Posted on 12/19/2017 2:44:20 PM PST by RicocheT
"The U.S. is about to spend a small fortune on teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM....That’s a good investment in theory, but the American education system is in no position to make the most of it."
"...Students should reach college prepared to take serious science and engineering courses, yet many don’t. Our math teaching is half a century out of date, and without math there is no STEM. Computer science builds on electronics and “discrete mathematics,” as opposed to the classical type leading to calculus."
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
First step: hire elementary ed teachers who can balance their own checkbooks.
Second step: hire secondary ed teachers who can do rudimentary geometry and algebra — or hell, at least keep score for a bowling league without using a calculator.
Unless you do this, by the time their students reach college, they’ll be unable to *learn* math, no matter how much money you pour into remedial ed. I have known far too many elementary and secondary ed teachers who “taught to the book” because they themselves were unable to do the math they were supposed to be teaching.
I kick the asses of literally hundreds of sub-average coders laboring in India, and have never had enough time for all the work I've been offered.
You've apparently never seen the quality of their work.
The teachers are also a product of the last generation of university education, too.
-PJ
No, they won’t. When I was getting my teaching credential and taking the subject competency tests in math, chemistry, and physics, I ran into numerous coaches or history teachers taking the math exam for the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time. Mind you, the test is at a 12th grade level!
Also, most universities are now offering a dummy math degree. All you can do with it is teach. But those getting a real math degree don’t want to teach, so I guess this is the liberal world’s solution.
Calculus is ne of the great revolutions in human thought. The representation and abstraction of rates of change - dynamics.
ne = one
“Realistically, though, there is no real application for Calculus other than Physics”
And all the engineering disciplines.
Try getting a EE without knowing calculus.
You know that.
I know that.
Executives don’t know that.
Therefore, it does happen and will continue to happen.
That’s the mentality that put US into this mess in the first place.
Granted, not everyone is college material, or have the aptitude to learn and understand the hard sciences, but active discouragement of engineering and science degrees since the mid 90’s is why we ended up with a bunch of mush headed SJW millenials with completely useless degrees.
There’s plenty of good paying coding jobs around. In much of the world costs have risen sharply. Finding good software engineers with the right breadth and depth of experience to take on modern software challenges are very hard to find. There’s also some fields where you must be a US citizen.
It just depends. If you find you’re using languages that seem “easy” and are using them for “ho hum” applications then yes, you’ll have a lot more competition. If you’re writing device drivers in C for some embedded device, or handling the internals of a media framework, you’ll be fine - there’s too few of these types.
Right now I’m looking for somebody with functional safety experience, in the automotive space, understands real-time operating systems, fluent in C/C++, with several years of experience. The requisition has been out for months and I’ve had one candidate.
“Our math teaching isn’t a half century out of date, it needs to go back half a century to the way it used to be taught, and taught successfully.”
EXACTLY!!!!
In the TIMSS (trends in international math and science studies), the US is last or near last in every high school exam in math and physics. Funny how these results are never reported in our MSM...
However, in the 50’s we were leading the world in space exploration. We just need to go back 70 years or so, before liberals took over the schools. The intentional dumbing down is just about completed. The teachers are so dumbed down, there is no hope of teaching the students.
Understanding Physics helps an engineer understand their discipline.
S and E in STEM.
Computer Science is mostly related to software programming and writing code and computer architectures so Calc may not be needed. Although matrix and vector math (2nd or 3rd semester Calc) is used in programming.
I agree. Today's teachers are generally an unimaginative, ignorant, resistant-to-learning bunch, being some of the dumbest stumps in college and being spoon fed SJW principles by acolytes of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
“I was telling my wife that these formulas in Calculus are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
That’s in Hebrews, right?
;)
I love that phrase (yesterday, today, and forever), but never thought of applying it to math. But, it is so! Newton rocks!
Well I'm a programmer of sorts too. (These days I program DSPs to control things that move.) Math is at least slightly useful. What's really beyond unnecessary to destructive, at least for what I do, is computer science.
ML/NJ
Another excuse to hire Third-Worlders over US citizens.
That’s exactly right - and funds directed towards those STEM programs will be siphoned off to “Art” students/teachers. That way we can pretend “artists” merit the same salaries as scientists, techies, engineers, and mathematicians...
I was in engineering school almost half a century ago. The math courses were completely useless. Fortunately, the engineering courses taught us the math we needed that was actually applicable to something. In fact, my advice for people who wanted to learn math was to skip the offerings of the math department and take engineering or physics courses.
“Our math teaching is half a century out of date, and without math there is no STEM”
50 years ago our public schools had very good math programs with many student learning calculus. But then a judge kicked God out of our schools and another banned discipline from our schools. Then the lawyers in our legislatures destroyed the independant school districts. The results is graduates who function at a 7th grade level who are unfit for college or the work force necessitating immigrants to fill those spots.
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