I did not go beyond honors (proof based) calc2, yet did as well in that class as classmates who went on to earn advanced STEM degrees - probably much better than most. (I became a humanities major.) Within a decade of college graduation, I could no longer solve calculus problems - my memories of calc were similar to those described by mathmom. I did seem to retain basic mathematical reasoning skills, however.
Years later, one of my children, then in late elementary school, came home all excited with bonus homework problems that were assigned as part of math homework, that needed no more than upper elementary math to solve, but that most students would nonetheless not be able to solve on their own. They were encouraged to try, and not feel bad if they couldn’t always get to a solution.
The next day, students would share attempts and solutions. There was no real penalty for not solving these problems. My child was excited to get solutions for many of these problems and explain them to classmates, then disappointed when suddenly they stopped coming home and math homework was once again limited to practice of concepts introduced in class.
I asked the teacher what had happened, and was informed that several parents with advanced engineering degrees complained that they were not able to solve the problems even after several hours of attempts, went over the teacher’s head, and demanded that the teacher no longer assign “unreasonable” homework even as bonus problems.
I took a look at the problems and was able to solve most without too much effort - oy vey!
The science I learned in college I use on a daily basis. I don’t use the college math so much bcs I already finished Calc2 in HS. The foreign language I used for one of my overseas job assignments. The liberal arts subjects stoked a continued love of debate (can’t u tell?).
Creatively “recycling” dirty laundry in college has prepared me for living out of a suitcase when I travel. And I know how many shots I can drink before I will throw up.
I too can still remember the first 16 lines of the Canterbury Tales, in Middle English, which I had to memorize in English 25, taught by Professor Dorothee Metzlitzki Finkelstein.
I remember that Basil II Bulgaroktonos (the “Bulgar Slayer”) was the Byzantine Emperor from 976-1025, and that the Battle of Manzikert, in which the Byzantines were first defeated by the Seljuk Turks in Eastern Anatolia, took place in 1071. And a few other random facts from my Byzantine HIstory course, taught by the late Professor Deno John Geanakoplos.
I remember a few things from my Egyptian History and Ancient Near Eastern History and 14th Century English History and Medieval Jewish HIstory courses.
I think that’s just about it. Beyond that, it’s all pretty vague in terms of specifics! (But I still have most of the books I had to read in college, so if I ever want to refresh my memory, I can.)
I won’t say I learned how to write, but I think it’s true that all the writing I did in college (and in high school before that) contributed a lot more to my becoming a decent writer than anything I did in law school.
I too had to memorize the Canterbury tales in HS. Same teacher, we got an A for memorizing a whole scene from a Shakespeare play, and I learned the Macbeth scene Out Damn Spot. (Fun to do these things)
what I learned in my field in grad school, I use all the time. I no longer need the statistics and all the old fortran etc programs I learned. I think my son has so surpassed me is because I always pleaded ignorance. By age 10, he was the one to work out the computer problems with tech support.
Because I have so much more time to read, I do feel Ive learned more history and widened my appreciation of good literature.
The stuff from grad school I use, so I remember it. I was wondering today if I could pass the government and history AP exams (my undergraduate major).
This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in awhile. Although I’ve only read the first page of this thread and maybe the last few responses.
Of course I do not remember specific things. I took CALC 1 & 2 in college and I was a STAT TA in graduate school. If you asked me 30 years later to remember how to do something I haven’t done regularly, or at all, in that amount of time, I would be hard pressed to remember. In fact, I wouldn’t remember. But I am sure I could relearn if needed. I also cannot remember most of the French I learned in HS, although I was fairly fluent
But college also taught me to analyze, problem solve, write and communicate and I still do this everyday in my job ((and in life in general too.)
I am a physician. One of my physician friends says that the only thing that he still uses from HS and was useful was learning Spanish, which he uses on a daily basis here in CA.
Different people have different abilities to remember stuff. My husband has an excellent memory (and also a degree in engineering, while I never went past freshman calculus) and he was able to help our kids with their trig and calculus homework, whereas I started having to refresh my memory from my kids’ textbooks whenever they asked for help with any math more advanced than 8th grade algebra. My husband is also the one who remembers all the obscure case law from our law school classes, while I look at him in blank bewilderment and say “I have no memory of that case at all.”
I have retained absolutely nothing from calculus other than the notion of the curve that approaches the line but will never ultimately meet it. (Can’t even remember what that’s called.) But I had to read Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” for my freshman humanities class and I remember quite a lot about that book. I also remember how to say “our plant is a concrete plant” in Russian, because my roommate was taking first year Russian and she taught it to me. I think most people find it easier to remember things like the plots of books, or stuff you learned purely by rote, than abstract concepts. They just don’t stick in the brain very well.
