If there were unfavorable racial, ethnic, or gender patterns appearing in these “tracks,” the schools could expect outrage that I’m sure they’d rather avoid.
I’m more outraged that such students are scrambling to find a job unloading boxes at target instead of working as an auto mechanic or plumber. Our educational system is not serving them well.
I’ve never seen a culture, anywhere in the world, that has managed to address the issue of socioeconomic imbalance in educational results. The simple fact is, if your parents don’t value education then you probably won’t either. The current system isn’t very good at it either.
The school curriculum itself doesn’t discriminate. Neither should tracking, at least not to the extent that I think you expect it does.
Academic tracking practiced in many other parts of the world did exist in the US up until sometime in the '60s when they found teacher/educrat biases in determining which students ended up on the non-academic vocational tracks were so strong regarding racial minorities and/or lower income individuals that they felt it was better to eliminate the tracking altogether.
That and a lot of skilled/semi-skilled jobs which once only required a high school/vocational HS diploma were eradicated in the industrial hollowing out of the late '60s onward.
Saw some of the effects of this in Cleveland and Lorain/Elyria area during my undergrad in the mid-late '90s.
These are two very different things, though—there are plenty of people who are poor who value education, and plenty of people who are rich who don’t.
Indeed, high achievers (as proxied by standardized test scores) from poor families are less likely to graduate college than low achievers from rich families.
http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20051012/
That sounds like an unfortunate case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Though I do know that in most countries, the wealthy manage to secure leeway for their children to be put into the top track regardless of (a lack of) qualifications, that is hard to see as a problem big enough to throw out tracking altogether. The result is worse for students of all level of capabilities.
Definitely a very real problem with no easy solution. A lack of education only makes it worse though.
In my experience, the poor who value education (usually immigrants, but not always) usually don’t stay poor for more than a generation or two. US social safety net is fortunately sufficient to give high-achieving, motivated poor students a chance to get an education. Usually for multi-generational poor it is an inclination towards working ASAP, and a disinterest in spending 6-8 more years in school, that keeps their children from getting an education. Too many high schoolers drop out of school because it’s what their parents expect of them.
Seems mostly consistent with my point above. The wealthy get their kids through school even if they don’t particularly want to go there (though many of them see it only as a stepping stone, to the point that even a lot of high-achieving wealthy kids that I know tended not to actually care about college beyond being a box to check off). The poor tend to discourage it even if the children have a good chance of being successful.
What would be a career path for someone with the following strengths/challenges provided two years of high school algebra is required for college? Let’s assume that since it’s a core class a grade of C- is needed.
4 years of English: equal numbers of A’s and B’s
3 years of Science: B average
4 years History/Social Studies: All A’s
3 years Health and PE: All A’s, but not really relevant for our example.
2 years foreign language: A first year, B second
2 years art/music: 1 A, 1 B
3 years Math: C- Algebra 1, B- Geometry, F Algebra 2
SAT: 620 verbal, 560 math
ACT: 30 reading, 30 social studies, 27 science, 26 math.
Writing ability demonstrated to be well above average
Verbal communication skills also well above average
Math computation above average
Mechanical reasoning and spatial relationships skills in bottom quartile
We’ll also assume that the student actually has hit a wall in math. Try as they might, a low D is the best they can do when they tackle algebra in community college.
What career path is available to this student? My stats, while not identical, were very similar. I’ve had a successful career as a librarian, but this is a career that would have been unavailable to me if I had needed to meet the standards some folks who have posted on this thread propose. Mechanic or plumber? Forget it. My mechanical aptitude makes my math skills look like those of my oldest son. How, you may ask, did I score in the top 20 percent on the math section of the ACT and SAT? Two words: multiple choice. Usually one, or sometimes 2, answers could be eliminated immediately. Combine that with the easier questions that I actually knew the answers to and you end up with a decent score. I wasn’t very good at figuring out what the answer was , but I wasn’t bad at figuring out what it wasn’t.
