For instance, in Portugal, they teach a little bit of Algebra, a little bit of Geometry, and a little bit of Calculus every year.
In the U.S. the students focus on Algebra, one year, then Geometry the next, then Algebra again, and finally Calculus (if they did well in the previous math courses).
So, if a student transferred for their senior year of High School from the U.S. to Portugal, they would have a different experience compared to their peers. They would find all of the Algebra and Geometry sections very easy and be able to help tutor the other students, but then they would struggle with the Calculus portions and need help from the others.
I’m not sure how common this is among other european countries. I would be curious to know how math courses are taught in other countries.
As a Norwegian, focusing on one kind of math per year sounds absolutely bizarre. We did a bit of everything every year in the 90s at least, and I doubt it’s changed. How do you not forget everything if you learn it one year just to not touch it again for years?
In college each group of subjects have a separate class, but doing that in high school sounds nuts.
Honestly that sounds much better
I see anything higher than the algebras as STEM focused, and certainly calculus is in that category. I do like the problem solving that comes with such studies… but I’d argue there are more important civics focused courses that should come first. Time is limited after all.
Graduating high schoolers are newly minted adult members of society and grade school should focus on ensuring they are ready for just that responsibility. I don’t think forcing calculus fits that model.
Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, should we require someone whose dream it is to be a carpenter, to take calculus to graduate high school? In what universe will that requirement be doing any good in their life? What will it serve other than a potential completely arbitrary barrier to simply graduating from high school? And a carpenter is actually far more mathematically inclined than most career paths people pursue.
Yes, learning calculus can be a revelation in mathematical beauty. But the same is true for a thousand potential fields of study. In terms of practical use to most people, they would all be equally frivolous. A case could be made that a thousand fields of study are something that people simply must be exposed to. I’m more in favor of letting people choose their own path. We shouldn’t be piling on arbitrary barriers on to a diploma that is only meant to signify basic competence.
How do you even walk if you don’t know calculus?
Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, should we require someone whose dream it is to be a carpenter, to take calculus to graduate high school?
I mean, they elaborate on that in the same paragraph.
but the fundamental ideas about rates of change seem like they’re something that everyone human deserves to be exposed to.
Now you can disagree with this idea, but you’re not even addressing it.
If i recall from the long long ago that was high school I think they required Algebra 2, Geometry, Calculus, and then i took Trig but it wasn’t required.
Let me ask you this, do you know how to budget?
We over provision for higher level arithmetic but don’t teach fundamental arithmetic for living successfully in our society.
My final year of high school (not in the US) had a finance class that had recently been split off from one part of the “current events” class into it’s own thing. We were taught how to budget and handle interest, loans, taxes, savings, ect…
Also a bunch of BS about how big corpos are great and awesome because the teacher made money on the stock market.
I do think it should be a standard class everywhere though, it’s ridiculous to not teach that stuff.
Budgeting and filing taxes, please!
*And understanding credit card debt
“The most powerful force in the Universe is compound interest.”
No banking corporation wants people to understand this.
Budgeting and more probabilities/statistics are where I think it should be.
Both of those directly relate to improving your life.
When I got to college, I had to take two math course, which I dreaded. Because I was a music major, one of the math classes had to be Acoustics. For the other, I was terrible at Algebra, and didn’t want that dragging me down, so I chose Statistics, since I was interested in politics, and would learn about polls.
I actually liked the class a lot, and to this day I track political polls closely. But I’m not a person who just accepts raw numbers. I want to know the sample size, the margin of error, etc. I know when a candidate is cherry picking his data, or leaning on a partisan poll, etc. It’s been very helpful through my life.
BTW, it was standard procedure for every music major to procrastinate on the Acoustics class until their senior year, and we got a cool math professor who was also a pretty decent amateur trumpet player. He didn’t want to be the guy to destroy our graduation prospects in our senior year by flunking us all, so he made the class interesting and challenging but not really difficult.
I learned a LOT in that class, and later I ended up working in sales for an audiophile classical record company, and my knowledge of sound and acoustics from that class allowed me to weasel myself into an additional part-time job helping out at recording sessions, some of which went on to win Grammys.
So Statistics and Acoustics were the math that worked for me, and I posted elsewhere that Business Math is something that I have also used a LOT, but picked it all up mostly on my own. NOT ONCE, have I ever said “I wished I paid more attention in Algebra.” Those two quarters of high school Algebra might have been the two most painful quarters of my educational career.
The emphasis on advanced math at the high school level is detrimental to many people. It instills a sense of failure and stupidity early on, reinforced by parents and teachers, and often develops a sense of hatred toward those who are good at it. People who struggle with advanced math would be far better served by teaching them Business Math. First week lesson: put up a pay stub, and start figuring out all the percentages of all the withholding on that paycheck. Every kid in that class will be riveted on the screen, even the thugs, who will want to know who FICA is, and why is he taking all their money?
