Posted on 03/27/2025 9:55:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Just how bad is our education system in America?
Harvard University is being forced to launch a remedial math course for its students.
The university is spinning this is only being done to make up for gaps in entering students’ algebra skills that it blames on lockdowns. Sure lockdowns were an unforgivable mistake.
But the bigger question: how are students getting into America’s most elite college without knowing algebra, which is taught starting in junior high? The elite school has a 3.4% acceptance rate for applicants.
What does this tell us about the math skills of the other 96% of high school grads?
>>What does this tell us about the math skills of the other 96% of high school grads?
You are assuming a sample from a uniform distribution, rather then the DEI skewed population that colleges use today.
Nobody accepted to university ON MERIT needs remedial math.
Another DOE success story?
You can always tell a Harvard man.
You just can’t tell him much.
And people are wondering how the Federal Department of Education spun through $82.4 billion and manage to see US student place 31st in worldwide scholastic ranking. The Harvard fiasco is just the problem bubbling to the surface.
By any rational metric these ivy-league institutions are complete failures.
Their ‘fruits’ have been plaguing us for a long time.
Woodrow Wilson comes to mind.
Harvard doesn’t understand that 1/1024 is a very teeny tiny fraction and should never have qualified Lizzy Warren for a job that was meant for a Native American person.
Advanced math was never their strong suit I guess. We have MIT for that.
Forget algebra - a lot of people don’t even know the order of operations of the basic operators. They blindly follow PEMDAS or BODMAS and don’t realize division and multiplication are done in order because they have equal priority. Same with addition and subtraction. It happens whenever someone posts a simple math problem on Instagram.
Our “betters”...
My next door neighbor is considering rescinding his application to Harvard (he’s exceptionally smart) because of this.
He has scholarships elsewhere.
So scholarship does not get you into Harvard.edu
DEI + number of Teslas you burned or key’d during the summer = WELCOME TO HARVARD.edu
Another shocker is a professor named Nicholas Dames on the Stanford University faculty said he encounters freshman students every new semester who have not read a book in at least a year. One example said her public high school did not require a full book of any subject to be read, only excerpts or articles but not a book.
Pardon me but the news was from the Atlantic, November, 2024 “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books”.
No, I don’t subscribe to or condone the trash sheet. I bought one issue in over 50 years, to get the cover story on the poet Seamus Heaney.
It is worse than not knowing algebra. Many undergraduates have no understanding of decimals. It’s hard to believe but they have no idea which is smaller, .01 or.009. They guess at the answer and say everything works backwards to the right of the decimal - whatever that means.
I think it was Ed Zern that had a joke about a husband and wife, he, a Harvard grad, driving beside a river, when the husband looks over and says, “Only a Yale man would dress like that to go fishing.” His wife, tired of his snooty attitude, says “Turn around! I’m tired of your Harvard snobbery. I’m going to ask that man where he went to college.” The husband complies, and his wife calls out to the man in the river “”Excuse me, sir, but where did you go to college.” The man replies “Yale.” The woman rolls up the window, sheepishly, and they drive on. Relating the story to a friend, later, the friend asked “Well, what was he wearing?” The woman responds “A white sweatshirt with a big blue ‘Y’ on the front.”
Cue the 2 FReepers who went to Harvard to get their crotchless panties all wadded up and come to the defense of 99.8% of Harvard grads who are complete imbeciles. Including many serving in Congress and legislatures across the country.
Why bother? Just let them believe 2 + 2 = 5, and graduate them to reality. The results should be fun.
I’ve been retired from my job with NY State for 22 years, but long before that, I remember reading an article that individuals who had applied to take the NY State Police test were being sent for remedial reading classes prior to taking the test. It was back when the State was pushing for more minorities in the ranks.
You would think Harvard could find enough DEI candidates who didn’t need remedial math. That says a lot about how perversive DEI is.
I’m saving funds to send my grandchildren to the most competitive high school I can find. College is a waste of time these days.
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