My point isn’t that there shouldn’t be standards for entrance into college; I am saying that, there needs to be some flexibility. There is a tendency in the education world to see students as “types” rather than as individuals.
Looks similar to your hypothetical of #84, which I answered in #90. I would be highly suspicious of a student with such glaring gaps in their abilities and I don’t think it would be consistent with the general goal of a college degree (to provide a well-rounded education) to allow them to finish with such weakness in math. I would not oppose a somewhat more lenient path: a two-semester “slow algebra II” sequence which, while inconsistent with the kind of speed of learning that would be expected of a math/science/engineering major, would provide the same knowledge of pre-calculus foundations that would constitute a reasonable foundation of mathematical knowledge for graduation.
As I talked about before, not knowing math is a huge blind spot that is about equivalent to not knowing how to read or write at a reasonable level. It represents a gap in knowledge that will limit what you can accomplish. And furthermore, a disdain for math does suggest a sort of idea of “favored subjects” which are worth studying and “unfavored subjects” which are not, which is a terrible attitude to have for college (every degree program has plenty of unpleasant classes any given student would prefer not to take). And furthermore, I have seen that this attitude towards math is mostly unique to the US - many other countries have found a way to teach students well enough for them to be able to understand math at an acceptable, at least algebra 2, level.
And if a certain career path does require at least a basic understanding of math that the student cannot develop, then no, I do not think they should have that option. I wouldn’t want an electrician who doesn’t know a thing about circuit analysis, or a pilot who doesn’t get aerodynamics. Math is an important, if secondary, skill in a lot of these professions. It’s also an important secondary skill for general university level knowledge. I do not think it unreasonable that this should be a graduation requirement, even if it does end up being harder for some than others and require some amount of remedial education.
Furthermore, where exactly do you think this cutoff should be? Algebra 2 makes sense, as it’s the foundations of calculus which is the start of higher math. Calculus would also make sense, though it’s a bit aggressive as a hard requirement for non-quantitative majors so it’s more rare. Geometry doesn’t really make sense; it has no clear sequel and it’s just sort of an awkward middle ground between Algebra I and Algebra II. Algebra I is kind of too elementary to really be the terminal class, as it leaves you with little more than an understanding of linear and quadratic formulas (and not much about their application, for that matter). Everything below that we can pretty much agree is not enough. So Algebra II, which leaves you with an understanding of various functions, how to manipulate them, and how to understand them at a level that will allow you to perform at least slightly mathematical tasks at a competent (though decidedly not advanced) level. Calculus would go a bit further and allow you to understand some of the more complex and useful relations, though there is plenty that you could do with just Algebra II. So it makes sense as a cutoff. What other cutoff do you think makes sense?
I actually like your idea of a slower Algebra 2. This is a sensitive topic for me, since students with strengths and weaknesses like I showed 35 years ago could be, as someone mentioned earlier, unpacking boxes at Target. That’s honest work, of course. Obviously this hypothetical student would not be an electrician. My concern is that there are some (admittedly few) students who are completely stumped by Algebra but are completely capable of doing well in degree programs and career paths that don’t require it. Does it leave a gap in the person’s knowledge? Definitely. Another reason this hits close to home for me is that some of the students I work with have gaps, which they certainly need help with, but also have areas where they are at the top of their class. There’s a tendency in some schools to define students by what they can’t do rather than what they can. For me the bottom line is this: can the student successfully complete a college degree en program? If the answer is yes, they shoud be allowed to complete it. If the gaps in knowledge are too much, whatever the subject area, that’s another story. Sure, you can say the degree program is too easy. I guess that would be a topic for another thread.
Wait a minute—people who were initially on opposite sides of an issue coming to agreement on how best to deal with it? We can’t have such things happen—this is the internet, da*n it!
:)) (←In case it wasn’t obvious.)
I would say that for the vast majority of majors, perhaps all of them, math is an important secondary, supporting skill. While yes, it is possible to go your entire career without using math, you will be the worse for it in general and there is no advantage to being mathematically illiterate. It doesn’t help the problem that there does genuinely seem to be those cases of highly specialist knowledge - good at one field at the expense of others, by either unshakable conviction in their relative importance or by genuine mental blockage.
