<p>I understood us to be discussing what ought to be required for high school graduation. Not what should be required for admission to college, but the minimum requirements for high school graduation. If a student is not academically inclined, and will not be getting a four year college degree, what do we want that student to be taught in high school? </p>
<p>That hypothetical licensed practical nurse, day care worker, or auto mechanic doesn’t need to be able to analyze Beowulf, but they should be able to solve mathmom’s problem of which storage facility is the better bargain, and they should be able to write a coherent memo to their bosses.</p>
<p>bluebayou, I agree completely. I would go so far as to argue that a basic knowledge of calculus is a requirement for being really educated - whether or not one “needs” calculus to practice one’s trade. </p>
<p>Cardinal, we’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about preparation for the workplace. I’m talking about being an educated person. A is a subset of B.</p>
<p>But is a super-elite academic high school representative of most high schools, including the one that she would have attended if she did not go to the super-elite academic high school?</p>
<p>It’s a super-elite ** math and science** school. The English is good, not great, and the foreign language is spotty (some languages are excellent, some mediocre). But they do know how to teach history.</p>
<p>Would you say that the regular school she would have otherwise attended taught the non-math non-science subjects at the same level of rigor and depth, or at a lower level of rigor and depth?</p>
<p>Whatever subject you suggest for deletion–no matter how remote from current life–you will get a bunch of people upset. I once wrote a letter to the newspaper suggesting that it was pointless to continue teaching cursive handwriting–a skill that is (almost) as obsolete as semaphore or sliderule, and lots of people were horrified at the suggestion, and gave what I considered silly arguments for continuing to teach it.</p>
<p>The problem with that kind of thinking is that as technologies evolve, some jobs become obsolete. Better to have a well-rounded education so you have the basic skills set to adapt.</p>
<p>Personally, I feel I went to a fairly normal public high school, but I definitely think there was a big emphasis on reading and writing in my history classes, especially at the AP level where I must have written around 20 essays at home for one particular class. Not to mention how many times I had to read the news for current events or scour the Internet to find obscure facts about small European countries to prepare for discussions and presentations. </p>
<p>And I felt my science and math and English and foreign language classes were taught at a similar level. </p>
<p>“young people should learn to read and write and do long division, whether they want to or not. But there is no reason to force them to grasp vectorial angles and discontinuous functions. Think of math as a huge boulder we make everyone pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves. So why require it, without alternatives or exceptions?”</p>
<p>Well, thanks for that link to the article, OP. I think we all know that there are people who enter high school with the ability to “read” math – just read it, like a TV guide caption. And there are other people who must parse the symbols one at a time, and repeat the process painstakingly, until the “picture” becomes clear. I used to be in this latter group. I presume Hacker is still in this latter group since he considers math this “huge boulder.” I think the problem is not with “math” but with the culture by which math is taught, which dates back to the accounting Abacist schools Fibonacci was familar with. We shouldn’t discard the content, but maybe upgrade the delivery vehicle.</p>
<p>^I doubt Hacker would have a PhD in poli sci from Princeton and have written numerous highly regarded books if he himself saw math that way.</p>
<p>I’m not going to argue this entire point, but a couple things:</p>
<p>First, people keep making the argument that people need to learn basic math necessary to be a competent adult and citizen. Hacker says that.</p>
<p>Secondly, his main argument is not that algebra et al should be dropped because they’re not necessary for every job (so no different from literature et al). His argument is that since, for whatever reason, algebra is the main reason for lack of school completion (not literature or history or science or philosophy or art) that maybe its disutility outweighs its utility–that the actuality is that, whatever we’d like it to be, it is the reason for less education overall.</p>
<p>I always found math easy, as have all my family, but I know manystudents drop out of the college I teach at because of math, and the way it’s taught there particularly at the remedial level. And I also know that even though I aced calculus in HS (and trig and geometry) I have never used much of it since (yes, I might sometime need to calculate the area of a square, but I’ll never do a geometric proof, a logorythm, or differential analysis again. I haven’t since I was 17.)</p>
<p>However, we all need to read and write cogently, and by and large, that necessity is not barring students from finishing college, thankfully.</p>
<p>But overall, it would be good to see people arguing against what Hacker said, not misreadings of what he said. I’m sure there’s lots of room to counter his actual arguments.</p>
<p>To accept Hacker’s argument is to accept the notion that very few Americans need to be well educated. So the next question is…at what age would you like your child to be potentially excluded from the educated elite? High school? Middle school? If we’re going to start tracking kids into slots where understanding the consumer price index is a suitable substitute for algebra we have to start somewhere. The notion that colleges would accept such practical math students with open arms seems like the end of American dominance in higher education - unless of course our universities can fill their seats with foreign students. An increasingly likely possibility.</p>
<p>Ah, Garland, your argument from authority is entertaining, but, as we all know, the proof is still in the pudding, and the article-writer’s reasoning can be taken at face value, whether he went to Princeton, Yale, or whether he invented the Internet like Al Gore. His statement is quite clear that math can be thought of “as a huge boulder we make everyone pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves,” and the implications here, from the writer’s op-ed viewpoint is 1)math is a huge boulder implying 2)math is so very hard to move and 3)it’s not just difficult, “its soooo haaaard”, leading to his view that 4)it produces pain. </p>
<p>So, in effect, he really does see math that way. I don’t know how you will argue against the point he makes himself by not-so-indirect implication in a way that won’t be entirely futile.</p>
<p>Not an argument from authority. First, I gave his credentials because they were questioned in the preceding post.</p>
<p>Secondly, I’m not arguing. I’m just suggesting that his argument be understood fairly. and he is clearly stating that it causes some people pain, NOT that that he feels it himself. I think that ability to understand another’s point of view is a good skill.</p>
<p>Again, I think reading skills are really, really important.</p>
<p>So true, garland: Reading skills are so really, really important. So what do you think this small and easily-read passage is saying through subcontext about the writer’s perspective on math as something forced on people, and math as something that provides only trivial benefits in most circumstances:</p>
<p>“young people should learn to read and write and do long division, whether they want to or not. But there is no reason to force them to grasp vectorial angles and discontinuous functions. Think of math as a huge boulder we make everyone pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves. So why require it, without alternatives or exceptions?”</p>
<p>I think he’s saying what he says that he’s saying–that this is an insurmountable barrier for some people, and do the gains from requiring it of all out-weigh the losses?</p>
<p>History in itself is boring. Put a timeline, add a few facts in PowerPoint, put it in an infinite loop, and my guinea pigs could pass AP World History with a 5…</p>
<p>History is interesting - and useful - when one follows up to dig deeper into the context of when things were happening, and to (gasp!) form opinions and communicate them successfully. </p>
<p>To me, History is not that in 1776 we sent the Dear King letter to England; it’s about understanding why this happened, how did it all came to be, and even theorizing as to whether it could happen again some day. And, being able to communicate them effectively in a lengthy argument style paper, not just put together a collection of facts. Which, come to think of it, is the whole point of teaching history.</p>
<p>DD2’s high school is offering a rather interesting Pre-IB 9th grade English + pre-IB World History where, on top of regular history, they get to read historical novels and write lots and lots about the events, interpretations, and so on.</p>