Well the reading sections get as much weight, and I think it’s stupid to prevent kids from going to elite schools if they can’t place high-level obscure vocabulary into sentences when their meaning, when already placed in sentences, would be quite clear from context clues. Or just the reading section in general, which is far too much of a time crunch for actually understanding text. I did well in AP English but still had to drill extensively to do well on the reading section. You can make that argument for that too, but everyone is hell-bent on attacking math.
What confuses me is why many people complain that students don’t understand why math rules work, but then if you show them the proofs, they complain about the proofs. I am not sure they understand that the proof is the why. lol
I love how many of the people who want to get rid of math are also the people who harp on and on about the merits of a liberal arts education. The pushback against STEM is severe, and unfair given that the STEM push is b/c technology requires it, and information technology innovation especially is increasingly important in our society. So ofc far too many ppl are worried about the delicate snowflakes that have to endure too much complicated math, while simultaneously arguing that we need to shove literature, fine arts, etc. down the throats of students who have no aptitude for them / find them boring.
No one points out in these discussions that we also shove English literature down the throats of students. It utterly destroyed my love of reading (I used to be the girl who got in trouble for reading under my desk all the time, and now that part of me has died after the pointless analysis of boring texts in hs). I started reading early, and used to love it - I no longer want to even pick up a book. Yet no one finds that tragic or cares - let’s shove EVEN MORE liberal arts into colleges, despite the fact that liberal arts institutions far outnumber tech institutions. At my state school AP Calc will get you out of college math, but even having both AP Lang and Lit wouldn’t get you out of college literature.
Literature classes don’t teach effective practical writing anymore than calculus teaches day-to-day skills, but yet you have so many “experts” pushing to get rid of the latter while essentially increasing the former by advocating for even MORE liberal arts and having a liberal arts superiority complex that pushed against the little bit of prominence and respect that STEM has finally gotten. Let’s get rid of literature and replace it with more expository writing for a variety of disciplines, to get a taste for what writing is like in different fields! Literature is not the only way to teach proper communication skills / grammar, and it certainly isn’t the best or most practical.
Sorry that I might have started this when I said geometry proofs should be abolished. Someone picked it up from there to branch out for mathematical proofs.
Learning geometry proofs is wasting of time. Students may learn a little bit about organizing things, but not worth the time for doing so. There is no evidence that learning geometry proofs would help CS programming. One counter example is that many other countries do not teach two-column proofs or flow charts proofs (the later may be more useful for programming). I never learned it in school, as an example, though I can be as good as anyone to prove those HS geometry problems. The geometry proofs used to be taught more rigorously through algebraic properties. Nowadays it is just watered down to let students memorize some arbitrary useless rules, in any sense, and go from there. If anything that is gained here, maybe it may improve students’ Rote memory. But again, this can be done through other ways like teaching logic.
Get rid of the geometry proofs! The same thing can be said about graphing rational functions among others taught in HS. Try to grossly simplify trig stuff. No need there too.
To be fair, I never really appreciated proofs much until after I took my first course on real analysis. So I perfectly understand why people don’t like proofs or find them pointless. But after taking that class I definitely could see that proofs are absolutely essential - not just to mathematics but to any discipline with a strong mathematical/logical foundation (such as any sub-discipline of math, to physics, to economics, etc.). While I can’t say that geometry proofs as taught really give you any such appreciation, proofs are indeed valuable. But if you only saw geometry two-column proofs as your introduction to proofs in general, I can see why you wouldn’t think highly of them.
I’d personally trim down the proof side of geometry, or turn it into more of a “geometry and discrete math” kind of course. As ucbalumnus said, two-column proofs (as opposed to prose, as done in real math) likely have more to do with ease of grading than with meeting learning objectives. And if that’s the case, then they’d be better off hiring additional hands to help with the workload than ruining the learning of a pretty important topic.
Problem is, “liberal arts” usually doesn’t go both ways. If STEM people should be required to take advanced literature/history courses then the liberal arts majors should be required to learn calculus-based physics. The extent of the “STEM” education of many liberal arts majors is a course in psychology, which would definitely be considered a “soft” science in the STEM world.
As I disagree with folks arguing to do away with HS math…including algebra, geometry, and trig…including proofs despite not being the best student in some because I can see the value in learning them, I’d say the same about expecting aspiring college students…especially those aiming for elite schools to be able to read and analyze text with high-level obscure vocabulary with some time constraints.
One reason why this is important IME is the copious amounts of reading one is likely to encounter in humanities/social science courses…even at the intro level. For instance, one survey level history class I took in my first year easily had ~80-100+ pages of reading a week on average. And the reading load per class only ramps up from there as shown from an advanced seminar class I took where the average reading load per week was ~800-1000+…and that was just one class.
One older classmate who did well on the SAT verbal through extensive prep by his own admission* now than in the early '90s when he was applying to colleges had a serious issue plowing through the heavy reading loads in a few seminar classes I took with him. And that was despite the fact he was repeating those classes whereas I was taking them for the very first time.
