Wow...I didn't know he changed careers.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/entertainment/music/2009/11/30/art_garfunkel_can_still_deliver_the_goods/artgarfunkel.jpeg)
Posted on 03/13/2023 1:30:37 PM PDT by grundle
Successful completion of high school calculus has long been an unofficial must-have for those seeking admission to the nation’s top colleges: The course has, for decades, served as a signal to admissions officers that a student’s coursework has been robust.
But some in education say it’s time to reconsider this de facto requirement: Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course. And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say.
“High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture,” said Alan Garfinkel, professor of integrative biology and physiology and medicine at UCLA. “The view … that math is a bunch of symbolic expressions, and you bang on them with tricks to get other symbolic expressions, is a bankrupt concept of math, dating from the 19th century.”
The course, as it’s often taught at the high school level, is inaccessible and often perceived as irrelevant to students’ interests, critics say. Just 16% of high school graduates earned credit for calculus in 2019, according to data culled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a statistic no doubt shaped by its unavailability.
Only 52% of schools with high student of color enrollment offered the course in 2017-18 compared to 76% of schools with low student of color enrollment, according to a 2021 report from the Learning Policy Institute.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I’m sure the Chinese do not agree. But they’re happy we’re dumbing education down.
Added plus if you can get them castrated.
“ Civilizational suicide.”
Idiocracy is a documentary.
There might be just a shadow of truth in that. Computers can do most of the work and get the correct answers nearly all of the time.
Where you really need the math is when computers don't get the right answer. Unless you know what is happening you won't even recognize a wrong answer, until it's too late at least.
This is the typical liberal approach. If minorities have problems with something, like math, standardized testing etc., then eliminate that something or lower the standards. It has to be the dumbest approach to anything, but then they are leftists/democrats.
It's all Greek to me anyway. $:-)
Jaime Escalante would beg to differ from this guy’s opinion.
Specifically, y = exp(x) is unknown by just about everyone, expecially people who have not taken calculus.
If people understood y = exp(x) then they would be terribly fearful of inflation greater than 3 percent.
They would never allow year-on-year deficit spending.
If they understood it, they would be prodigious savers, economizers of everything, and would avoid credit cards and procrastination of all kinds.
They would be able to tell the difference between thousand, million, billion, and trillion, which they apparently are unable to do now.
They would be hard to fool or lie to.
People like this biologist who want us to abandon calculus are just Cloward-Piven afficianados in yet another guise, trying to get us to abandon the pillars of civilization, and tricking us into pouring sand into the gas tank of our great economy and culture.
Adding to my last post:
I noticed that calculus is required for biology because one of my kids considered a biology major but balked at the calculus courses that were required.
It’s not offered be cause no one demands it. No one demands it because it is either too difficult or the students just can’t do it. Considering the abysmal proficiency in basic arithmetic by both groomer teachers and students, this is to be expected.
I had 3 semesters of Calc, majored in biochem and microbiology. When I got my first job in business I fell in love with that and never looked back. I don’t recall using Calc in anything but knowing what it could be used for was useful. When I finally reached senior management I could go ask our engineering department to run some numbers for me. They could generate information that was useful to management even if they didn’t all completely understand how we generated it. More people need to understand what you can do with Calc than actually know how to do calculus if that makes any sense. I never liked calculus class but I loved the concept of what all you could do with it. How, when, and where do we teach that? I don’t know, but I’m satisfied that engineers know it and they are a useful asset just like the rest of your fellow employees, everybody has a part.
I did well in Calculus, but we were never told what you could do with it.
Wow...I didn't know he changed careers.
[snip] Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course. And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say.
"High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture," said Alan Garfinkel, professor of integrative biology and physiology and medicine at UCLA. [/snip]
Anyone who calls themselves an academic but wants to end the teaching of calculus is a pathetic joke. If there was a place I could move to in America where such thinking was unconscionable I would want to live there. There is an eloquence of Calculus, and all math. Math, chemistry, biology, are all discipline that help us to think and explore the universe we exist in. They allow us to think beyond ourselves. They allow us to see spirituality and the building blocks of creation at a fundamental level (my personal opinion).
But in the current culture it’s more important to be able to post to Instagram and know what twerking is.
We’ve had a societal choice equivalent to a decision between Rembrandt vs paint-by-numbers matadors on velvet, and we chose the latter. So I guess why not dumb it down even further..
Exactly.
Wrong Garfunkel.
Exactly
Make the Students stupid so as not to embarrass the teachers.
Algebra is easy if you follow the rules in exact order.
To be fair, I was good at math but can’t spell. Everyone has different skills and abilities.
But shutting off math to all just because some kids can’t or won’t learn it will ruin our country.
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