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Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.
It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you're not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra?
That's the argument Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California community college system, made today in an interview with NPR's Robert Siegel.
At American community colleges, 60 percent of those enrolled are required to take at least one math course. Most — nearly 80 percent — never complete that requirement.
Oakley is among a growing number of educators who view intermediate algebra as an obstacle to students obtaining their credentials — particularly in fields that require no higher level math skills.
Their thinking has led to initiatives like Community College Pathways, which strays away from abstract algebra to engage students in real-world math applications.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:23PM (10 children)
> first-generation undergrads
There is a sad truth with regards to this group.
Look at the year. The current freshmen are born > 2000. Their parents grew up in a culture where post-secondary education was treated as almost mandatory. They didn't go because of poverty or because of inability.
Now, we can safely ignore poverty and all the unknown and uncomfortable possible causal directions relating to lower intelligence testing.
But inability is highly hereditary. The g-factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_%28psychometrics%29) ls estimated at .4-.7 inherited, and there's a strong correlation in intelligence between partners, ie. smart procreate with smart and stupid with stupid more often than smart with stupid. Which means that the .4-.7 isn't regressing to the mean, much, because both parents also likely came from a pool which was lower and so on up the tree, getting more diffuse of course.
So the sad truth is that: some would-be first generation university students simply don't have the intellectual chops because of their parent's lousy genes. Or foetal alcohol syndrome. Or poor upbringing. And down and down the line, with the final, obvious conclusion being: stop being sad that the least intelligent among us can't pursue advanced education. Don't force them to attempt the impossible, and don't destroy advanced learning for their sake. And stop lionizing having a degree. Especially if you hire, consider: does this position really need a degree?
Lots of the great old hackers were pure autodidacts...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:35PM (7 children)
This is one of the least intelligent eugenics arguments I have heard I will not deconstruct your idiocy instead I will simply say that my parents where a lot stupider than I am and where MS, Not Quite MS, PHD, PHD and I didn't even finish high school..
IQ 143, more educated than many on this site
your argument is potato so here are some cats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tntOCGkgt98 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:52PM (3 children)
An AC with a self-claimed IQ over two standard deviations above the mean who fails to construct a coherent sentence? Your comment is the only convincing eugenics argument I've ever come across.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:16PM (2 children)
Oh sad child noone spell god on intertube,
smartest man in america
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan [wikipedia.org]
sent lot of his life as a bouncer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:33PM (1 child)
It's typically either the conman, the quack, or the idiot that appeals to their own intelligence. This is doubly true when such appeal is supposed to be quantified in an IQ number. And infinitely true when such appeal is supported by little more than said IQ number.
- Oh my child. He's just brilliant. He simply doesn't apply himself.
- Ma'am, then your child is in effect an idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:27PM
That would never happen here, I cannot understand how you could think that an entire site with people that MUST believe their own superiority might resort to appeals to authority to demonstrate their superiority , unpossible
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @10:17PM (1 child)
What is your IQ supposed to tell us? That you buy into unscientific nonsense from the social sciences? You're all comical people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:29AM
You idiot. You stupid lump of mostly protein! Have you not eyes in your head, a tongue in your mouth, and a soul to steer both of these? We are ALL conical people. This explains your simple mistake. No, we needs sections, conic sections, you innumerably illiterate son of an donkey-bottom-wiper! Your mother smelled of elderberries!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @06:10AM
Your "143 IQ" is fallible. Were you stoned? Which part of .4-.7 genetic correlate was not clear? How in the world could your N of one disprove a non-global statement? And argument ad verecundiam - really? Awfully poor thinking and grammar for purportedly a high IQ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @11:06PM (1 child)
No. But an apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Your intelligence is based on how you are raised, now whose crotch you are yanked out of. Now, how wealthy you are, that has more to do with the latter not the former. But both are not that gene-specific.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:33AM
Now, at long last, I am confused, no doubt due to my IQ being so low that I never needed to have it tested, rather like my "T", and that I am the scion of a long line of people who refused to become rich. Are we talking about the Trumps, or the Kardashians?