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It is truly a disability recognized under the American's With Disabilities Act.
I started this thread in order to educate people about this disorder, duscalculia.org
So far I have informed one poster of her rights under this Act, and she is on her way to her college degree.
What rights are those?
IDEA does not apply in college. Neither do IEPS. As a matter of fact the only part of ADA that applies is:
"No otherwise qualified individual with a disability shall, solely by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity."
In other words, a disability cannot be grounds for excluding a person from a college, an academic program, a class, a residence hall, or a college activity, if the person is qualified.
The person with the math issues has not shown that they are being discriminated against based in anyway. In fact, they are being held to the exact same standard as anyone, sort of the opposite of discrimination.
Even your own source does not remotely recommend exempting anyone from their math requirements for their degree but rather leveling the playing field using various assistive technologies, taking the class as PASS/FAIL, etc
First of all, my nursing curriculum at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1970s required NO math courses. I did take a math class, college algebra, b/c it was what I could fit in to my schedule. It was easier than any math class I had in high school. There was a good bit of math integrated into the curriculum, e.g. with chemistry and pharmacology. These days, I believe most nursing programs require statistics, at least.
I applied for one job with a local health department that required a transcript. This in 40+ years of nursing. Mostly, I get asked to show my license.
Well, the patient might appreciate it if the nurse can calculate the dose correctly, though I agree that it's a different skill, not necessarily lower level.
My experience in Nursing was the same and this was in the 1980s. As a student at a 3 year hospital school of nursing (now closed as are many 3 yr. programs) which I perused after three years of college was a required course in Pharmacology, which consisted of some algebraic type equations, however there was no actual Math course. There was some Math in Anatomy and Physiology and Microbiology.
Later, I returned to complete mt bachelors degree, although not in Nursing.
Now almost thirty years after completing my RN, my daughter is considering majoring in Nursing (BSN with a view to becoming a nurse practitioner) and the colleges that she is looking at vary. Some require Stat and others do not.
At know time while practicing as a nurse did I need to show a transcript. Only my license and current registration.
^^You'll note it was a health dept. that asked for the transcript. Govt. agencies, even small ones like a local health dept, can be very bureaucratic. Or perhaps they had some issues with nurses lying about their education, as there are so many levels of entry into practice for nursing, and the job required a BSN.
One time, my husband was interviewing someone who he said just didn't talk like an engineer (poor grammar, etc.) He asked for a transcript and the guy admitted he did not have a degree.
I wasn't clear in what I stated. I know the algebra class exists, but even at the local community college it is a remedial class and does not give credit as a requirement towards any degree programs I am familiar with but only exists a pre-req towards other necessary classes.
All the kids have to take core curriculum classes, two in natural sciences, but I did not find any degrees requiring specifically college algebra. It was there as a non-credit pre-req (or a qualifying score on the placement exam) for MANY classes like in the natural sciences section.
I tried to find their gen ed requirements and couldn't find them. Maybe you will have better luck. Do you know, does that school have school wide gen ed req's? Maybe it is regional thing.
Also, I tried to look up some very non-technical degrees to see their requirements and a bunch of the pages are down, like Asian studies, Chinese, and Dance. Weird.
My experience in Nursing was the same and this was in the 1980s. As a student at a 3 year hospital school of nursing (now closed as are many 3 yr. programs) which I perused after three years of college was a required course in Pharmacology, which consisted of some algebraic type equations, however there was no actual Math course. There was some Math in Anatomy and Physiology and Microbiology.
Later, I returned to complete mt bachelors degree, although not in Nursing.
Now almost thirty years after completing my RN, my daughter is considering majoring in Nursing (BSN with a view to becoming a nurse practitioner) and the colleges that she is looking at vary. Some require Stat and others do not.
At know time while practicing as a nurse did I need to show a transcript. Only my license and current registration.
Just FYI. Statistics, is really statistical SCIENCES, and while the stats department in many schools is housed with the mathematics department. But then so frequently is the computer science department, and it is clearly a science.
If this whole thread is about avoiding stats, than really it is about avoiding a particular science that has lots of applied math (very little of it above basic btw) rather than avoiding math.
lkb: Yes, it's CU-Boulder. I didn't go there, so I can't answer for sure. If I talk to my daughter who went there soon, I'll ask her.
I tried looking up St. Olaf College, where one of my daughters went and which I know has a lot of gen ed requirements, but the info I was looking for was not obviously apparent on the web.
