<p>No one considering a top school is incapable of learning math. Unfortunately, it’s acceptable in our society to be a proud math-phobe.</p>
<p>“My mother in law, a mathematician who took time off to raise kids and then became a math teacher teaching BC Calculus with great success, strongly urged our kids to NOT accelerate beyond a point where they would do AB Calculus in HS. She felt that after that point you have to learn from people who write the textbooks, not people who read the books.”</p>
<p>I wonder how many students have been derailed from technically-based careers by uninspired teaching. My D struggled with Calculus in HS, but still managed a 5 on the AP test thanks to a wonderful teacher.</p>
<p>One part of the problem is terminology. Almost everyone knows what Ethics and History and English and Chemistry are. Terms in the math world are, well, less intuitive. Who really feels confident describing what Calculus and Differential Equations and Set Theory and Laplace Transformations are, or what each is used for in the “real” world?</p>
<p>I guess my two cents would be that any student who wants a career in science, or who wants to work for an organization with lots of technical types, should consider taking Calculus in HS. Avoiding HS Calculus because “it’s too hard” and then expecting to do well in freshman college Calculus is dubious planning at best. JMO.</p>
<p>but why CALCULAS!!! I studied calc, and my a H never did, and he is just as smart and analytic as anyone…</p>
<p>Why the LOVE for this one kind of math class…and the defense of it when, if student had the opportunity to try something DIFFERENT, they would fall in LOVE with math</p>
<p>I am by no means a mathphobe, I think math is great, but I just don’t get the passion behind having this one class, the thoughts that it has to be calculas only…why? </p>
<p>There is no imagination in academia if they can’t see there are so many other ways to teach math, to stretch the brain with math, </p>
<p>When my D took calc, after trig, she started to HATE math, while she loved it before, she loves logic puzzles that have to do with math, but after Calc, well, she now wants no more math, Calc ruined her love of math</p>
<p>It is almost, well, pathological the love of calc and what it supposedly teaches and shows about a student</p>
<p>CityGirlsMom,</p>
<p>Why Calculus? First of all, I’m truly sorry your D didn’t get better instruction. But is it really fair to blame this one mathematical tool for your D’s current woe? Calculus is a prerequisite for numerous science courses. That’s because the course materials are taught with Calculus. Until THAT changes …</p>
<p>Other areas of math cannot be adequately accessed without a familiarity with calculus. Probability, statistics, linear algebra, etc, all incorporate calculus to some extent.</p>
<p>CALCULUS</p>
<p>cgm:</p>
<p>AGAIN, what math do you suggest? Instead of throwing bombs, why not make a constructive suggestion for a change?</p>
<p>Calculus in HS can be a blessing.
I took AP Calc AB last year, and I KNOW I would have failed if I was taking it in a college setting. The flexibility of my teacher and his willingness to completely re-teach sections if the class didn’t understand was amazing - i’ve never been in a course where the teacher didn’t just keep on going when kids were having a hard time! Maybe he was too easy on us, but I actually LEARNED! I had to take pre-calc this year (BC class was cancelled due to lack of interest…and it was pre-calc or no math at all), and I grasp everything…I am able to explain why answers are the way they are - makes me realize how much I absorbed last year! There are all too often huge classes and impersonal profs in college - a combo that makes already difficult classes nearly impossible for those who are not ‘math savvy’. Calculus in high school circumvents some of those issues.</p>
<p>Imo, going through life without both the equivalent of Calc I and Intro Stats is like going through life colorblind. It may not particularly bother you but there are lots of things you won’t notice or correctly understand. It also isn’t always necessary to do something but very helpful to understand that something <em>can</em> be done and <em>how</em> it is done. My Stats background is pretty informal, with lots of bits and pieces from here and there, including lots of science classes and survey research, etc. A formal Stats course is one of those “holes” in my transcript. I’d happily trade that godawful course on Hegel except that I’m forced to confess that even that idiocy was useful in the long run.</p>
<p>I took pre-calc in high school and then quit, despite being urged by the head of the math dept to continue. I couldn’t stand being teased by all the boys in the class and the male teacher. True story. Water under the bridge. Fast foward to business school. Took calculus. Still hated the calculation part, but found the concepts fascinating and intuitively clear. Really glad I took it - gave me faith in my capacity for abstract spatial reasoning. </p>
<p>Then took statistics. Completely loved every bit of it. Finally math you can see a picture of. Use it all the time. Wish I had taken both calculus AND statistics in high school. I think for many kids math instruction in the US is way too slow and boring. </p>
<p>Both my kids love math and will take Calc BC in high school and I only wish I had had the foresight to accelerate them in 5th-7th grade. That is the right time from what I saw and they would have loved it and had fun with it.</p>
