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This got me thinking about a good friend of mine. She has two Bachelor's degrees (Fine Arts and English) and is a High School teacher with 15 years' experience, much of that time spent teaching G&T classes (G&T English, Lit, etc) as well as fine art.
She never passed college algebra.
She took something along the lines of "Liberal Arts Math", or Introductory Math Concepts, when pursuing her first Bachelor's. Her core then transferred at her next school for her 2nd Bachelor's. None of her teacher certification stuff required any further math. She is an amazing teacher, often nominated for Teacher of the Year type awards, but she admitted to me that she'd considered a degree in Sociology instead of English but didn't pursue it because of the required statistics course for that degree (vs. English).
I imagine she'd be surprised to hear that some people believe she doesn't deserve either of her BAs.
I have never gotten a sense on any of these college threads, that anyone thinks someone doesn't deserve to get a BA if they met all their college's requirements. As I said, my college did not require math for nursing students, although I did take college algebra, and yes, got credit for it. I have never taken a physics course, either. There are a lot of things many of us have never studied.
My alma mater, a fairly rigorous private liberal arts school, did not require math in order to satisfy gen ed requirements. Students had the option of choosing from math, computer science, lab sciences, and engineering courses to complete what was essentially a STEM gen ed requirement. I took a bunch of science classes for my gen eds, rather than math or engineering or computer classes. I didn't take any college level math coursework, because it wasn't especially applicable to my course of study.
Yes, you are giving away your age, and you are somewhat younger than I am, because just when I was graduating from my year-long course in secretarial school at the end of 1978, they were introducing a new course in something called "Word Processing" at the school. (I am 54 years old, by the way.)
I was not that great at being a secretary--not meaning technically, because I was wonderful at typing and spelling, and I worked for engineers, most of whom were not great writers, so I had to fix their correspondence and reports for them and they loved that. I just took on work above the secretarial level when others were on vacation or out for some reason, and within five years or so I had been promoted out of the clerical ranks into what they called "junior management". If you didn't have a degree, there was a way to get around it--you took an exam before a panel of senior managers, and in order to be eligible to do that, you had to pass a certain score in the Math, History, and English CLEP exams. I passed the Math CLEP with flying colors--it was multiple choice, so I could pick what looked like the best answer without having to show how I got there, which I could not possibly have done.
Re the "remedial" reference--yes, that is exactly what discouraged me from finishing college at night. When I started taking night classes at the college, they gave me entrance exams in math and English. English was a piece of cake, of course, but the math-well, they gave me all this scrap paper to work out problems on, and when I was done, I hadn't used any because I hadn't the foggiest idea what I was supposed to do. The math problems made no sense to me whatsoever. I didn't know where to begin on how to solve them--algebra had been in 9th grade, and I was now in my early 20s and it hadn't magically found its way into my head since that time. Therefore, they decreed that I must take a non-credit remedial course, costing $350 or so, before I could even take the basic college math course. I failed the remedial course. I went to every class. I stayed afterwards to ask for more explanation. Nothing worked. It just made no sense to me whatsoever OR I would think it did, and then when I got home and went to do homework, it was like trying to read ancient hieroglyphics again. It just did not stick.
Honestly, I began this thread when I learned of your plight. I have been doing research into this subject because I am greatly disturbed by a growing contingent of people who think that the only subjects that matter are the STEM fields, and that any other field of endeavor is essentially worthless, and that being weak in: or having a disability in math is tantamount to mental retardation, and that no one has a right to a college degree who does not have a proficiency in Mathematics.
This is wrong on so many levels!
Earlier today, I was questioned as to weather dycalculia is actually a real disorder. It is. In fact under The Americans With Disabilities Act, no institution of Higher learning can discriminate against any one with a documented case of dysalculia.
Colleges and Universities ROUTINELY GIVE DEFERMENTS TO STUDENTS with DYSCALCULIA! And yet, most people simply drop out, never completing their degree, while feeling a sense of utter failure.
Colleges that still do not require mathematics for graduation include -
Harvard
Bard
Brown
Evergreen State University
Hirum College
Hampshire College
Goddard College ( also offers an online degree completion program)
And many others. I am currently compiling a list of colleges that either do not require math, or will offer a substitution for Math.
Furthermore, as a graduate student and teaching assistant in Sociology at an extremely science oriented research university, I was charged with grading tests and papers. Many engineering students at this highly competitive university could barely write a sentence in English.
One rudely complained that his academic adviser had told him "that there would be no papers in the class," Another complained when a test included essay questions, and demanded a "multiple choice alternative"!
