Wow, you’re a tough audience here (as well you should be). With all due respect, though, I know what’s needed to be successful in my field. Yes, there are library/information jobs that require more math than the ones I’ve had. Someone in my line of work may be more convincing than someone who isn’t. I’m not saying that a firm grounding in algebra and beyond isn’t desireable, but there will always be those who are able to succeed despite the gap in their knowledge. If you don’t want people with this gap working in a professional capacity you can take your concerns to the American Library Association, which is the accrediting body for MLS programs. Finally, the previous sentence was just me being a wise guy.
At the very least, understanding of exponential functions can help prospective college students understand how compound interest on their student loans works.
Probably more of a concern now than years ago when college was cheaper.
I didn’t need Calculus to understand how compound interest would affect me. A chart showing the growth over months/years did that quite well.
Did not say that understanding exponential functions requires calculus. But it is usually taught in math higher than algebra 1.
Well, you even say yourself that algebra and on is desirable, and that it is a skill that would be useful to have, even in your job which is rather far from a mathematical field. And it’s becoming even more so - the mathematical underpinnings of computers, data, and software make math ever so slowly more critical. Certainly you’d be able to survive without it in your position, but you can do so in the same way that you can be a weak writer and still be an engineer. I mean, yes it’s possible, and yes it’s common, but it’s a failure of the university that it did not manage to ensure that students are equipped with important primary and secondary skills that represent a basic level of knowledge that opens a large range of potential job opportunities in and out of the specific field of study.
Yes, there are always skills that you learn that end up not being useful for the job you actually get. That’s the “danger” of an education - it might not all be useful, but it does provide you with a wide range of skills that actually do matter and do come in handy. Maybe that algebra skill could come in handy - a lot of people (including me, at times) can often convince themselves that skills that actually limit them don’t matter, even when they do and they do limit what you were actually capable of accomplishing. Part of a university level education is to give students that body of wide-reaching knowledge upon which they can build, which makes math up to algebra 2 make perfect sense as a requirement for the non-STEM among them.
Basic compound interest and debt repayment are enough for most people in most situations. There’s more to it than that, but those two are the most common and the ones most worth knowing. As long as you know and appreciate that there is a whole field of study for compound interest, it’s not necessary to know all of its mathematical details if all you need it for is personal finance.
"Well, you even say yourself that algebra and on is desirable, and that it is a skill that would be useful to have, even in your job which is rather far from a mathematical field. And it’s becoming even more so - the mathematical underpinnings of computers, data, and software make math ever so slowly more critical. "
How / why does a librarian need to know the “mathematical underpinnings of computers, data and software”? She may need to know how to think through how best to integrate these things into her professional life and what that means for database searching and retrieval but she doesn’t need to know the mathematical underpinnings behind it. That’s as silly as saying everyone needs to know how to code.
Nope, it is an Algebra I topic now in Common Core (PARCC). Not only that, the PARCC test asks you to find the rate of change on this extremely nonlinear curve to see if the students can apply the great western philosophy of linearization of everything.
Algebra 2 in general teaches about a wide range of mathematical functions more advanced than linear (quadratic, higher-order polynomial, hyperbolic, elliptic, trigonometric, exponential, logarithmic, complex, etc). If it really is true that all you need from math in your entire life is just a few equations and handy tricks like the compound interest formula, then you could probably just learn those and not bother with Algebra 2. If you plan to do even the most basic of algebraic manipulations, which are at least of secondary importance to just about every field, the functions of Algebra 2 become important.
However, doesn’t Andrew Hacker advocate eliminating algebra 1 from high school graduation requirements?
Reading a chart showing loan payments or savings growth over time requires neither.
“. If you plan to do even the most basic of algebraic manipulations, which are at least of secondary importance to just about every field, the functions of Algebra 2 become important.”
Just about every field? Really? Once again the typical CC STEM obliviousness to lots of different career fields that don’t involve using much math beyond solid knowledge of the basics, and no, they are not all of the “would you like fries with that” variety. Corporate communications, public relations, advertising …
@pizzagirl, it can get annoying when someone presumes to tell me what’s needed in a field I’ve worked in, and kept current, for 25 years. Fortunately, they have no say on my evaluations and don’t sign my paychecks. I’m not going to convince them that I may have some idea what I’m talking about, and they’re not going to convince me that gaps in one’s math background are supremely difficult to overcome.
Here at halftime, @NeoDymium seems to be at a standstill in the quest to say that a complete and balanced education contains more than just the humanities or more than just the sciences.
Of course a complete education needs both. Am astounded anyone would seriously propose otherwise.
