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Considering the fact that the vast majority of students aren't going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn’t make sense to track all students towards that go

Considering the fact that the vast majority of students aren't going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn’t make sense to track all students towards that goal. I feel as though there is too much focus on giving everyone more or less the same type of mathematical education in high school. This is probably due to limited resources (ie teacher availability and class sizes), but ideally there would be room for a more varied approach wherein students don’t need to have every year build on the next if the aren’t STEM tracked. Too many students fall behind and never are able to recover. Math class just becomes dead time, and those that do make it to college end up retaking the same subjects over again.

klodolph 5y ago
> Considering the fact that the vast majority of students aren't going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn’t make sense to track all students towards that goal. It sounds like we agree 100% on that point. I'm mostly thinking about the students who are going into STEM degrees later in life, who will (hopefully) come from varied backgrounds in high school and middle school. If you decide in high-school that you're interested in STEM, then it makes sense to develop solid foundations in algebra during high-school. Just like it doesn't make sense for all people to take math like a STEM major, it doesn't make sense to fast-track all future STEM majors to take calculus in high-school, and it doesn't make sense to make decisions in middle school that lock students out of high-school calculus. The thing that confounds this is that people overvalue high-school calculus as the ticket to a STEM degree, when (like the article says) many people would be better served by developing stronger foundations in algebra. And public schools are generally not good at educating students at their own rate & level.

klodolph 5y ago

> Considering the fact that the vast majority of students aren't going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn’t make sense to track all students towards that goal. It sounds like we agree 100% on that point. I'm mostly thinking about the students who are going into STEM degrees later in life, who will (hopefully) come from varied backgrounds in high school and middle school. If you decide in high-school that you're interested in STEM, then it makes sense to develop solid foundations in algebra during high-school. Just like it doesn't make sense for all people to take math like a STEM major, it doesn't make sense to fast-track all future STEM majors to take calculus in high-school, and it doesn't make sense to make decisions in middle school that lock students out of high-school calculus. The thing that confounds this is that people overvalue high-school calculus as the ticket to a STEM degree, when (like the article says) many people would be better served by developing stronger foundations in algebra. And public schools are generally not good at educating students at their own rate & level.