And fucking Excel. Better yet teach budgeting and spreadsheet courses in one.
If people had stats, budgeting and excel it would be an incredible improvement.
Budgeting also only gets you so far in our dystopian age when you need 2 full time jobs to pay rent.
I just posted a similar take, but used a lot more words. Yours was much more succinct.
I tutor high school students in math and science. They’ve all taken a budgeting class. One of my students is taking calculus and I genuinely feel he has a better understanding of it than I do!
I am glad he has the option to take calculus, he’s one that gets bored at the place other students need. But I really don’t think many students need it or can fit it in their graduation tracks.
We also need to consider how difficult algebra was for some, to the point that a lot of adults think they hate math. I like the comment in the op that Applied Calculus skills (real-world story problems) are useful, and I think that would have more impact than two-three semesters of calculus.
if he can get that far into calculus, he wouldnt be having problem with math skills. its the people struggling with aritmetic, or early algebra thats problematic. i think the early books in ALG1 and 2 and geo, are just a little to convoluted for people to learn, because its mostly abstract word problems. plus the teachers in our HS dont even teach the subject properly at all, they expect you to know how to do it already in the early 2000s. same went for chemistry, and adv algebra, just poor teaching skills at least in our school. hence why alot of hs comes out with such poor math skills.
I think he doesn’t need math tutoring. He needs someone to sit with him while he does his homework, and he needs encouragement. Our education system just marches people through to graduation without giving them the chance to breathe.
But, I agree, our teachers have been struggling for decades.
precisely, no one taught me algebra, and it was vaguely mentioned in Middle school(because only above average graded kids(not gifted or exceptional) go to learn it. i partially learned it on my own, and funny enough i had to take math below algebra again, and it was just more annoying than learning algebra. just needed alot of pratice to be honest, the hs teachers expected you already know it by the time they mention the problems, outside from a portion of the students that already knew how to do the word problems most wernt taught. lets not get started with english(writing papers) that was different beast.
I would include statistics. So much everyday information is presented using statistics, often in ways that are misleading or deceptive. A bit better understanding would make people harder to trick.
Especially political polling which samples a fraction of a percent of the voter population, and is consistently wrong.
In my fourth semester im Uni I could choose whether to take numerical analysis or probability theory.
Most students took numerical analysis, even if the exam typically had a 80% failure rate. (Yes, one of five successed)
It was a completely different with probability theory (Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung). Oh, having chosen it due to these reasons now I know why: The prof loved teaching and was really good at explaining.
Ultimately this shows, people have no idea about probabilities.
Edit: fixed the nunerical typo. No it was not about catholic nuns.
In terms of utility for the average person, statistics >>>>> calculus.
I work in an engineering field, and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to do an integral in the last year. But I run into glorified statistics problems virtually every day both in personal and professional situations.
Having to constantly remind people of error bars, statistical significance, and the difference between correlation and causation, it would have been nice if those things were hammered home more thoroughly in school.
I feel like perhaps you don’t know enough people from the entire range of human abilities to understand why requiring calculus might be going too far.
It should certainly be an option, and it should be a requirement for certain career paths, but making it a high school graduation requirement would just unnecessarily result in more people dropping out of school.
I’m certified in special education and spent two hours of my day today teaching an adult how to do subtraction. I’ve worked with kids with Down syndrome. I entirely believe that it would be possible for 95% of students, if given the appropriate support, to learn how to take a simple derivative and have some vague understanding of what they did. It just takes visuals, good use of real world examples and metaphor, and patience.
Looking at the state of the US right now, calculus wouldn’t be where I’d devote my energy.
I have family working in Special Education, most of them with kids under 12, some through early adulthood. All your points are correct. But from what I know of US Education, most schools - or schools in certain states - will not receive appropriate support and the students will ultimately be hurt for it. Think of the implementation of Common Core in the mid 2010s.
Students with proper support and encouragement can accomplish amazing feats, but most students don’t have the resources to do that on their own (or with limited support and instruction.)
Hmm. I think algebra 1, 2, intro stats, and geometry for core curriculum. Anything beyond like calculus(I took) as elective or college credit. It’s been years but I think I took stats over trig.
Personal finance should be taught but not at the expense of other maths.
Dunno about algebra 2, I took that class but don’t remember how synthetic division works and haven’t missed it. I’d replace it with some basic probability and logic for non-nerds. They don’t even have to be treated as math topics. More like: how to avoid some common mental errors. Lots of people don’t think mathematically and that’s ok.
Critical Thinking Skills should be an entirely separate class, required by every student to graduate.