Put over-simply, the instant a person has to make decisions about how to get the most out of available resources is the instant that math can be useful and the moment a person has to make decisions about what kinds of things are good and ought to be done is the moment that a background in humanities is useful.
Of course nobody needs either, and may not even notice the absence of either. But having access to both backgrounds/skill sets is always better than having access to only one.
[edit: I apologize in advance for ascribing a particular position to NeoDymium … ]
@Pizzagirl
Look, if you want to make an argument or bring up a point, then I would be happy to discuss it with you. If you want to just issue blanket condemnations of “STEM people” in short, emotionally charged posts that are high on assertions, low on understanding of the context of the argument, and low on content, then there really is nothing to discuss here.
I’m not sure if I came off that way, but if I did then that’s not the point I was making. I’m not saying you don’t know how to do your job or that you do it badly - at the very least, you most certainly know more than I do about what needs to be done within your job. My point is that you’re looking at this from too narrow an angle - “since I didn’t need algebra therefore it doesn’t matter” - and that it’s unreasonable to go down that path because you are one data point and even you admit that algebra is valuable, if not absolutely necessary, to your field. Your response, as I understood it, is that since you would have had trouble in your education leading to that career path if algebra were a hard requirement (but that you survived since it wasn’t), it’s a bit of an undue hardship. And my response to that is that while I sympathize with the issue, the correct response is to teach the topic in a manner more friendly to the mathematically uninclined, rather than to remove the requirement of a fundamentally important topic with a broad range of application that is at least of secondary importance here. A lot of the rest, admittedly, seems to be arguing in circles.
Surely, there are many people who can say that one or more of the following high school subjects is not used at all in their jobs:
English literature
history
science
foreign language
art and music
Should any of these be eliminated from high school graduation requirements in the same way that Andrew Hacker proposes eliminating math?
No. I think they are all important. They can be important, yet not immediately useful.
NeoD - I was a math major.
I am aware. It does not excuse you from having to defend your arguments with more than simply disparagement against those who disagree with you.
Might as well expand on this point.
Yes, it is true that you don’t really need algebra 2 all that much for small, personal “real life” scenarios any more than you need a foreign language for day-to-day interaction with people in a country where almost everyone speaks the most common language at a competent level. Nor do most people necessarily need to know much history or civics to survive (though it certainly is very desirable to be a more informed voter, you’d survive just fine not being one). And so on for any other core, fundamental topics that you could feasibly make a, “I didn’t ever need to use this” argument for. The issue is, put simply, that they are fundamental for the reason that, while they may not be used by everyone in every single line of work, they have a broad range of uses across many fields, and having that broad range of knowledge gives you a lot. Education in general is often about learning things that may or may not come up in the future - a topic being fundamental does not mean that it will be used by everyone in every life situation ever - but that have such broad importance that you would be well off knowing them.
Math, specifically, teaches you a lot about mathematical manipulation and about structured thinking (though the latter is underemphasized in standard HS curricula). That has a broad application to many fields, and generally requires competence in math at at least an Algebra 2 / Calculus level to properly make use of. And yes, it is true that many people will ultimately never use mathematical results or manipulations that require even that level of competence. But as the university education is meant to offer you a broad range of skills for future growth, one of them being math, this idea that it shouldn’t be taught because of students struggling with it (and with poor instruction) is really throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If not taught, it leads to a general aversion of math in general, and I know a lot of people who chose very substandard career paths for themselves (e.g. aspiring pilots, electricians, etc.) because they never learned to come to terms with the actual importance of math and just pushed themselves in the path of least mathematical resistance, to their detriment.
So no, you don’t strictly need algebra 2 to calculate compound interest as used for personal finance. You’d need it for more advanced applications, but that’s not what most people deal with. The more important aspect of math is the broad importance of somewhat more advanced mathematical work across many fields which may not necessarily appear to have any math at first, and the related issue of people who push themselves away from fields because of a developed aversion to even the smallest amount of mathematical content.
@NeoDymium, I actually don’t think we’re as far apart as it might appear. If I came across as saying “math isn’t important”, that was a communication failure on my part. I am saying that failure to advance to a certain point shouldn’t always automatically block career paths where it is less important. I think we agree that the way it’s taught needs to, at least for many students, be changed. Until that happens, I think some flexibility is called for. As far as my story being a single data point, you got me there. However, I’m sure I’m not the only person it’s happened to. For what it’s worth, I’m not crazy about the formulaic way that writing seems to be taught nowadays either. It’s as if teachers are no longer trusted to use their professional judgement.