Is a Math in 12th grade really Neccesary?

[al2simon]

Actually, BC is not any brisker than calculus in college, which students who are not advanced in math may have to take after completing precalculus as high school seniors. So the better at math students who are advanced by a year or more should be able to handle BC in one year.

@ucbalumnus‌ - I think we’re in complete agreement that good students can master the BC curriculum in 1 year. However, I also wanted those parents / students who are trying to decide whether AB or BC was the right choice in their particular instance to know that BC goes at a college pace, not a high school pace.

Another small point that hasn’t been mentioned - in college, calculus sections are often taught by graduate students or instructors who may not be native English speakers. Many students find it easier to understand high school teachers who are often native speakers.

What do they do in high school geometry instead now?

I’m definitely not an expert. I first formed my opinion after observing my own children’s curricula, and conversations that I’ve had with fellow grumpy old (former) professors in a university math department have mostly confirmed it. My kids attended much better schools than I attended (they had future math olympiad finalists / winners as schoolmates), but in their geometry class they proved only a minority of the important theorems and proofs weren’t the basis of their homework and tests. An example which this article uses
http://www.educationnews.org/k-12-schools/the-modern-day-high-school-geometry-course-a-lesson-in-illogic/
is that students are simply told the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees; it isn’t proven. In contrast, when I took geometry we pretty much proved everything building up from the basic postulates (at least until we got to solid geometry); we even had a few ruler and compass constructions on tests. And I went to a fine but not particularly wonderful high school.

I think geometry courses now emphasize knowing and applying the theorems (not proving them); “experiencing” geometry in the everyday world, the role of transformations and symmetry, and computation using coordinates. I’m not saying that’s all bad, but it’s not formal deductive reasoning.

Also, if I remember right, when I took BC Calculus epsilon-delta proofs were on the exam; they definitely aren’t nowadays.

Some quotes and articles I found

For example, Glencoe refers specifically to the 1989 NCTM standards and the 1995 NCTM Assessment Standards as a model for its textbook, Glencoe Geometry. Glencoe states that the textbook “implements the shift from geometry as a course in proof to geometry as a representation of the world around us”

In the grades 9-12 additional geometry is taught. Most of this is concentrated in the 10th grade, where historically a deductive treatment of Euclidean geometry was given. In recent years, educators have moved away from this approach to one in which students are encouraged to develop conjectures about Euclidean geometry … It is important to note that this route rarely takes the formal approach …
Perspectives on the Teaching of Geometry for the 21st Century: An ICMI Study, page 22

Introduction of “Intuitive” geometry - www.jstor.org/stable/30173550

Scantron in our public HS. Yeah, fill in the bubble representing the next line in the proof.

Well, as horrifying as that is, I guess it’s easier to grade