Community Colleges May Drop Racist Algebra

Front Page ^ | July 21, 2017 | Daniel Greenfield

[detective]

A little reminder.

Turning college into the new high school will make its degrees just as worthless. Maximize enrollment, particularly of unready students, and you'll need promotion to move them through the system. And then you can argue that any class they can't pass is unfair.

It starts with community college. It'll end at Yale.

Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.

[detective]

Math has been declared racist. Science, technology and engineering are also racist.

Soon we will be living in mud huts and be treated by witch doctors.

[Carl Vehse]

"Community Colleges May Drop Racist Algebra"

Community Colleges want to substitute a remedial course on how to walk upright.

[Vic S]

I took algebra in 8th or 9th grade and finished high school calculus in 11th.

Have standards dropped that much in 25 years? Amazing.

[glennaro]

If this is all it takes then let’s drop the racist personal income tax.

[CharlesOConnell]

I’m 62, when I was in high school, about 15, I read a science fiction short story, in which an ultra high-tech medical kit, a doctor’s black bag, suddenly appeared in a future, intellectually degenerate society, presumably because of the use of some time travel technology.

A sub-Neanderthal, troglodyte denizen of this dissolute, future time, is suddenly able to perform miraculous surgical procedures, using a kind of energy scalpel to create temporary incisions. After the “surgeon” reaches in to pull out an offending appendix, the “flashlight” then re-sutures the wound without any scar.

[sourcery]

Would it be racist just to give everyone a diploma, without actually teaching them anything? Thus effectively denying them an education? Wouldn't the SPLC so claim, if a Southern state tried to save money by doing that? So why isn't it also racist to deny blacks an education in basic math?

[JimRed]

Al-jabr is racist, because the Arabs, who are the worlds premier slave traders, invented it (or so the story goes).

[forgotten man]

Those college administrators should fly on airplanes built by affirmative action engineering students.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Ya, I hear you. Algebra was 8th and 9th grade for me, Geometry was 9th and 10th, Trigonometry was in 11th grade.

I’m amazed sometimes, sadly amazed, at how this culture and society have been “dumbed down” if I can use that term.

So rather than trying to uplift those who have difficulty,apparently many of who are minority youth, we will instead declare the whole thing racist and eliminate the subject matter.

Unbelieveable.

[Gene Eric]

Visit an algebra course on a community campus — the agenda to drop it becomes quite clear.

[Riley]

I took it and geometry in high school, and then I had to take it again in college. It was funny, I was taking Algebra and Pascal programming concurrently and one class right after the other. I’ve never been especially good at Algebra, but I recognized exactly the same logical structure in use between the two and programming was easy and fun. Algebra was a slog.

I guess a little context made all the difference.

[CodeToad]

“Would it be racist just to give everyone a diploma, without actually teaching them anything? “

They already do.

[Innovative]

Since when is algebra “racist”?!

[umgud]

I’m old enough to have both taken algebra and had a slide rule.

[Scrambler Bob]

Since when is algebra “racist”?!
= = =

It may not be racist, but it is sexist.

1+1=2 is heterosexual, mating yields children.

1+1=0 is fags’ rate of population increase.

[needmorePaine]

I took algebra in 8th or 9th grade and finished high school calculus in 11th.

Have standards dropped that much in 25 years? Amazing.

I remember taking Algebra in 9th, double math with Algebra II/Trig and Geometry in 10th, Pre-calculus in 11th, and Calculus in 12th.

The double math in sophomore year was optional, but a lot of us did it. Now people are enrolling in community colleges, and they can't read, write, spell, or do anything more complicated than multiplication and division.

[fidelis]

As much as I dislike higher mathematics, even I think this is an asinine idea, especially for the reasons stated. First, eliminating this requirement just because “minorities can’t handle it” is denigrating to minorities. If someone can’t succeed in a standardized college, they probably shouldn’t be there. But lots of minorities do and can succeed. Second, college is not for everyone, regardless of the fact that it is practically expected and pushed on every child that goes through the public school system whether they have a desire or aptitude for it or not. I actually saw a sign in an elementary school last week that said, “Everyone Goes to College.” Well. no, everybody doesn’t, and sometimes shouldn’t. That’s what vocational schools are for: to teach people worthwhile, honorable, and valuable trades that they can earn a decent living at and contribute to society.

[shotgun]

It was my experience at our local CC that they placed everyone in Math 101 (Algebra) regardless. I took Algebra I and II, and Geometry in Jr. High and HS but to enter the CC I had to retake it again and that was in 1978.

I always figured it was a money making scheme anyway for the school as that meant you had take those additional courses and credits which = more money.

It makes sense to teach it now with the crap they teach in HS. And my Math Professors loved to belittle anyone in class for not understanding math. If they haven’t retired yet then they surely would be fired with today’s generation of snowflakes...

[Riley]

I’m old enough to have both taken algebra and had a slide rule.

I had a circular one when I was learning dead-reckoning navigation in airplanes. That was eons ago, I don't remember how to use it. :-)

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

According to John Derbyshire, Medieval Arab scholars were mostly simply copyist preserving Greek, Egyptian and Chaldean records, save for a few exceptions, making very few original contributions. The expression al-jabr in Arabic means "restoring". It was term of art in Arabic texts, meaning adding the same quantity to both sides of an equation in order to solve it.

For instance, given:

x - 3 = 4 ............. ! original equation
x - 3 + 3 = 4 +3 ..! the "al jabr" step
x = 7 ...................! solution