Ordinary people use algebra, or at least algebraic thinking, every day. Maybe if more people understood algebra2, we wouldn’t be paying for as many defaulted loans.
I am a psychiatrist and I see people everyday who cannot calculate their way out of the most basic life problems. Any analytic skills would be welcome. The idea of imparting less math to young minds is idiotic.
Wayne State just proposed eliminating required math classes in favor of diversity classes. I think that a mind with no math skills dreamed up that idea.
You need algebra to figure out how to double recipes or figure out the paint needed for a room. I do think algebra and geometry are basic. Calculus, not so much.
Get rid of geometry or shorten it. It is basically waste of time. Without algebra, you can not do physics and chemistry. So, if we get rid of algebra, we better get rid of sciences too.
Math is probably the single most effective screening tool. If you can’t get into a selective college because of your weak math score, probably you don’t belong to one.
"Without algebra, you can not do physics and chemistry. "
I personally have never taken a physics course in my life (HS or college); I have taken chemistry, but really, knowledge of chemistry is not necessary to my daily existence at all. Not like math is.
I’d say that math test scores are probably a more accurate indication of ability than verbal scores. Our oldest son made D’s in English but made a 4 on the AP exam and a 720 on the verbal portion of the SAT. I can’t imagine that happening with someone who (like me) got D’s in Algebra. I did manage to score in the top 15 percent or so IIRC, but that was 35 years ago. Fortunately, math isn’t an issue with our sons. The younger just finished Algebra 2 with an A, and the oldest successfully took all the math his math/science magnet school offered (and he’s not even majoring in math or science). What about the student who struggles in math but has off the charts verbal skills, or even analytical skills. My best section of the GRE was actually the analytical. My quantitative score was, predictably, in the bottom half. What if someone is unsuccessful in high school math but scores reasonably well on the ACT and SAT? My hypothesis is that in my case it was due to the fact that my ability to think logically helped me do ok when presented with multiple choice math problems. Also, using Boolean logic has been one of my strengths as a librarian despite needing a tutor to pull out a D- in Algebra 2 my junior year of high school. I’m not saying Algebra isn’t important; I am saying that people can be successful academically and in the real world mastering it.
You know, an important part of a basic education is learning classes that aren’t taught as well as you’d like, in subjects that you don’t really care for. Instead, a lot of people prefer to rationalize bad results with, “I won’t need to learn that subject anyways.” Even when it isn’t true and they simply can’t appreciate how much their diminished learning (and appreciation of education) limits them.
My difficulty with Algebra would certainly have limited me in some career paths. With the one I chose, it didn’t. My students develop solid research skills, and those kids who love learning but don’t necessarily like school find a refuge in the library I run. I admit I didn’t like school, but I loved learning. As we said when I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Yes, not mastering Algebra can make it harder to succeed. It doesn’t make it impossible.
Problem is that there is always a tendency to push yourself away from fields that might be lucrative but require a reasonable, though perhaps not excessive, amount of math simply because a dismissive attitude towards math has a compounded effect on the rest of your career. You start going towards the path of least resistance with respect to mathematical knowledge, and most fields, as they become more advanced, start to take on a more mathematical nature to them. This situation tends to involve a lot of rationalization, a lot of saying, “I’m doing fine without it,” and a lot of failure to realize that it’s a handicap that you’d be better off without. As I mentioned before, it almost always comes off as the argument of an uneducated person trying to explain why an education doesn’t matter - you have to have an education to really appreciate education.
Not everyone is mathematically inclined and that’s perfectly OK. There were a lot of subjects I learned that I had no real inclination towards, that really helped me in the long run. Basic math is the same.
If you were to list the high school subjects in the order that they have been beneficial to you, then I think math comes right after reading and writing. With a good understanding of those three subjects, all college majors are accessible.
It is true that some students will not go to college at all, and will not use the math they learned. However, knowing it means that they will always have the option to change their mind later. That option has a lot of value.
In fact, having a broad skillset beyond just that of the job in front of you, is the entire purpose of an academic education.
Disclaimer: I’m a computer science major and I’m almost finished with the calculus sequence.
Math absolutely changes how your brain works. So does learning a language. The way we teach math is terrible, though. I didn’t see how it all connected until Calc 2, when we delved into a little bit of physics and I learned that basically every algebraic equation in geometry and high school physics comes from calculus. It’s mind blowing. Not to be cliche, but knowledge is power, and the more information you have the better a critical thinker you can be. Honestly, that includes high level math, at least to calc 1 or 2. I’m good at math, terrible at math CLASSES, but boy have I learned a lot.
Disclaimer: I’m a political science major and advanced calculus gives me headaches.
I think math is going to be vital to a lot of the jobs of the future. I plan on going way beyond my comfort zone with college math. When you consider the extent to which a lot of jobs are becoming automated, and the growing role of analytics in most fields, it seems likely that in 20 years’ time the most valuable workers will be getting machines to do 99% of the job for them, gauging the efficiency of said machines, or deciding how to run a business using those machines.