<p>Oh well. In my next life if I get these kinds of kids again I will know what to do. However, I am sure next time around I will have a different kind of row to hoe.</p>
<p>“It also isn’t always necessary to do something but very helpful to understand that something <em>can</em> be done and <em>how</em> it is done.”</p>
<p>Great way to sum up the importance of all math & science courses. “But I’ll never use (whatever)” gets so tiresome.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with “offering” Calculus, AP Calculus, and pre-Cal in high school. The problem is finding teachers who have the “people skills” to communicate the concepts. There seems to be a “disconnect” between teachers with higher math abilities and teachers with good teaching abilities. When a school gets one or two good ones, they need to treat them like gold so they will stay!!!</p>
<p>ANd the forciing of having to take it by colleges to weed out applicants…</p>
<p>And I have given lots of suggestions and examples on another thread, as have dozens of other posters</p>
<p>Do kids learn binary numbers anymore? The abacus? And don’t laugh, sometimes simple teaches alot</p>
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<p>Yep. Sometime in grade school. I don’t remember what grade it was. In fact, most of the things people keep saying should be taught instead of calc (like interest calculations etc) I had in grade school. </p>
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<p>Kids in my high school took AP English rather than journalism because they were worried about impressing colleges. How’s that any different?</p>
<p>The real problem of bad teaching aside, kids don’t always know soon enough that they will limit their choices by not taking calculus. No one argues that econ and stat aren’t very useful things to know about. Well, at my son’s college even the introductory econ class relies on calculus and so do almost all the stat classes. As for physics, calculus seems to be the language that it’s written in. So, having missed all that, I feel as if I failed to learn a language that was basic to understanding the world.</p>
<p>My non-math daughter was encouraged to take calc BC, but we told her she didn’t have to. We didn’t think she’d put in the required work (she was majoring in social life at the time) and she was a potential art major. We did say she needed to take one more year of math and encouraged her to take calcAB. It was the single best decision we made about her high school curriculum. She got a lot of confidence out of it and still thinks of herself as good at math. </p>
<p>I wish I could say it led her to take more, but she did, in fact, graduate as an art major. Now, she is becoming an elementary school teacher and talks about how much she wishes she could teach…MATH. You just never know.</p>
<p>Yeah, you sure don’t. I was a wiz in algebra 9th grade but a brick wall with geometry (barely escaped with a C) in 10th grade. Only needed 2 years of math back then so that was it.</p>
<p>So I majored in Sociology when I first went to college, but took Trig as an elective. Got the degree but found I the available jobs didn’t interest me, so I kind of bummed around. I supported myself with odd jobs but was going nowhere.</p>
<p>On a lark, I went into the career center at the local CC to take an aptitude test. I scored highest as sociologist and mathematician. Well, I really wasn’t going anywhere so I kind of worked back into school getting back up to speed in Math. Fortunately, most of my classes from the first time counted towards my general education, and CC and state schools were really inexpensive here in CA. Got the math degree 2 1/2 years later.</p>
<p>Wrote math off at 16, got math degree at 29. Shows you how much kids know, huh?</p>
<p>According to my advisor, foreign students (particularly Asians) are head and shoulders above their US counterparts in terms of mathematical training both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. They start earlier, require more, and go more in depth. If the US really wants the technical/engineering to survive this mentality has to change.</p>
<p>On another note, someone else posted that you need to know calc. to know statistics. I couldn’t disagree more. At the introductory level calculus is definately not needed to digest all of the topics in stats.</p>
<p>I don’t know about needing calculus to learn statistics, but I think it helps. I consider myself a math person. I took AP Stats this last year, and it didn’t really mean much to me to see a normal distribution without the calc behind it. So what, I can calculate it on the calculator, but I don’t know how to derive it, or what it really is as a function. I found that when I reached the same topics in calc (probability distributions, density functions, etc), it was far more enlightening. I don’t know, just my thoughts. I wouldn’t say it’s necessary, but it helped me to understand the premise better.</p>
<p>It’s obviously going to help you understand it better but that doesn’t mean you need it to understand it. You can understand the general premise of a normal distribution without calculus.</p>
<p>Fair enough, I am not disagreeing with that.</p>
<p>You can also understand the general premise of a normal distribution when you’re still in junior high.</p>
<p>You can take the calc out of pretty much any subject, you’ll just be left with something that’s less about understanding and more about memorizing facts.</p>