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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: 1, Interesting) by idiot_king on Saturday July 22 2017, @04:54PM (36 children)
Funny thing is, when things like mathematics, which serve no purpose to the average person outside of paying bills, doing taxes, or splitting checks, get taken out of college, it makes STEMsters uncomfortable. However, by the same token, learning how to interact with other individuals with kindness, specifically oppressed and unprivileged individuals (i.e., people you interact with every day, being women, PoC/WoC, trans*, Muslims, etc), which is a skill that you need in nearly every interaction with nearly every other human you meet is considered something that is totally unrelated to STEM. Why? It's because STEMsters are afraid of the truth of the matter, which is that they need skills that they don't have and aren't willing to learn. Learning how to purge yourself of ignorance is much more important in every day life in every way than learning how to manipulate letters and numbers with your mind. What's more, is that the skillsets of interaction can easily be learned, while often mathematical ability is something that cannot be nearly as easily learned. This perpetuates problematic power structures in places like the Academic Institution which has far too long valued the intellectual pursuits over practical application of teaching people how and why they are the way they are. If the STEMsters actually learned that not everyone is like them, then this would encourage them to help those who do not understand the STEM-related topics and at the same time encourage more participation of minorities in STEM fields, where inclusion of women, specifically WoC, is notoriously low because the STEMsters will start to see the importance of diverse opinions and ideas in the workplace and in research.
tl;dr: This is a two-way street. You could learn something from realizing not everyone is good at STEM, and that STEM could use a good inoculation against their assumption that what they do is a walled garden that doesn't need input from non-STEM fields.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @05:08PM (3 children)
I'm a STEMster and social skills are beneath me. Soft skills are for soft headed idiots. I'm blissfully oblivious to how much everyone hates me. I think people find me fascinating when I talk about myself. What I don't know is people are only pumping me for information they can use to mock me. People can't get rid of me through the usual social methods of mockery and shaming. I'll keep coming back until people resort to shunning and ostracism because nothing else works. I'm a STEMster and I can't understand why I always get banned from absolutely everywhere all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @05:22PM (1 child)
I'm an introvert and I have a wide range social skills from glares of disapproval and boredom to fully fledged conversation enders. It's difficult to feel ostracised from people I find tiresome and fully intend to avoid interacting with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @05:39PM
Is that the best you can do? I go on job interviews and give a reason-your-company-sucks speech which I lace with examples of my own technical prowess, and I genuinely expect to be hired. Of course every interviewer is a blithering idiot who gets offended instead.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:23AM
actually, your sarcasm misses the reasons . these people are ugly from birth, they are made fun of and shoved into lockers, girls laugh at them. they decide they are going to be assholes and overcompensate by pretending they are superior. this comes after years of crying, and that's how they resolve the crying. smart has zero to do with being an asshole. being a loser ugly fuggo does.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by SanityCheck on Saturday July 22 2017, @05:26PM (1 child)
How about people who are not going into STEM do not go to college, because it is waste of their time and our money.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @05:47PM
How about the opposite is happening, because people can see STEM is a dead end unless they smear shit on their faces and relocate to India and get an outsourced job.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @05:34PM (5 children)
Nice rant... feel better for beating the everloving shit out of that strawman?
Algebra is key to mathematical literacy. Understanding gives you the tools to reason about the relationships between numbers without being blinded by the figures.
In a capitalist world, people are going to try to trick you with numbers every day. Working out how much that car, that house, that loan REALLY costs and what happens if you miss a payment is important.
Anyone who tries to shortchange people on education, and claim it's in the students' best interest, is a cunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:14PM (4 children)
You had me listening, until you started to use four-letter words. Hint--they don't add much to any reasoned argument.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:39PM (2 children)
"Nice rant... feel"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:20AM (1 child)
Or did he mean the very last word?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:16AM
Well, if he stopped after reading the last word, he did indeed read the whole thing, didn't he?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:25AM
umm, no one gives a flying fuck what you think say or do - especially your opinion on how people should communicate. the four letter words he used have meaning and change what is being communicated. learn some inglish curryhead.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:02PM (14 children)
An argument could be made that the entire global economy collapsed in 2008 due to the average person not understanding exponential functions, which are usually covered in the second year of algebra. The subprime mortgages that were getting advertised like crazy always focused on the low monthly payment, and not on what that would do to the total cost of owning the house in question. There was a reason for that: The way those loans were structured, it was extremely easy to end up owing more on the house than it was worth. This in fact happened, and that's a major reason why the loans stopped getting paid back. In other words, it was a massive system set up so that those with a knowledge of exponential functions could take advantage of those without that knowledge.
