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Man oh man does this bring back past trauma. I graduated high school in 2006 and despite me being in one of the top half rated high schools in my state and havi

Man oh man does this bring back past trauma. I graduated high school in 2006 and despite me being in one of the top half rated high schools in my state and having a consistent B average, I was not prepared at all for when I entered my engineering school (NJIT). A lot of my math was lacking fundamentals and instead was just memorization and 'plug and chug' style learning. That does not fly at university especially an engineering school. Schools (at least my school) really expected you to learn fundamentals as their tests would not just be a variation of the problems taught in the lectures but a unique twist on the concept itself. The school tested me on my skills before entering and put me in a 'remedial' course called Pre-Calculus with a Calculus Perspective. They even wrote a custom textbook to really fine tune getting prepped for what was to come. (Calc 1, 2, 3, Diff-Eq). I wasn't enough because the new thought process requires a great deal of effort to internalize in the timeframe given. I was barely treading water my first semester and ended up failing math and physics and got put on probation. I eventually graduated and am doing quote ok in life career wise but it was an extremely painful ordeal. Not being prepared and really ready to go remains to this day one of the biggest regrets of my life. I really feel like I let down the people who made my education possible (parents, teachers, schools). Sometimes I wonder why is there such a dumbing down of mathematics in the US? The US is powerful and at the top of their game because of science and technology. Why try your best to kill your golden goose?

jaybrendansmith 3y ago
Similar story here. What I learned in math in high school was an absolute joke. It in no way prepared me for physics and math in college. In addition, most college majors do not need it, they need an understanding of statistics, and a much better understanding of 'business math' and algebra. I think dividing kids into two or more tracks does not hurt them, because they can always take extra course work in college if they ultimately decide they want to pursue STEM. Where it hurts them are the standardized tests, this seems to be the issue.
tayo42 3y ago
> instead was just memorization and 'plug and chug' style learning. Kind of surprised to see that, my experience with college calc was it was so heavy on memorization, that was my struggle. i ended up failing out of school too, lol. i was clicking around khan academy recently through their calc stuff and was surprised i struggled so much with it, 15-ish years ago.
antod 3y ago
Same experience 17 yrs earlier and not in the US. Went from breezing through high school calculus and physics, to completely floundering and flunking out the first year of university. The gap was enormous - probably another 3 years of learning at the high school pace.
mathstuf 3y ago
I noticed this when I went to RPI (I graduated HS in 2007). My high school wasn't ranked at all (or at least no one cared where it was ranked) and AP courses weren't offered until after I graduated. Based on reports from my younger sister, the AP curriculum they did add later seems to have restricted what was taught due to the scheduling rigidity rather than improving it. (Students could take the AP tests on their own though.) I found that I was far more ready than many of my fellow students for math in college (though this could also be due to aptitude given my handle, even the physics and chemistry in my high school went further than AP curriculum). I attribute this to MathCounts (sadly just a 7th/8th grade thing) and the accelerated math track a friend and I were allowed to take. This track ended up getting us calculus concurrently with physics which made a lot of things there make way more sense and gave examples of real use of calculus outside of the math classroom. I also ended up taking statistics which I found more interesting/useful than calculus at the time (possibly because my intuitions weren't as applicable).

jaybrendansmith 3y ago

Similar story here. What I learned in math in high school was an absolute joke. It in no way prepared me for physics and math in college. In addition, most college majors do not need it, they need an understanding of statistics, and a much better understanding of 'business math' and algebra. I think dividing kids into two or more tracks does not hurt them, because they can always take extra course work in college if they ultimately decide they want to pursue STEM. Where it hurts them are the standardized tests, this seems to be the issue.

tayo42 3y ago

> instead was just memorization and 'plug and chug' style learning. Kind of surprised to see that, my experience with college calc was it was so heavy on memorization, that was my struggle. i ended up failing out of school too, lol. i was clicking around khan academy recently through their calc stuff and was surprised i struggled so much with it, 15-ish years ago.

antod 3y ago

Same experience 17 yrs earlier and not in the US. Went from breezing through high school calculus and physics, to completely floundering and flunking out the first year of university. The gap was enormous - probably another 3 years of learning at the high school pace.

mathstuf 3y ago

I noticed this when I went to RPI (I graduated HS in 2007). My high school wasn't ranked at all (or at least no one cared where it was ranked) and AP courses weren't offered until after I graduated. Based on reports from my younger sister, the AP curriculum they did add later seems to have restricted what was taught due to the scheduling rigidity rather than improving it. (Students could take the AP tests on their own though.) I found that I was far more ready than many of my fellow students for math in college (though this could also be due to aptitude given my handle, even the physics and chemistry in my high school went further than AP curriculum). I attribute this to MathCounts (sadly just a 7th/8th grade thing) and the accelerated math track a friend and I were allowed to take. This track ended up getting us calculus concurrently with physics which made a lot of things there make way more sense and gave examples of real use of calculus outside of the math classroom. I also ended up taking statistics which I found more interesting/useful than calculus at the time (possibly because my intuitions weren't as applicable).