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Making (pre)calc elective would have a lot of good outcomes, but it would also drag the decision point for whether someone wants to pursue a STEM career down to
by red_admiral 3y ago
Making (pre)calc elective would have a lot of good outcomes, but it would also drag the decision point for whether someone wants to pursue a STEM career down to earlier in their life - you'd have to commit to going on the "STEM track" or the "non-STEM track" before starting High School.
For people who know they don't want to go on the STEM track by then already, the change is a net positive. However, it might also mean STEM loses a few more people from underrepresented groups as a result, who would have done well in STEM but are now locked out of that track earlier.
- zozbot234 3y agoPre-calc is a weird course. It includes functions, exponentials and logs which are fairly key concepts in STEM, along with a bunch of fiddly trigonometry that just becomes superfluous once you introduce complex numbers. You could teach the first part of precalc and then do whatever part of trig+complex numbers alongside calc.
- jampekka 3y agoTrigonometry doesn't become superfluous after complex numbers. In fact complex numbers are very hard to grok without trigonometry. Complex numbers also only work in 2D.