It's also not a coincidence that all of the applications you mentioned are financial in nature. One way to make math a lot more relevant is to put dollar signs in front of the numbers.
Calculus also affects more than you might think. For instance, designing highway exit ramps: To do it properly, you have to get it so there's a smooth curve that matches the driver gradually turning the wheel from straight over to the angle they need to go around the clover-leaf.
I'm not opposed to STEM people learning basic social skills. I should note that contrary to the stereotypes you are obviously drawing from, most of them do in fact have basic social skills. I should also point out that those who are intending to become engineers still have to take language arts courses, so it's not like your average computer programmer has never read Shakespeare or written an essay or learned the basics of history.
As for participation of minorities in STEM fields, I've worked with black people in those fields who were about as smart as their white counterparts. I've also worked with young black kids in the inner city who were extremely interested in learning about STEM, and college students who are trying to get started in the field. The interest is there, the opportunities to turn that interest into qualifications and a decent job are not. Even when a qualified black person gets a job in a STEM field, they are not paid as much as their white counterparts, nor have the same chances for promotion. STEM fields, like most other fields of study, are not remotely as meritocratic as their practitioners would like to believe.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:23PM (4 children)
> designing highway exit ramps: To do it properly, you have to get it so there's a smooth curve that matches the driver gradually turning the wheel from straight over to the angle they need to go around the clover-leaf
Nice try, but not the best example. See railroad spiral curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_transition_curve [wikipedia.org]
While calculus is required for an exact solution, numerical approximations are plenty good enough for surveyors.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:05PM (3 children)
Then why do I see so many that are done wrong?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:05PM
> Then why do I see so many that are done wrong?
Lack of algebra(grin)? Or, more likely, giving the job to a contractor without involvement of a qualified civil engineer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:27PM
You say "done wrong", but do you know what constraints they were designing to? It's not all about minimizing various derivatives -- sometimes there's constraints on total space occupied (eminent domain means you can take what you want, but you still have to pay something for it); sometimes particular areas (e.g. wetlands, or property owned by well-connected individuals) must be avoided. There's quite a few ramps I've driven on that I just can't explain, but there's enough other "weird" layouts that I can see the (or a) reason for, it makes me wary of assuming all the ones I can't figure are just down to ignorance on some civil engineer's part.
(Also, get that "civil engineer" bit? Yeah, they have semester on semester of classes about dirt, but they're still a STEM field. Of course they took calculus.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:50AM
If there are that many trains derailing on a section of track or sliding out of control, then they should fix the track.
Otherwise, it's probably not wrong, it's probably just not what you envision it should look like.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:30PM (8 children)
It can also be argued that a big part of the global economy currently hinges on leveraged derivative contracts which are well beyond the understanding of anyone who hasn't made a specific study of them. We are rapidly working our way into a scenario where a handful of programmers are going to set loose a handful of algorithms that will trade more than the annual GDP every day in a complicated dance that anyone outside the implementation team will have a vague understanding, at best, of what's really going on - this includes the owners of the firms who profit (and lose) based on the success (and failure) of their algorithmic quants' implementations.
How many people understand, really understand not just trade sound-bites from CNN, global issues like energy supply, greenhouse gases, distribution of fresh water, or what it takes for their vehicle that they depend on every day to start and move?
Yeah, the financial industry pushed a bunch of predatory loans on a bunch of rubes who either didn't understand exponential growth, or more likely just didn't care - like, what's gonna happen? they gonna put everyone in jail when they don't pay back their mortgages? Really?
So, yes: education good.
