What an idiotic idea!
When my kids complained about their math homework, with the typical, “I’m never gonna use this in real life,” excuse, I countered with this.
Higher mathematics teaches you to think abstractly. It develops synaptic connections and pathways in your mind that will give you an advantage in problem solving, textual comprehension, cognition, and thinking speed in adulthood.
The only reason I can imagine to minimize, dismiss, or eliminate mathematics is that more and more teachers have degrees in crap like Gender Studies than in classical liberal arts: mathematics, surveys of history, the sciences, and literature, ethics, rhetoric, logic, Greek, Latin, and at least one other language.
I told my kids it was weightlifting for the brain ...
‘It develops synaptic connections and pathways in your mind that will give you an advantage in problem solving, textual comprehension, cognition, and thinking speed in adulthood.’
yes, it may do all of that for a select few; it also has caught thousands of otherwise bright students in a vortex of failure, rendering any thought of academic excellence, well academic...
I failed miserably at algebra, and was thus deemed dim and shunted into the dustbin of low profile college application; my friends, in my estimation no smarter than I, passed the course and were used by my parents to shame and humiliate me...and as far as fostering abstract thought, coursework in logic and rhetoric would serve far better than distant mathmatical concepts...
When an idiot says that I ask them “ ok, you are driving 60 mph and your destination is 120 miles, how long will it take?”
Majority will say “2 hours” in which I reply, “ that’s algebra”.
Exactly
Make the Students stupid so as not to embarrass the teachers.
I think it is more because requiring calculus for college bound students skewers equity.
“The only reason I can imagine to minimize, dismiss, or eliminate mathematics is that more and more teachers have degrees in crap like Gender Studies than in classical liberal arts: mathematics, surveys of history, the sciences, and literature, ethics, rhetoric, logic, Greek, Latin, and at least one other language.”
You are absolutely correct.