Math, science not all kids should know

Capital Times ^ | 12-18-05 | Dave Zweifel

[SJackson]

I see that there's a move afoot to increase the math and science requirements in our public high schools because jobs today are more high-tech and require more of those skills.

So everyone's jumping through hoops, concerned that developing countries are eating our lunch on science and math and saying it's time our kids start cracking the whip. Businesses want high school grads with those skills, and business in Wisconsin usually gets what it wants. So legislators are introducing bills that would require kids to take three years of both science and math courses in order to graduate from high school. The current requirement is two years of each.

That's all fine and dandy and, obviously, as our major industries farm out what's left of our blue-collar jobs to cheap labor abroad, there's a need for U.S. high-schoolers to be able to deal with this new computerized and technical world out there. I sometimes think I could've used that extra year of math and science just to deal with the remote control on my television.

But let me add a word of caution here.

Preparing our high school students for the rough and tumble of the job market is a noble cause, but I hope it isn't being done at the expense of making sure our graduates are prepared to do their duty as U.S. citizens, too.

It's so important that young people understand the importance of citizenship in a democracy, the need to be politically literate and involved.

High school graduates need to understand the history and workings of American government and why they need to participate in a healthy debate of ideas and beliefs if that form of government is to survive.

All too many young people don't know who their representatives are or how they got to be where they are and, frankly, couldn't care less to know.

High school students need to experience citizenship through activities in school. They need to be given opportunities to experience governance, debate and the importance of moral and social behavior and be able to understand how they all can play out in their adult lives.

If we continue to graduate young people who don't care about being citizens, who are turned off at the very thought of politics and government, then it won't do us much good to have them know everything there is to know about math and science.

They won't have a country in which to practice their technological skills.

[SJackson]

My guess Dave and I would disagree on the nature of teaching the need to be politically literate and involved. , but I can't disagree with much here. Though we need to teach more math and science as well.

[kingu]

Simplistic goal - since 18 year olds are more likely to be liberal, one must up the brainwashing so that they'll vote the proper way.

As for more science and math - how about a class on counting change. Ghads, I was ready to throttle the pimple faced drone at the fast food counter the other day.

[ClaudiusI]

Do you know how fast you could get a degree in college if you weren't forced to take all that liberal arts/social sciences crap and could actually focus on your major? It must knock off at least a year...

[Right Wing Assault]

the pimple faced drone

You got one of the good ones. I thing that was the manager.

[ClearCase_guy]

Is that really the choice? The kids can be either:

A) politically literate
or
B) Mathmematically literate?

There's no way a school might teach both 'rithmetic and civics successfully? Never been done before?

Pity.

[EGPWS]

...but I hope it isn't being done at the expense of making sure our graduates are prepared to do their duty as U.S. citizens, too.

That's what parents are for.

Even the worse parents would do a better job than government organizations in assuring that this be done.

Typical liberal "listen to me and follow" jargon.

[Bob]

Oh yeah, there's just too much of an over-emphasis on math and English. They're actually expecting prospective high school graduates to be able to do eighth-grade math and tenth-grade English here in CA. The inhumanity of it just boggles the mind.

[kdot]

When a child prepars for his future, graduates and gets a real job, he will experience citizenship . Until then, his "chips" are in other games.

[MNJohnnie]

"High school graduates need to understand the history and workings of American government" Why? About 52-55 US Senators and EVERY current member of the "Journalist" Communit do not understand any of these things yet they are considered our "Best and Brightest". If this person is really concerned about this, have them assign their students 1 hour of Free Republic reading a day.

I suspect that what "Dave" actually wants is POLITICAL INDOCTIRNATION, not Political Literacy

[SandRat]

Here's the way H.S. should be, heck even Middle School

1. Math - Algebra, Calculus, Geometry, Trigonometry
   
2. Science biology, Chemistry, Physics
   
3. Literature the Classics - Poe, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Longfellow
   
4. History - World and INTENSIVE Real US not the PC revisionist Crap
   
5. Civics - US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights -- and all of the words not Cherry picked phrases.
   
6. Music appreciation - Bach, Beethoven, Tichofski, Handel, Mozart, The Big Band artists, Rock and Roll of the '50s and early '60s
   or
   Art Appreciation -- Gogan, The Dutch Masters, Picasso, M. Angelo,...
   
7. P.E. -- all track and field and gender specific self defense.

[Kimmers]

I like that curriculum!!!!!!!

[AZ_Cowboy]

SandRat for curriculum director bump!

[old republic]

History and government are two subjects that have been increasingly filled with propaganda. These classes are often used by the left to push their agenda. You hear all of the time about how the Founding Father's are bad. The teachers themselves often don't teach that government once upon a time was limited. They act as if the government federal government has and should always be all powerful. The left would have you believe that the Constitution creates your rights, when in reality your rights exist without the Constitution. The Constitution is actually you giving power to the governemnt and not the other way around. It would be good if students knew what was Constitutionally acceptable 200 years ago, and how it has changed.

[GSlob]

Everyone has one's limits in every aspect - be it the speed of running or the capacity to learn. Some people do not run into their limits in MIT postdoctoral programs, and others struggle with multiplication table. And everything in between, of course. This would pertain to math and science education for sure, and [albeit maybe in milder form] to the civics as well. Thus the solution would be rigorous segregation of students by ability into parallel streams [say, traditional 5 groups - retardees, dullards, normals, brights and the gifted, IQ cutoffs 70, 90, 110 and 130] with separate and unequal curricula in each stream. Otherwise having a mixed class and common curriculum inevitably results in the teaching to the lowest common denominator. A platoon marches at the speed of its slowest soldier.

[Chaguito]

liberal arts/social sciences crap

Go to a technical training school. Don't have that 'crap' there.

[stripes1776]

Though we need to teach more math and science as well.

I must disagree with you. The schools don't need more math and science classes. What the schools need to do is teach competently the math and science they are now teaching. How is adding a new math class with another incompetent teacher going to change anything except make for a further disaster in the schools.

We got the same argument for more math and science back in the 1950s when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made setellite into orbit around the earth. In the haste of that project we got the new math. It was a great failure.

[Renegade]

My wife and I taught Science for a combined total of 70 years.
my favorite quote was ' Science has the power to giveth and taketh away ( big time )Without science advancements we would still be living in a cave with a life-span of 21 years .

[SandRat]

Odd,... that's the curriculum I had and I was born in '49.

[AZLiberty]

My wife's a counselor at an awesome charter school called Tempe Preparatory Academy. Here's their 12th grade curriculum (everyone takes it, no electives):

12th Grade Curriculum : Humane Letters: a capstone course in which students draw upon the work of the previous two seminars in examining developments in European literature and philosophy in the transition from Rome, through the Middle Ages and into the Modern era. Authors read include Vergil, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Descartes, Hegel, Marx, and Dostoyevsky. Calculus: addresses differential and integral calculus with its applications. Chemistry: a comprehensive study of all major topics in general chemistry with an introduction to organic chemistry and an intensive study of the fundamentals of biological chemistry. Drama: an advanced study of theater in which students act, direct, and design for two major productions. Students also explore theater history and read the great works of Aeschylus, Plautus, Shakespeare, Moliere, and others.

Art: advanced drawing techniques leading to an introduction to studio painting.

Intermediate Greek or Modern Language IV

In addition to the formal classes, students at Tempe Preparatory Academy are required to complete:

Senior Thesis and Defense: credit awarded after completion of the Defense in the spring of the senior year.

[patton]

It's so important that young people understand the importance of citizenship in a democracy, the need to be politically literate and involved.

Might want to tell the author that these United States are a Republic. Not a democracy.