Also yes: equivalent opportunity for all persons, both capable and incapable of skill X. If you can't do X, then you can't have a job that requires X - that's easy. X should never be made part of a "core curriculum" that basically bars people from the bulk of meaningful employment including things that have no need of X whatsoever.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:09PM (6 children)
If you can't do basic algebra you're probably only good for menial labor. I can't think of any professional level job that doesn't require algebra for propper planning.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 22 2017, @09:35PM (5 children)
So, you've obviously never gotten any insight into how management works.
There is actual value in management, even multi-layered management - the value is in communication and coordination. You can master algebra and it won't make you one bit better at communicating with people above and below you in the organization. I'd go so far as to say: those who are really good at maths are often less likely to be good at communication, particularly with people who aren't as good at maths.
I knew a fellow from the backwoods hills of Kentucky, 35 years old, couldn't read or write much more than his signature, algebra was far out of his league, but he had a talent for managing the types of crews who install big conveyor belt systems. He would travel around the country to the job-sites where these big conveyor belt installation projects were being installed and manage the labor... got him over $100K / year in takehome pay + benefits. Now, being from the backwoods hills of Kentucky, I think he just might have wrangled a High School diploma for himself back in the 1980s, 'cause without one of those, nobody would trust you to do a job like he was doing, and last I heard he's still doing that job 10 years later.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:47AM (1 child)
Management requires basic algebra if you need to figure out how to efficiently allocate resources. I've been using it for production scheduling and all I'm managing are one CNC machine, one assistant, and myself. Anything less and you're just guessing. So I don't doubt that a lot of managers do get by without it, but then they're not doing their jobs as well as they could.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:33AM
All the fancy figuring in the world won't make a damn bit of difference when your crew doesn't show up, or doesn't follow instructions for what to do first, or doesn't do what the drawings tell them to do. Yes, you need people who can do all sorts of math and engineering to design a conveyor belt installation, but you also need grunt labor that will work without air conditioning moving heavy equipment, drilling concrete, and assembling heavy hardware. You need somebody who can effectively manage these people, not just fire them when they do it wrong, but actually get them to do it right, and that has about nothing to do with math and everything to do with effectively communicating between the people who do know the math and engineering and the people who execute the work. Algebra, and apparently 2nd grade reading, are entirely optional in that role.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 23 2017, @04:01PM (2 children)
"You can master algebra and it won't make you one bit better at communicating with people . . ."
Sorry, that's nonsense. If you have people working for you who communicate mathematical concepts, and you can't understand, that's a problem.
" . . . above and below you in the organization."
And, that is a problem, in and of itself. Management believes itself to be above all the riffraff who actually earn the company's money.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:13PM (1 child)
Like it or not, the world is organized in a bunch of pointy top pyramids, and the people at the top of those pyramids, largely, decide who gets to stay at the levels immediately below them. If you're an independent consultant, congratulations, you're now floating solo taking on tremendous additional risk for the privilege of "not having a boss," such risks include: lack of collective bargaining for things like healthcare insurance, regulations, laws and taxes affecting your industry, and laws affecting international competition for your business. If that's working for you, great - I did it for a while, but I really prefer the regular paycheck coming from one location instead of short unpredictable bursts of money coming from unpredictable locations.
So, I've worked with quite a number of bosses and underlings - my role has generally been "maths implementer" so, yeah, I try to "talk math" with people on the job, but - probably 90% of people I have worked with, both above and below, don't really get it, or if they do it's not really necessary for the conversation. The whole "strength in diversity" thing is really true, and many people are better at things outside the realm of math and/or science, and to have a successful business, you need all the skills, not just the ones you learn in school. Back at the independent consultant thing, to really pull that off well you have to be your own sales, accounting, billing, occasionally collections, marketing, legal, and a few other skills outside the actual job you perform for the client. Very few people are good at "all the things," which is one good thing (among so many bad ones) about larger companies where people can specialize in what they are good, or at least adequate, at and skate around the skills they are weak in.
