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I want to know what world this author is from. High School math in public schools has been dumbed down repeatedly over the years. Calculus in High School? Incr
by Scubabear68 3y ago
I want to know what world this author is from. High School math in public schools has been dumbed down repeatedly over the years.
Calculus in High School? Increasingly rare to non-existent.
What we need is the opposite - a return to traditional curriculums, and stop non-sense like a 5 credit course in graphic novels (a thing in our district school).
- threeseed 3y agoWhy is that course nonsense if it's elective ? Calculus is irrelevant for the majority of students.
- Scubabear68 3y agoIt’s nonsense because this is a public high school, government mandated and paid for by taxes.
- ceejayoz 3y agoHelping kids engage with literature they enjoy seems a lot worthier of my tax dollars than, say, teaching cursive.
- BlackjackCF 3y agoPlease tell me they don’t teach cursive anymore. I remember being fed the lie that I would have to use cursive as an adult. I don’t even really write anymore…
- ceejayoz 3y agoThey do still teach cursive, at least here in New York state.
- ern 3y agoCursive is making a comeback. Google it. The education establishment is often divorced from reality.
- hnfong 3y agoAh yes, and the few times I actually use a pen to write, 90+% I'm filling in a form that requires me to write in block letters...
- threeseed 3y agoThe child's parents also pay taxes so surely they should have a voice. And it seems like if the child is creative and has zero plans to go into STEM then he shouldn't have his time wasted. Which is a win-win for everyone since disengaged students often disrupt the teacher and other students.
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoYou don't get to pick and choose which taxes you agree with. Part of living in society is paying taxes, part of which won't directly benefit you at all.
- lupusreal 3y agoLiving in a democracy means everybody gets to have their say in what is or isn't a worthwhile use of our resources.
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoThat doesn't mean that you personally get to decide. Living in a democracy doesn't mean you'll have any fair say in things - or a say at all (see: felons and immigrants) and it does mean that things are going to happen that you think is ridiculous. If we let things pass because (sometimes misinformed) person thought it was ridiculous, there wouldn't be a government at home and I, being female, might not have any rights whatsoever.
- lupusreal 3y agoEverybody gets their say in the decision. It's called democracy. Somebody spouting off their opinion saying the process should be changed is part of the process; they not only get to do that, they're encouraged to.
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoThey definitely do not get their say. If groups of folks cannot vote in any election (in the US, this is the case: Immigrants here get to vote in local elections but no such rights generally exist in the US. Felons cannot vote. Children and teens cannot vote). Representatives in the US tend not to listen to those that cannot vote and generally dismiss a lot of folks that Do. Democracy is a name, sure, but flawed democracies are more common than unflawed ones. Those flaws generally mean that some folks' voice is supressed. The US was a "democracy" even while it enslaved millions of folks that it did not allow to vote. Once these folks became "free", many still could not vote. IT was a democracy then, too.
- smeej 3y agoI think it would actually make sense as, say, an art elective or something. My school required six credits of some kind of art (music, visual arts, performing arts), and I can't think of any great reason this would be less worthy than any other kind of niche art class.
- Scubabear68 3y agoThe curriculum consists of reviewing the history of comic books, reading a lot of comic strips, and watching several graphic novel driven movies such as Superman and Watchmen. It is a consumption course. Kids don’t actually learn how to write graphic novels. That might actually might be worthwhile.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> It is a consumption course. Kids don’t actually learn how to write graphic novels. That's the norm for high school English courses.
- lupusreal 3y agoThat doesn't sound normal. Ever highschool English class I ever heard of was an equal split writing and literature class. You read things and were expected to write as well. Not until university did I ever have a literature class where I wasn't expected to produce creative output of my own.
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoAnd no one said they don't write in the class. THe original post was complaining that they do not learn to write graphic novels Which is normal. We don't tend to teach high school students how to write entire novels. We aren't really doing creative work at the high school level either: Most papers are research papers or talking about themes of novels the entire class read. Hardly creative stuff.
- 3y ago
- secabeen 3y ago> Calculus in High School? Increasingly rare to non-existent. That's an exaggeration. As of 2018, 65% of public schools in the US offer Calculus: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_225.72.asp?current=yes https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_225.72.a...
- kwk1 3y agoIt would be perhaps more enlightening to see the percentage of students that are in a school that offers it rather than the percentage of schools. I don't see that figure in this table, but it does show 4.7% of high school students enrolled in calculus.