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Just wondering what some of your thoughts are with remedial math for those who take it in college....well community college.
Do you think that people who take remedial math classes shouldn't go on to do something in an engineering field like mechanical engineering since it has a lot of math? Should they pursue something that is out of the "stem" area?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nana053
This is going to depend on why they need remedial math and how well they do in learning the concepts they need.
Sometimes the students who are taking remedial math simply were badly taught at the high school level or were so math anxious that they could not learn. With good teaching, they might actually enjoy math and they might be able to go on to higher math with aplomb.
Now this is not true of every student and if a student has NO aptitude for math, they should not go into engineering or science.
^^I agree with this. I worked in an engineering construction department when I started out as a secretary, and I thought of becoming an engineer. I went back to school, was tested in the beginning for math, which I was a complete failure at (they gave me all this scrap paper and I had no idea what I was supposed to use it for). Then I took the non-credit rememdial math course and failed that, too. This is actually why I gave up on pursuing a college degree altogther. I simply cannot learn math (not arithmetic--math, like algebra and geometry). I didn't give up taking courses and learning, though, and I still work in the construction industry, doing bids and RFPs and related documents. This stuff requires written English skills, which I AM good at.
The point is that I came to realize that without math, engineering was not going to be a career for me. I agree with nana053 that the person should verify whether or not they suck at math or were just badly taught.
^^I agree with this. I worked in an engineering construction department when I started out as a secretary, and I thought of becoming an engineer. I went back to school, was tested in the beginning for math, which I was a complete failure at (they gave me all this scrap paper and I had no idea what I was supposed to use it for). Then I took the non-credit rememdial math course and failed that, too. This is actually why I gave up on pursuing a college degree altogther. I simply cannot learn math (not arithmetic--math, like algebra and geometry). I didn't give up taking courses and learning, though, and I still work in the construction industry, doing bids and RFPs and related documents. This stuff requires written English skills, which I AM good at.
The point is that I came to realize that without math, engineering was not going to be a career for me. I agree with nana053 that the person should verify whether or not they suck at math or were just badly taught.
And people like you are very valuable in the construction industry.
I never bothered with remedial math even though that is what I initially placed into. I felt it was a waste of my money and I could teach myself on my own time. I retook the placement test later in the semester and placed into pre-calc. I continued to study math on my own and placed into calc I by the end of the second semester.
I was one of those people who really loved math, yet I was really bad at it. Incidentally, it was not until I took that calc I course that I realized that all those years of learning to graph, factoring, simplifying, etc. all lead up to the learning of calculus, and for the first time, it all made sense.
Just wondering what some of your thoughts are with remedial math for those who take it in college....well community college.
Do you think that people who take remedial math classes shouldn't go on to do something in an engineering field like mechanical engineering since it has a lot of math? Should they pursue something that is out of the "stem" area?
If you have been out of school for any length of time, you almost have to start with remedial classes and work your way up. Maybe people who have natural ability in math wouldn't have to, but I think most would.
But if you take remedial classes and struggle with every class, then yes I would rethink engineering. I know I could never go into engineering. I have a natural talent for English, grammar, literature, reading, writing, spelling, languages, history, psychology, philosphy, journalism, etc. I am fine with things like biology. When you start getting into math, physics and chemistry, count me out!
Remedial classes in college aren't new as a lot of people on these forums seem to believe nor are they limited to community colleges. Community college numbers have just grown exponetially over the last couple or three decades.
When I went to college in the early 70's there were already remedial classes in both Math and English at my fairly well regarded PA state college. They were called Student Development and the sections were labelled on the order of SD111 Algebra.
What has changed is the number of students needing these classes and I have the gut feeling that we're seeing the results of students who historically would not have been considered for college attendance now going.
Add to the fact that community colleges are now academically oriented rather than trade oriented, as they originally were.
Remedial math is awesome, look at me....a full 3 semester of remedial math and I'm an engineering manager, who loves math and excel at it...unfortunately when I got to college I wasn't prepared due to the poor state of public education in the inner city of Philadelphia. Encourage those who need remediation...it's like riding a bicycle, eventually you will get it.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nana053
This is going to depend on why they need remedial math and how well they do in learning the concepts they need.
Sometimes the students who are taking remedial math simply were badly taught at the high school level or were so math anxious that they could not learn. With good teaching, they might actually enjoy math and they might be able to go on to higher math with aplomb.
Now this is not true of every student and if a student has NO aptitude for math, they should not go into engineering or science.
Agree. A number of students in Washington DC who had very high GPAs in DC's public school system ended up taking remedial math their freshman year in colleges even valadictorians. The quality of education was that bad there.
Remedial math is awesome, look at me....a full 3 semester of remedial math and I'm an engineering manager, who loves math and excel at it...unfortunately when I got to college I wasn't prepared due to the poor state of public education in the inner city of Philadelphia. Encourage those who need remediation...it's like riding a bicycle, eventually you will get it.
I graduated with a degree in math twenty years ago, and I distinctly remember a prof saying that Americans, i.e., "native born Americans are pretty much mathematical illiterates."
I graduated with a degree in math twenty years ago, and I distinctly remember a prof saying that Americans, i.e., "native born Americans are pretty much mathematical illiterates."
When I studied Physics, I had to take Real Analysis. Our professor was from Poland, and he was in the US for his postdoc. The first week he did no lecture, just fooled around and told us stories about Easter Europe and the education in that part of the world. We finally begin the lectures and about four weeks in we have our midterm. A couple days before the test, he gives us both the questions and answers to the test, and how we should go ahead and do the problems. We couldn't believe it, but sure enough, test time, and there they were, the same questions which he gave us two days before. He explained the following week, when everyone got an A, except for me, I got an A-, that in his country, where he got his undergrad degree, they spent an entire year, not a scholastic year, but a calendar one, on that subject. It was the basis of all upper division math, and the universities made sure that if you were to study math, it was after you had a solid foundation in Analysis. No one could possibly teach the subject in any proper way in ten weeks, which was the length of the US academic term for our Analysis class and he told us that we were getting screwed. He had no desire to stay in the U.S., math was simply not taken seriously....
Just wondering what some of your thoughts are with remedial math for those who take it in college....well community college.
Do you think that people who take remedial math classes shouldn't go on to do something in an engineering field like mechanical engineering since it has a lot of math? Should they pursue something that is out of the "stem" area?
My personal opinion is that anybody who is intelligent enough to read through a William Faulkner novel is intelligent enough to be an engineer.
Yes, there are people who are better prepared for math and engineering through previous education and there are people who have an aptitude for it.
But, you are not coming up with revolutionary ideas to nuclear fusion here. You're trying to get an undergraduate degree in engineering.
You'll mostly need the MAIN concepts of Algebra, Trig, Physics, and Calculus for most engineering. Anybody who is intelligent could blow through those main concepts in a few months.
It's all learning and regurgitating. You have to remember. A lot of engineers don't use what they learned in their careers. I met an engineer recently who couldn't remember how to find the cosine and sine of a right triangle.
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And people like you are very valuable in the construction industry.