My alma mater, a fairly rigorous private liberal arts school, did not require math in order to satisfy gen ed requirements. Students had the option of choosing from math, computer science, lab sciences, and engineering courses to complete what was essentially a STEM gen ed requirement. I took a bunch of science classes for my gen eds, rather than math or engineering or computer classes. I didn't take any college level math coursework, because it wasn't especially applicable to my course of study.
And hey, I might not be able to do algebra or have a college degree, but I didn't need the small-print hint as to what your name means!
Honestly, I began this thread when I learned of your plight. I have been doing research into this subject because I am greatly disturbed by a growing contingent of people who think that the only subjects that matter are the STEM fields, and that any other field of endeavor is essentially worthless, and that being weak or having a disability in math is tantamount to mental retardation, and that no one has a right to a college degree who does not have a proficiency foe Mathematics.
This is wrong on so many levels!
Earlier today, I was questioned as to weather dycalculia is actually a real disorder. It is. In fact under The Americans With Disabilities Act, no institution of Higher learning can discriminate against any one with a documented case of dysalculia.
Colleges and Universities ROUTINELY GIVE DEFERMENTS TO STUDENTS with DYSCALCULIA! And yet, most people simply drop out, never completing their degree, while feeling a sense of utter failure.
Colleges that still do not require mathematics for graduation include -
Harvard
Bard
Brown
Evergreen State University
Hirum College
Hampshire College
Goddard College ( also offers an online degree completion program)
And many others. I am currently compiling a list of colleges that either do not require math, or will offer a substitution for Math.
Well, it's an interesting project you've taken on. Just to be clear, I did not have my heart set on college when I was a teenager--as a matter of fact, it was not something that was encouraged in our house growing up or even discussed. You were expected to learn a trade or support yourself somehow after graduation. (I remember kids talking about taking SATs and feeling stupid because I didn't know what that meant.) I did not have the type of parents who were involved in their kids schoolwork except maybe to check out the report cards at the end of a marking period. They were not bad people, just emotionally unprepared for raising seven kids. My father was an engineer, but had gone to college after becoming 100 percent disabled in the war, and he was not always "present"--now I know it was untreated PTSD. My mother was raised in extreme poverty and was forced by her father to drop out of school in tenth grade and help with the household. Their lives centered around their church, and church activities were considered priority. For example, if you were in a school play on the same night as prayer meeting, you'd better find a way to get to the school, because you didn't have a ride and no parent was going to be in the audience. It's just the way it was.
I tried going to night school later in my twenties, after starting my job and finding that they had tuition assistance. Other people did this night-school thing, and I thought I could do it, too. Then the math thing got in the way, I met the wrong person and married him and had my daughter and divorced my husband, and just worked all my life to get her to adulthood.
As much of an idiot as my ex is, he and I both agreed that we wanted our daughter to go to college because neither of us did, and bizarrely, though he did backflips for years to avoid paying child support as much as possible, he was willing to co-sign loans for her to go to college. She'll graduate in May, and I am happy that she will have better opportunities than I did to avoid life's boobytraps. And despite inheriting my lack of mathematical ability, she worked very hard to get past it and then was done with it.
I do hope others who are younger than I and who aspire to get that degree are able to do so without being tripped up by one subject in which they are not proficient.
Furthermore, as a graduate student and teaching assistant in Sociology at an extremely science oriented research university, I was charged with grading tests and papers. Many engineering students at this highly competitive university could barely write a sentence in English.
One rudely complained that his academic adviser had told him "that there would be no papers in the class," Another complained when a test included essay questions, and demanded a "multiple choice alternative"!
You know, if those students were telling the truth, there would have been no reason to hire you, and no reason for them to be taking sociology. They were just bs-ing, probably because the course was hard for them.
I have never gotten a sense on any of these college threads, that anyone thinks someone doesn't deserve to get a BA if they met all their college's requirements. As I said, my college did not require math for nursing students, although I did take college algebra, and yes, got credit for it. I have never taken a physics course, either. There are a lot of things many of us have never studied.
Momma_Bear specifically said that if someone can't pass a basic algebra class, they don't deserve a BA. Sally was responding to that with an example of someone who DID pass all their college requirements but did not pass algebra.
OK, got it! OTOH, the person in that example DID take a math course, which her 2nd college accepted, so it must have been considered an "algebra equivalent".
OK, got it! OTOH, the person in that example DID take a math course, which her 2nd college accepted, so it must have been considered an "algebra equivalent".
Well, her first college had a basic requirement that allowed her to choose from various courses from math & computer science, and like I said, she took what is basically a "Liberal Arts Math". My issue was with Momma Bear saying that someone who didn't pass college algebra didn't deserve a BA, because lib arts math is not the same as college algebra. If it was, I would have no problem taking either, but for me, college algebra is pretty much impossible to grasp, Lib Arts math is manageable (somewhat) enough to pass with a C at least.
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