Some fields, like law or publishing, will stay relatively unchanged, because their product is (with some exceptions) not all that quantitative. A typical business, NGOs, or government agency will be putting exabytes of data to use in the future. I’d rather have an understanding of the process that goes beyond “the quants analyzed this data using some kind of magic, and here are the results.”
I read Hacker’s book The Math Myth and found it balanced, persuasive, and full of research and evidence. He is a former math teacher and certainly not against learning math. He thinks that it is taught ineffectively in the U.S. and is too often an unnecessary hurdle. His main points were (as I remember)
- Math up to Middle School Math (Arithmetic, basic Geometry, Algebra I) is valuable.
- Advanced math is often a "harsh and senseless hurdle," a barrier to HS graduation and being hired into jobs that do not require its use.
- Many professions requiring Calculus for their schools (He used the example of Dermatology) never use it at all.
- He makes strong arguments that Math "enhancing the mind" is a myth and cannot be supported with evidence.
- He gives many progressive and creative ideas and examples of how Math could be taught better.
Math is a homework hog, is most often the student’s most difficult or disliked class, and for all that work, it isn’t really used that much, even across all of the sciences. Hacker gives a recent study from the Association of Medical Colleges. Over 14,000 Medical students rated how important their premed courses to their clinical studies. Biology was 82% and Calculus 3%.
I encourage everyone getting passionate about this topic to READ the book; you may end up with some new ideas.
My only problem with this is you are asking middle schoolers to make decisions about the rest of their life. That’s a lot of pressure for an 8th grader. IMO it’s better to over-prepare them so they can have many options then to under prepare them so they are only stuck with a few. Some kids know exactly what they want to do for a career from very young ages and actually follow through with it. But most people don’t have a clue. Hell, I know plenty of people who are not using their college degrees. They are in totally different career fields. If college students and working adults can change their minds about their careers and life at a drop of a dime, How can we expect middle and high schoolers to have it all figured out.
The way math is taught in the US is definitely something to talk about. Especially with this whole common core thing. But I don’t think removing higher level math is the way to solve that problem.
^This. When D started high school, she began with Calc1 and was having a really difficult time with it although she was a straight A student to that point. According to her, the entire class was having a hard time and no one liked the instructor. Because she was adamant that she was not going to forego her perfect grades, she dug her heels in and ended up spending two afternoons each week with this instructor who, in turn, ended up being her biggest mentor during the four years at her high school. She got highest achiever in Math four years running (mostly A+, with a couple of A’s thrown in to keep her ego in check lol). She is now an uprising college sophomore math major. She originally intended to do a science/math double but is now gearing towards a math/math of some sort/cs mix. You just can’t tell in 8th grade what someone’s abilities or interests will be four or five years later.
Even professions which do not require a bachelor’s degree (e.g. carpenter, auto mechanic, real estate agent) can make use of high school math like algebra, geometry, and trigonometry in the course of their work.
However, medical researchers with insufficient understanding of math may spend time rediscovering things that are already well known and useful in medical contexts. For example, consider this paper:
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract
Here is some commentary:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/12/07/ncbi-rofl-clueless-doctor-sleeps-through-math-class-reinvents-calculus-and-names-it-after-herself/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/11/10/apparently-calculus-was-invented-in-1994/#2bf9d386266e
I didn’t read his actual book, but I read his article (in which he is supposed to summarize his arguments, and in which he pretty much put forth the points you mentioned here). After reading the, “Is Algebra Necessary?” article I disagreed with him, and I have to say that this one is worse. If you call make assertions about how math and Mr. Wolfowitz’ political strategies are somehow related, then I have to say that I don’t see the makings of a good argument. He primarily attacks strawmen and comes off as something similar to a college dropout arguing why college isn’t important.
He’s a political science professor, and I don’t see any support for your assertion that he’s a math teacher. He also doesn’t seem to show any real understanding for how math is actually taught, given that he thinks that statistics without algebra somehow makes sense.
The vast majority (well over 90%) of students have no understanding of how their education fits into the grand scheme of things. If you were to ask me two years after high school how valuable my high school classes were to my further studies, you would have gotten a much different, and much less accurate, answer than if you asked me a few years later. Few students can see beyond what is right in front of them, even those that can be considered intelligent. The example by ucbalumnus is a good example of how you actually would need math within medical work. I will say that it is definitely true that it is less often important to have a good grasp of math as a medical professional (well, unless you work with genetics) than as, say, an engineer. But that’s true for advanced topics in general - it’s not their frequent use that makes them important, but the ability to know when a little bit of advanced knowledge would make all the difference.
I offer [this article](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/education/2016/03/andrew_hacker_s_the_math_myth_is_a_great_example_of_mathematics_illiteracy.html) as a more long-winded response to his arguments. I think we’ve already debated his own assertions thoroughly enough, and as I said and this article echoes, it’s an argument from lack of education.