Posted on 07/21/2017 5:12:11 AM PDT by C19fan
Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.
It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you're not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra?
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
“And there is only one right answer.”
Often there is more than one right answer.
Considering the number of cars that run out of gas each day the drivers failed algebra.
Liberal viewpoint: If it’s difficult, it must be racist or sexist. So pass a law against it or get an affirmative action exemption for your “special” group.
sometimes there are IMAGINARY answers.
(seriously)
How can Math be too hard for “people of color” when all we hear is how there is no difference between black/white, man/woman etc...?
Another use is calculating the meat content vs. price between different fat grades of ground beef.
Calculus could be taught with simple rules: d/dx x^n = nx^(n-1)... simple.
But if you never learned LIMITS then you don’t understand WHY this is true.
or why d/dx e^x = e^x (weird......!!!)
Sigh....
Once upon a time, one needed to pass algebra to graduate from 8th grade.
After that seemed to hard for some grammar school students, we made it a requirement for high school graduation and/or college admission.
Of course, plenty of would be college students hadn’t managed to learn any algebra (even though they’d been passed in the course) and lots and lots of community colleges began (as far back as the 1920s in California per my father!) requiring prospective students to take a math exam, putting those who failed it into a “bonehead” math class similar to the “bonehead” English classes required for those who failed the (in California) “Subject A” exam at entrance....
Still, the kidoos still needed to pass “college algebra” to get the old sheepskin....
Now, the snowflakes find algebra too hard for college students to pass, so they want to eliminate the requirement....
I remember when I was an undergraduate, most colleges required you to pass a year of calculus to graduate! Of course, that requirement was eliminated when the kiddies found calculus too much like mathematics, and thus, too hard....
The fundamental problem is that, all other things being equal, it takes cognitive ability equivalent to an IQ of about 110 to learn the calculus. Or do real college work at the level of undergraduates in 1950....
Yet, with only about 20% of the population having IQ > 110, we’re sending something like 50% of high school graduates to college.... Gotta be lots of college students who just don’t have the cognitive ability to do the work...
Solution: dumb college down instead of make sure no one goes to college without the ability. Forumla for disaster!
[/end rant]
“What, exactly, are the authors saying without realizing that they’re saying it? “
They are saying “You know how we keep saying there’s no difference between black/white, man/woman? That’s BS.”
I was always terrible in math. Though in my early organ builder days I taught my shop how to accurately make pipe feet using trigonometry.
These days I love math, having made my way through Tom Apostol’s “Calculus I&II” and some number theory texts. Though I also don’t have to worry about passing or failing, which is why I’m such an enthusiast.
When I first read that, I thought the article was about leftist colleges getting rid of male students. (Or at least white ones, anyway).
Yeah..
We need more uneducated, unmotivated idiots./s
I took Algebra in HIGH SCHOOL. ..it should be a requirement for HS Diploma.
Algebra is logic. Without logic there is less critical thinking. Less critical thinking means swallowing liberal ideas is easier.
The Arabs did not give us algebra. The ancient civilizations had different forms of algebra, but it was a Greek mathematician that came up with what we know as algebra. Not too many people were interested in algebra during the dark ages, a few hundred years later an Arab stole the Greek’s work, called it his own, then several hundred years after that, during the Ottoman period, it was translated into Latin.
At American community colleges, 60 percent of those enrolled are required to take at least one math course. Most — nearly 80 percent — never complete that requirement.
This is the product of the Government School System. It could not possibly be any lower. Not even in Zimbabwe.
Remnants of Sam Cooke’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ (Don’t know much about history...)
I bet he had no idea how prophetic he was.
I completely believe it. It hasn’t come up but I would not be surprised if there are students in my program that can not read an analog clock ( with numbers!).
Same here. Excelled in logic, too. But got off the math bus when it came to calculus.
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