I suppose I should ask you the following: suppose a kid has a narrow specialty where he/she is highly skilled in math and science, taking an engineering major, but pretty inept as a writer and speaker (can barely communicate ideas in a fashion that would be expected of an engineer). What would you expect that the school should do in that situation? I’d find it hard to justify giving said person an engineering degree if they cannot write and speak at a competent level. They might be able to do good work, but without that secondary skill they become very limited in what they can actually accomplish with those talents. I’m not sure whether or not you think that said student should be allowed to pass and get an engineering degree, as that is a genuinely important, though secondary skill. I think of math in the same way.
The bottom line for any field is how gaps in knowledge, wherever that gap exists, affects the ability to do the job. To address your specific example I’d need to 1) be familiar with the verbal/writing skills an engineer needs 2) know what degree of deficiency we’re talking about.
The issue is, there is no specific “job” associated with having any given degree, even for engineering which is about as close as it gets to that. There are jobs that require more of those writing/speaking skills to the point that you probably could not function with weak skills, and others where technical skills matter more and they’re more used to working around poor communication skills where even a severe deficiency is manageable. Universities, at least in principle, are supposed to prepare you for more than just a job, but for a career that will last many decades. And that goes double for non-technical majors, which have an even greater tendency to emphasize secondary skills because employment in exactly the field you studied in (e.g. English or Political Science or even Economics) is not really realistic for all graduates. Math is one of those secondary skills.
Maybe you could argue that there needs to be some respectable middle path between university and high school, that would serve the specialist students who could become narrow but still valuable experts. Trade school and vocational school filled that role in the US, and in other countries at various points in time (including now). But that path, while existing, has now become very limiting and unsuitable for long-term employment. Perhaps more effort should be expended to bring that path back.
Engineers do have to communicate with others, both in their field and outside of it. That is why course work including writing skills is included in engineering curricula.
Indeed - it is a very important, though secondary, skill. Though I know quite a few working engineers who are bad at it, and while it isn’t as fashionable to talk about how you get by without communication skills as it is to do the same with math skills, it is in effect the same result.
I guess that because math classes tend to build on each other it’s hard to compare minimum levels of competence of math and verbal skills. The minimum for entering my field is a Master’s, but if I could be in the same place career wise without a Bachelor’s that would have been ok with me. The thing is that librarianship requires a very high level of critical thinking and written/verbal communication. I’m not sure it would work to make the minimum entrance requirement not even be a Bachelor’s.
As someone who’s taught composition occasionally, and who has colleagues who teach it (plus oral communication) constantly, I would take issue with the idea that math skills build off of each other from class to class, while verbal (oral and written) skills don’t. In actual fact, verbal skills do build on each other in such ways, it’s just that we’ve built more flexibility into the sequencing of them than we have (for the most part) for math.
Could you give an example of unnecessary sequencing in mathematics, dfbdfb? Different schools have different “macro-sequencing” of geometry and algebra 2, but I am wondering about the sequencing of topics within algebra.
No, I don’t think it would be the right way to go to reduce the requirements from a Masters to less than a Bachelors. A Masters represents a high level of academic knowledge that would be expected of advanced work. My point was that, if people really are so incapable of learning the kind of breadth that would reasonably be expected of a university graduate, then there should be a middle path open to them. I think it’s not really right to give the university degree out to those with massive gaps in their knowledge that may not be fatal, but are still severe and limiting. It’s not right to ignore their weaknesses nor to fail to acknowledge their strengths.
A Masters specifically is at least in theory, a demonstration that the degree holder is capable of doing advanced work and contributing to the body of knowledge of the field. Math tends to matter a lot for that, especially with the modern emergence of big data and such. Algebra 2 equips you to understand at least the results of mathematical work (while calculus equips you to understand relations and derivations), so it makes sense as a general requirement. I would worry about allowing those who can’t do it at all to be given the leeway to move on, when it does actually matter.