I agree. It's better for this university to start off with extremely solid courses in a limited area, then they can expand.
Besides which, responding here to other posts, I respectfully don't think it necessary for a legislator or policymaker to have an extensive background in calculus, physics, statistics and the like. Critical thinking skills would be my main criteria there! The idea that someone can't make sensible financial decisions or evaluate budget decisions on something like NASA without a background in physics or calculus strikes me as elitist. JMHO. It's simply not possible for everyone to specialize in everything and have an extremely extensive college mathematics background at the same time one is specializing in another area. Everyone has different gifts to bring to the table. Would I send my daughter interested in engineering to Patrick Henry? Absolutely not. Would I sent a child interested in political philosophy or journalism there? Absolutely! It sounds like they are developing an excellent program very early out of the box.
Well, we disagree. So many political issues we face today have a technical component that it is my opinion that an education is deficient without two years at the college level of chemistry, physics, biology, and computer science, all of which should require calculus, linear algebra, and multivariate statistics. All of that is easily completed before leaving for college if one only redesigns the curriculum. Both my kids will have a year of college calculus under their belts before their thirteenth birthdays. One will do it before she's twelve. She was factoring quadratics when she was six. No, it's not that she's a genius, it's the method.
The idea that someone can't make sensible financial decisions or evaluate budget decisions on something like NASA without a background in physics or calculus strikes me as elitist. JMHO.
And just what is wrong with expecting a high level of performance from every child? How is that elitist?
It's simply not possible for everyone to specialize in everything and have an extremely extensive college mathematics background at the same time one is specializing in another area.
Yes it is. We are doing it right now.
What is important? What are your values? I am not a wise old sage by any stretch of the imagination, but after having been allowed 54 years on the earth and raising 5 children, with some margin of success I hope, I think I do have some experience.
I have a BS with hardly any solid math but several courses in hands on technology. Now, I work as "number cruncher" or "bean counter" for the Army. The math we use is simply logic, give the kids lots of that. Teach them how to think for themselves and reason things out.
We have home schooled our youngest three children. The oldest one of them graduated from Georgetown College (NOT University) on May 8th, Summa Cum Laude. She is now heading off to graduate school with a full (label that 100%) scholarship and a healthy stipend for expenses. How much math did she have? The minimal, we used Saxon and she loved it. It laid a solid enough foundation that she made it through with a 4.0 GPA and attended Oxford for a semester as an exhange program, where she also received an "A" in all courses. When we ask her how she did it, she gives credit to being able to think for herself, to reason things out.
BTW, the recent college graduate started a College Republicans Organization at the local community college while still a High School Senior and was active in the organization while at college. Guess these conservatives are out to take over the world.
Sorry, but it is. Without that sort of basic background, a policymaker has no basis for deciding (for example) whether "global warming" is a looming catastrophe caused by human technology, a background phenomenon that comes and goes independent of human activities, or just plain hokum.
"The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots."
--Robert A. Heinlein
The notion that "critical thinking" is the aim of education is derived from the socialist educational philosophy of John Dewey. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact that real critical thinking requires real content. That is, real knowledge of calculus, physics, statistics, and the like. Without such content, there is no critical thinking.