If you marginalize too many people, you create a huge problem for society - and there are a LOT of people out there who never will get math, or spelling, or nuanced social skills, no matter how S L O W L Y A N D L O U D L Y you repeat it at them. There are many, many productive roles that sub-DaVinci level people can have in the workforce. One of the first things I think we should re-introduce to the schools system is the concept of developing peoples' strengths, rather than drilling them endlessly on their weaknesses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @10:43PM
>Like it or not, the world is organized in a bunch of pointy top pyramids, and the people at the top of those pyramids, largely, decide who gets to stay at the levels immediately below them.
not if I can help it
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:25PM
> If you can't do X, then you can't have a job that requires X - that's easy.
Sounds like you are not familiar with the Peter Principle? http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp [investopedia.com]
"The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach the levels of their respective incompetence. The Peter Principle is based on the logical idea that competent employees will continue to be promoted, but at some point will be promoted into positions for which they are incompetent, and they will then remain in those positions because of the fact that they do not demonstrate any further competence that would get them recognized for additional promotion. According to the Peter Principle, every position in a given hierarchy will eventually be filled by employees who are incompetent to fulfill the job duties of their respective positions."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:18PM
I agree. Clearly the Algebra requirement should be replaced with Social Justice re-education camps, with topics such as:
(Score: 4, Funny) by Geezer on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:38PM
Yes, because social skills have electrolytes plants crave!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sulla on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:20PM (2 children)
- The bar is too high, some groups can't make it
- Well then we should teach them better, may--
- No thats racist you need to lower the bar
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:57AM
I grew up in the post-segregation period where they were initially trying to figure this stuff out.
The problem isn't the way that the classes are taught so much that certain segments of the population don't respect education and don't get their children ready for school before showing up that first day. Unfortunately, if you aren't already ahead when you show up, you're already behind.
Then there's the parents that do respect school, but simply aren't around to properly parent the children. Mostly because they're stuck working two jobs because the government doesn't provide actual poverty relief and assistance.
Lowering the standards for minority students is rather racist and counter-productive. It sends a powerful message that those students aren't smart enough to make it if they apply themselves and not only does that screw over the current generation of students, but it also screws over the next generation that's then raised by these people that think it's OK not to apply themselves at school
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:38AM
Teaching them better isn't racist - sometimes teaching them better still doesn't work, regardless of race.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @12:41AM (2 children)
As a STEM person, I happen to think that both calculus-based statistics and calculus-based physics should be mandatory for high-school graduation. I would also require chemistry and biology, both at the AP level. I might also require economics. For a college degree, add a bit of signal processing and information theory: FFT, wavelet, etc.
So, we don't do that?
Fine. Ditch the Marxism classes, the anti-white classes, the anti-male classes, the dishonest history classes, the language classes, the poetry classes, and all the other worthless nonsense.
Even the best of that, language, is an economic loss. Less than 2% of the people who take a language in school end up fluent in it. (this is NOT counting the cheaters who were already fluent) Of those 2%, very few will find significant use for the language. There isn't any language I could have taken that would have proven valuable later in life (now 43 years old), and anyway I'd probably have picked the wrong one. Language is cool and all, but if you'd studied economics you'd know about the concept of opportunity cost. I'll never get back those numerous wasted hours of my precious youth.
I mean really ditch it. Ditch it in high school. Ditch it in college. I don't need to hear about Pocahontas or Susan B Anthony or George Washington Carver. I really don't. My boss will never never never pay me for a marxist criticism of a Maya Angalou poem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:02AM
Clearly, you don't understand the concept of opportunity costs here. Calculus isn't required for high school with good reason. It's something that there isn't time to sufficiently cover in high school and it's not very helpful in the real world either.
As for fluent language, that's not really the point, the amount of class time available isn't going to lead to meaningful fluency, but with proper resources and support you can get students to the point where they can speak a bit. It's certainly a lot more helpful than calculus is.
The point of the language classes is that it broadens out the students' thinking and helps them to develop strong brains. It's much like PE and music that keeps getting defunded because it's taking time from the STEM obsession. But, all of those fields are necessary to maximize what little brain power people have.
Considering the way your post was written, I think you are confusing education with schooling, they're not the same.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @05:11PM
Oh wow, this rant here really explains why some of the SN population is so .... "Special"
Fucking arrogant twats
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday July 23 2017, @03:42AM
We see here that you have that rare combination of superior talent - a dearth of both STEM and social skills. May that take you far.