Also, on a similar note some elite/respectable STEM PhD programs pay serious attention to the applicant’s verbal scores on the GRE as they have found candidates with lower verbal scores are much more likely to either fail to finish their PhD dissertations or take far longer to complete their PhDs than candidates with reasonably high verbal scores.
- His level of SAT prep would be much closer to how recent college applicants within the last several years prep than was the case when he was a HS senior in the early '90s.
“Problem is, “liberal arts” usually doesn’t go both ways. If STEM people should be required to take advanced literature/history courses then the liberal arts majors should be required to learn calculus-based physics. The extent of the “STEM” education of many liberal arts majors is a course in psychology, which would definitely be considered a “soft” science in the STEM world.”
I totally agree, and I find it completely unfair. Most institutions in the country are liberal arts, and at my institution we can take 4 classes Pass/D/F, and they won’t count in the GPA. We only have 3 STEM requirements and 8-12 humanities requirements depending on level of foreign language proficiency, so humanities kids can Pass/D/F all their STEM courses and slack off and do the bare minimum, but we have to put in full effort (and compete against liberal arts majors for top grades) in at least half of our humanities requirements even if we use all Pass/D/F for down of the requirements. The imbalance is so unfair and illogical, but given the huge # of liberal arts institutions that’s the norm. And yet ppl STILL complain. It’s ridiculous.
“As I disagree with folks arguing to do away with HS math…including algebra, geometry, and trig…including proofs despite not being the best student in some because I can see the value in learning them, I’d say the same about expecting aspiring college students…especially those aiming for elite schools to be able to read and analyze text with high-level obscure vocabulary with some time constraints.”
Though I still think context clues are more helpful than memorizing random obscure vocab (as far as I know, the only ppl who don’t have to memorize are those who either read A LOT of pedantic texts or have well-educated parents who speak fluent English at home, and I’ve almost never seen the former, so immigrant children like me are at a disadvantage), as long as the burden is equal on students (literature for STEM majors and STEM for humanities majors, for instance), it’s fair. My remark had been in response to someone who whined about how much of the SAT depended on math (very basic / simple math that many kids at my school finished by freshman year) and was not an attack on the concept of the reading section in general.
As for the reading load in higher level classes, the argument is about usefulness of classes. From my experience, few ppl actually all of the readings - even my humanities friend didn’t do all the readings for his relevant classes. Meanwhile, I always did my best to read the textbook chapters, if not before class, then at least before doing the homework, which is also not common among my classmates. W/ limited time, I’d much rather read textbooks for classes that’ll be important instead of reading every page for a class that I’m not interested in or won’t help me. Kudos to those who could do the reading section of the SAT by genuinely reading the entire passage and answering the questions in order instead of skimming the questions and the text and answering the questions in the order they appeared in the text, but in college many ppl just skim the readings for relevant info.
My point is, though, if ppl are going to argue against math, they’re assuming they won’t take any math at university, so they shouldn’t expect STEM kids to endure long boring readings in classes they don’t like. And it’s much easier to read texts that you’re interested in. The SAT was much more pleasant when it had an astronomy passage on it, which made me happy enough to power through the other readings.
Re: “liberal arts” and “STEM”
Note that “liberal arts” and “STEM” are not mutually exclusive sets of subjects. Their intersection includes science and math.
This is just me thinking out loud, but it’s a working hypothesis. I wonder if really good verbal skills help students who may be weak in math still score fairly well on SAT/ACT. I did much better on the math portions of both tests than my grades would indicate. I could usually eliminate a couple of the choices immediately. When I wasn’t allowed to drop Algebra 2 after 1 semester the justification was that “your PSAT scores were extremely high”. Knowing what I know now, my response would be "give me multiple choice tests in class and my grades would be a lot better.
ahem
As @ucbalumnus already pointed out, mathematics is part of the liberal arts. So that statement is kind of silly on its face.
Not to mention that it seems a bit of a strawman, except that there’s a “many of the” in there, which allows enough wiggle room that it’s more or less a meaningless argument.
Some of those “pedantic texts” include literary classics and reading material many college educated adults will encounter as a part of their daily work and enrichment/social activities post-college(i.e. reading clubs).
At least half of my public magnet HS classmates were immigrants or children of immigrants. I am one of the latter. Didn’t pose an obstacle for most to excel on the verbal as well as the math portion of the SAT. And the public magnet HS I attended was very STEM-centered (Think BxScience, Stuyvesant, TJSST, etc).
In fact, immigrant kids…including some who just arrived from East/SE/South Asia and Eastern Europe right before taking the entrance exam in 8th grade for 9th grade entry were well-represented among the top scorers on the SATs in both sections.