ETA: You gave me another term to look up, "general ed requirements". Here they are for CU:
lkb: Yes, it's CU-Boulder. I didn't go there, so I can't answer for sure. If I talk to my daughter who went there soon, I'll ask her.
I tried looking up St. Olaf College, where one of my daughters went and which I know has a lot of gen ed requirements, but the info I was looking for was not obviously apparent on the web.
ETA: You gave me another term to look up, "general ed requirements".
I find this thread slightly ironic as the only specific course required of EVERY RU grad (I adjunct there so I can only speak to their programs) is Expository Writing. Many of the science kids struggle but they are not trying to get out of it.
It looks like the course I linked to earlier, math 1011 (College Algebra) would qualify
I saw math 1012, but not 1011. Oh well, interesting to know there are regional differences. The gen eds at Rutgers, at least at the schools I am familiar with but include degrees in Nursing, would not take it to meet the math req to graduate.
Any 3-credit math module: MATH 1011-3, MATH 1071-3, or MATH 1081-3.
Re: private, religious schools-I have no idea. My daughter only went to the one. She and her friends said there are ways around that requirement, if you strenuously object.
From the course catalog:
St. Olaf College | About St. Olaf All St. Olaf students take courses that orient them in a general way to the study of religion and acquaint them with the principal elements of the Christian tradition. The religion department also makes available a range of courses about Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in order to prepare students to live in our religiously diverse world.
If you have a problem with that, then I guess St. Olaf is not for you.
Any 3-credit math module: MATH 1011-3, MATH 1071-3, or MATH 1081-3.
Re: private, religious schools-I have no idea. My daughter only went to the one. She and her friends said there are ways around that requirement, if you strenuously object.
From the course catalog:
St. Olaf College | About St. Olaf All St. Olaf students take courses that orient them in a general way to the study of religion and acquaint them with the principal elements of the Christian tradition. The religion department also makes available a range of courses about Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in order to prepare students to live in our religiously diverse world.
If you have a problem with that, then I guess St. Olaf is not for you.
Agree. We were never interested in religious colleges so I had never heard of those things. I am sure they make their requirements abundantly clear.
I suspect this is true for any of the nursing programs the OPs child wants to attend as well.
I am still researching colleges that do not requier math in order to graduate. It's hard work but it needs to be done.
I'd hate to think that there are ANY people who are intellectually inclined and academically motivated who are or will be unable to graduate from college due to a Math deficiency. I am talking about GOOD STUDENTS here. Kids who grew up reading, asking questions, going to museums and enjoying everything from art and poetry to archeology and histort and perhaps a bit of politics as I did. Kids who did the NY Times cross word puzzles and played Trivial Pursuit with their parents. It IS possible to be an academically gifted and intellectual person worthy of obtaining a college degree without studying MATH.
They do it at the colleges that I listed. And it was common place in the 70s and 80s. There must be other schools that you know of.
Lets help these folks out! Everyone needs at leasy a BA today.
I think I am probably one of the people you referred to in your OP, sheena, because I wrote on here about not finishing college because I am unable to grasp basic algebra. Failed the remedial classes and simply did not have the money to take them again, especially since I had my doubts that yet another math class would somehow magically make me able to understand it.
I CAN do ARITHMETIC. I can add numbers in my head, do percentages, fractions, whatever. That is not the math that's the problem. It is algebra and above that simply makes no sense to me. OR, if I sit in a class or go for extra help to have someone painstakingly explain it, I think for a moment that I got it, but within an hour, it's gone. It's just gone.
I have always been an avid reader. I have had writing published and have been paid for it (but can't quit the day job to write full-time, lol.) I was a trivia whiz before the Trivial Pursuit came out and then kicked myself for not putting what we did for fun into a game form.
My daughter also struggled with math, but she had a great teacher in high school and was not only able to get through it, but she got mostly As in her math classes. She had great difficulty with math in college, but managed to get through the minimum she needed and move past it. She speaks and writes both Mandarin and Spanish nearly fluently, and has some grasp of Russian and Dari, as well. She will graduate shortly with a dual degree in Mandarin and Linguistics.
For some of us, that math ability is simply not wired into our brains. I have a decent job that pays just over six figures. I worked my way into management after starting as a secretary, an option (and a profession) that barely exists anywhere anymore. But as you point out, people need that Bachelor's nowadays just to get their foot in the door.
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