Algebra 1, geometry 1, statistics 1
Yeah, I feel like what you’re asking for would have to be a more holistic thing, like the concept of rates of change could be covered in physics quite naturally alongside momentum/impulse.
I have a math minor so have taken through calc 3, abstract algebra, and quite a bit of matrix math. Like 90% of concepts from those classes wouldn’t really help people in the world around them, not just “they won’t use integrals daily” but rather they won’t be taught in a way where they’ll connect differentials to what they see in the world or news.
Now, Finland, they have the right idea. They’re teaching classes on spotting disinformation and how to find trustable answers. That seems way more important to me and likely to have a higher impact.
Like 90% of concepts from those classes wouldn’t really help people in the world around them, not just “they won’t use integrals daily” but rather they won’t be taught in a way where they’ll connect differentials to what they see in the world or news.
That’s one of the things I find most disappointing about the education system. Like, people technically pass classes that are supposed to ensure they’ve “mastered” certain concepts, but few seem to even notice how they could be applied outside a narrow scope of specifically worded problems. Its so strange hearing people say things like “unless I’m like a math teacher, this is all useless for me outside of class” when calculus specifically was something that I could immediately connect to problems I had outside school immediately.
Even when taking classes that seem to be designed around trying to build real-world problem-solving skills, the classes generally seem to devolve into teachers teaching an algorithm for solving a hyper-specific question, assigning homework doing those hyper-specific question types over and over, and then testing on those hyper-specific questions with different numbers. Those students seem to be virtually no better at identifying how to apply math to real-world problems after such courses…
I disagree with calculus being mandatory. Most students still won’t need it and it will increase dropout rates.
But a pre-calculus course with calculus as an optional offering would sure be beneficial. Most highschoolers get their ass kicked by college calculus courses because the logic jump from even moderately complex algebra to differentials and integrals is fairly high. Problems become significantly more abstract with more ways to solve things rather than rigid solution paths. A good precalc class gets them strong on the trig identities and more complex algebra rules that they’ll need moving on.Abolish school.
Why would we abolish a system that exists so everyone gets a level of knowledge that ensures they can both be productive for society, but also productive in their own endeavors, whatever they may be, while better understanding the world and history that led to where they and society is now?
Education is very clearly a beneficial thing, and schools are a good system to efficiently and equitably distribute an education.
It’s more about conformity than actually learning anything useful
Schools do indeed sometimes teach some conformist lessons, primarily regarding how you should operate as an individual to work within the Capitalist machine.
That does not mean we should abolish all schools. It means we should ensure schools that do sometimes push conformist messages stop doing that, while still remaining the educational institutions that they are.
Schools taught me the math I use every day both at work and at home, the history I derive various meanings and life lessons from, the art lessons I use to relax in my free time, exercise and nutrition advice that keeps me healthy, writing that I’ve used to publish articles read by thousands, better budgeting, leadership and coordination skills, and even some philosophy that I’ve used to better understand my place in the world.
Not to mention how schools are the primary way many kids create friendships, as it essentially forces you and many other people to all exist in the same, dense space, nearly every day, for extended periods of time, which is crucial for social development.
Without all of that education, I and many others would be in a much worse spot. I find it absurd you’d argue against a concept so deeply human that so many cultures across landmasses and time periods had some form of education through systems very similar to what we’d call “school” now, because it benefited not just society, but any individual that participated in it.
What do you propose as an alternative to school? No education at all, where we simply hope that people’s personal experiences will lead them to the right answers and knowledge they could need for their future?
When I was in school in North Carolina, you could be on different “tracks.” Almost like a college major.
“University Prep” was for the AP kids who were going to graduate with a 5.0 GPA and half a semester of college credit. They took up through Calc 1, sometimes at the local community college, they did two extra semesters of English class (11th and 12th grade English were full year courses) and such.
“College Prep” was the “Hope you get good SAT scores” tier. A bit more room for electives, you were usually in “honors” classes, and graduated with no college credit to your name but ready to start in the fall as a Freshman at a state school. You typically took up through pre-calculus Algebra in college and Trigonometry or Calc 1 would be in your first semester of college. Two semesters of a foreign language were required, which is why I can kinda sound out French.
“College Tech Prep” was “Sew your name to your shirt because you’re going to trade school.” They had their own math classes which I think got most of the way through Algebra 1 and 2. They took shop classes, which didn’t trust the student to have ever been awake in a math class in their lives, hell I’ve gone to trade school at a community college, the first week they spent “teaching” us addition of whole numbers. Or, you were in JROTC.
“Career Prep” was the “You’re gonna be a parent before the end of high school, knock over an Advanced Auto Parts when you’re 20 and spend the rest of your life in and out of prison” tier. These were the kids that did eight semesters of PE, some of them could read.