Anyway, cheer up, OP – someday you’ll be trying to help your kid with his calculus homework and you’ll find that you don’t remember anything about it either! Then your kid will get to feel all superior. Circle of life.
I did try one of those math placement tests a while ago. It did not take too long, and it was not hard.
That is more due to the difference between your mediocre high school versus your kids’ much better high school, not the difference between when you took math and now. If you went to a good high school, then you probably would not see much difference.
However, for most college students, the college experience is one of commuting to the community college and/or the local mainly-commuter university. For those attending college immediately after high school, this often means living at the parents’ house, while non-traditional students likely have been living on their own for a while. It is true that even community colleges and local mainly-commuter universities are likely to be more diverse than high schools that they are near, due to the larger geographic areas that they serve, but that may not be the level of geographic and other diversity that you are thinking of.
I probably helped my child with his school work a little bit too much while he was in the middle/high school. He sometimes “complained” about it, insisting that he really does not need my unsolicited “help”.
I always tried to urge him to learn more. Geometry in the middle school? Learn the official proof in geometry in the “old school” way and maybe learn some applied logic on the side. Infinite sequence and series and later calculus? Learn the definition of limit and the official epsilon-N and epsilon-delta proof. Special relativity in high school? Learn how to derive the formula axiomatically. Also derive all or at least most important formula from axioms in mechanics in high school physics. These won’t be “in the tests” at the secondary school level but I still insist he learned these topics in this way. It sometimes drives him nuts. After he has grown up, he occasionally still teases me that I said back then that he needed to master trigonometry by algebra I or II. (yes, he is required by this “unreasonable parent” to derive all the formula he is going to use, hopefully in several ways.)
Not related to my child’s education: At one time, when I was over 50 years old, a 20-something coworker complimented me that I could explain many things well using the concepts that were taught at school. But the truth is: I read many of these basic college-level books as a “hobby” quite frequently. This is why I did not forget it.
I’ve learned that one of the best ways to learn at a deep, enduring level is to teach somebody else the material. And I’ve had this notion reinforced by my own teaching experience.
However, I only learned the above as an axiom … yesterday … while listening to an iTunes lecture of a developmental psychology class from UC-Berkeley.
That is, unless I have learned it previously, and since forgotten.
@sseamom not only nailed it, but she proved that the really important stuff can be remembered at least well enough. (I use google to help me remember things. At least more accurately. Alas, we grew up absolutely believing Mark Twain wrote the words @sseamom quotes below, but now the dang internet says he probably didn’t really write them nor even say them!):
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” --Mark Twain
The question is whether a college education is a means to an end or an end in itself. The former is a pursuit of a job or position, with skills that tend to become obsolete. The latter is for love of subject and learning, and I would argue that those who choose this course will remember what they studied. I was a classics major and have loved reading history over the near 40 years since I graduated, though it has little to do with my career as a journalist. This is not to de-legitimize or demean the professionalism of the career-minded, but they will tend to forget their subject matter as they pursue their careers.
Also, college serves as a kind of socialization process, according to which you enter a class. You get a network and learn how to behave. This too is perfectly legitimate.
I think “use it or lose it” really applies here. I majored in chemical engineering undergrad and did well enough to later go onto an Ivy league business school. I only did pure engineering work for two years, then moved into operations, and then management. What I do now has nothing to do with chemicals or engineering. I have difficulty sometimes helping my 8th grade son with his math. I have given up trying to help my high school daughter. I just don’t remember a lot of it and they teach it differently now. I can pull out the text book, look at it for a few minutes and then help my son, so the ability is still there, but I haven’t used it in 30 years don’t remember it.
@bookworm : “Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him…”
Macbeth Act V, Scene I. I can still remember most of Act I Scene V, as well.
Theatre major, class of 1984.
Sadly, I cannot always remember everything I went to the grocer’s for.
All I remember from college is that Statistics was way harder than I could have ever imagined. And then, the battery in my little calculator died right in the middle of the Statistics final. Try doing a Statistics final without a calculator!!! Needless to say, I pretty much flunked that final.
AND, I remember sitting in Calculus thinking “When the heck am I ever going to use this craziness in real life”. I can guarantee that I have never needed to find the derivative of a number while shopping at the grocery store or doing my bills.
Don’t mistake the idea that someone has forgotten facts or specific material from one class (or all their classes) with a notion that everything gained in college is lost. This is not always true but it tends to be true-I can tell by talking for 5 minutes with someone whether they are college educated without ever broaching technical material. There are loads of intelligent people who never went to college and many self made and self educated people. Talking to them is often like talking with someone who went to college. Also, other things about college educated and high school grads differ-so there is a confound. But even someone who remembers almost no facts or specific material from college retains the analytical skills and critical thinking skills that were often shaped in college.