Incidentally, one of the reasons why humanities/social science requirements have been hiked for some STEM majors…especially engineers/technical science majors according to a few older relatives and a former supervisor turned friend who are engineering graduates is because back in the '70s, engineering college deans received a deluge of complaints from engineering/tech employers about engineering graduates having poor skills in communicating and socially interacting with clients, colleagues in other departments, and senior executives who weren’t hardcore engineers/techies. By their accounts, the issues were not only annoying and inconvenient, but downright embarrassing and quite costly in lost productivity and dissatisfied clients.
That supervisor was part of the first class at his engineering school which had the revised requirements requiring far more humanities/social science requirements than previous graduating classes.
All of the required STEM subjects combined make up a small fraction of the humanities requirements at liberal arts institutions, and when people talk about the superiority of a liberal arts education, they are usually contrasting it to tech schools, so I was referring to the humanities aspect of liberal arts. Look at the countless articles on liberal arts education and their merits as backlash against the increased prominence of STEM. So if you’re going to criticize me for my use of “liberal arts” and call my arguments “straw man” arguments, then do inform all the journalists reporting on the merits of liberal arts against STEM that STEM is included in liberal arts. Nevertheless, humanities does outweigh STEM in liberal arts.
You include “literary classics” as part of the pedantic material college kids and adults would encounter. Tell me, where in the average work field would one encounter Jane Eyre or The Poisonwood Bible or Great Expectations? People who aren’t interested in those oh-so-precious “classics” wouldn’t join reading clubs were such books are on the list. Why assume that enrichment would consist of these activities to the point of necessitating advanced literature in school?
I was one such top scorer on standardized tests, as were many of my classmates, many of whom were immigrants. But idk about your classmates, but we drilled SAT vocab in English class and outside of it, and I was one of the few top scorers who prepared on my own - many went through expensive test prep programs. My point was about NATURALLY encountering such vocab - typically, of my acquaintances who DIDN’T DRILL VOCAB, most had families who spoke w/ such vocab often.
Again, if you agree with forcing humanities majors to take advanced calculus, then by all means continue to advocate shoving literature down our throats. But this isn’t a black-or-white game. It’s not “have nothing” or “require much more humanities classes of STEM majors than STEM classes of humanities majors” and force certain subject areas like literature. As I said earlier (if you hadn’t cherry picked my comments) there’s more efficient ways of teaching communication - writing seminars can be on more relevant subjects for instance. If an engineer wants to take literature, go for it, but there’s no reason to REQUIRE literature AND social analysis AND history AND epistemology AND ethics, etc. History and social analysis suffice for politically-engaged citizens, and the rest should be by choice.
The point of reading great literature isn’t that you will encounter it in real life. The point is that it will change? elevate? allow you to synthesize YOUR real life in ways that are likely not possible with such context. If all of us were Tolstoy, we wouldn’t see a farmer hacking away at a field and need the literary reference in order to understand it in a different way.
But we’re not. I hear Jane Austen in my head every time my neighbor whines about why she can’t get her daughter to date successful doctors and bankers instead of the “losers” she insists on going out with. I hear Edith Wharton whenever I meet a social climber who seems blissfully unaware of how ridiculous they seem trying to obscure their origins from Loveland Ohio or Daytona Beach. And walking down an urban street- anywhere- and trying to understand the phenomenon of the richest society in the history of the world and yet people are sleeping in cardboard boxes- we have Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo and dozens of others to thank.
Hello, everyone,
The author is not talking about Calculus. He wants to get rid of Algebra 1 !!! The next class, after addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, fractions, and percentages (in the most simple form). Bingo! This math was discovered 2,500 years ago. Even earlier.
Ancient Egyptians new Geometry, and used it, when they were building pyramids. But American kids in the 21st century … nope! Too much for them!
God! The new “technology” generation, millennials, would know less than ancient Egyptians. Ok, America. Welcome to the future.
IMHO, only. Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo have nothing to do with the homeless population that you see on the streets. How many characters in Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo books were junkies? The origin of homelessness is very different in our days. Please, stop living in the past 
California, you missed my point entirely-- and thereby proved my point. Dickens was not a sociologist and Hugo’s works are not policy white papers.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Why negligence? Just for curiosity …
Oh, I do—and I’ve left quite a footprint, both on this forum and elsewhere, doing precisely that.
(And yes, I do think that humanities majors should have some exposure to calculus, at least at a conceptual level. I mean, really, couldn’t they at least get an idea of what limit theory is really saying?)
Literary allusions are all around us, quite as invisible as the air we breathe. Yes, you needn’t have read any Brontë to enjoy either direct allusions (like one finds in some of Kate Bush’s oeuvre) or indirect ones (like the many of the ways the “struggling orphan makes good” trope exists in pop culture), but I would argue that it helps deepen the appreciation of them—really, in ways similar to the way that understanding mathematical proofs helps deepen the appreciation of the way abstract concepts work together, as I attempt to wrench this subthread back into the main topic of the thread. And having such background knowledge in various fields can, I am convinced, only help with general communication, which I think we can all agree is central to nearly any field of work one can imagine.