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teacher here.
All are important and apply to stuff in later life, and I'd be all over it if one stood out. Chemistry maybe, but even that's a reach.
I couldn't agree more, and it's short sighted to declare various subjects "useless" just because you don't directly use them in later life.
What the most important thing about education in the various subjects is to teach you how to think, reason, express your ideas effectively, and to collaborate with others.
Maybe you don't use Geometry - but doing those proofs help you form a hypothesis, find supporting evidence, and confirm a conclusion.
A parallel of the geometry proof is the expository essay - form a thesis statement, find supporting points to the thesis, and come up with a conclusion.
Even extracurricular activities have benefits. What I learned from being in band was not just appreciating various musical styles, but also the value of preparation/practice, learning to collaborate with others (playing in tune and in tempo with others) and to represent a larger group.
If an "engineer" bristles at having to diagram a sentence, how will he ever be able to design a bridge?
And just as an FYI, I took Probability & Statistics as a high school junior, concurrent with Calculus I. The latter as a pre-req for the former does not compute.
It does when you get to higher levels and econometrics.
I'd also agree that Studio Art - actually creating art, working with paint and clay, is only useful to people who want to pursue art on higher lever. And for students who are interested in seeing what creative art is all about. I also think that they should NOT be graded on their work. It should be offered "pass fair".
Additionally, I agree that everyone should understand and have a rudimentary knowledge of art. So yes, Art History should be mandatory as part of a HS liberal arts, college prep curriculum.
Students find out if they are gifted in art in elementary school. In HS they should be free to opt out of Studio Art courses because they know that they don't enjoy it, and they will never use it.
Same goes for higher math. By HS, most students know that they love math or hate it. I have rarely seen any in between.
However, all HS students should understand what the forms of math are used for, how they impact our world, who discovered them and why they are of importance - because they are important.
But just as art is important, creating art is beyond the ability of most students. Taking art history is not.
There should be a Mathematical History course for students interested in learned about Math. But not actually solving Mathematical equations.
I would have enjoyed and benefitted greatly from such a course! Instated, I took the minimum math required in order to receive my states college prep HS diploma, and to satisfy the colleges minimum requirements.
I would have taken more if "Math History" was available, as Art History was, at the time.
Is art a required course in HS? It wasn't in my school, thank heaven! We didn't receive any actual instruction in art class in gradeschool. We were just told to draw this or that, without being instructed as to how. We didn't learn any techniques, didn't work with a variety of media to learn their different qualities (pastels, charcoal, watercolor), etc. Fortunately, art was no longer required in middle school. If that's what HS art classes are like, or if having art talent is assumed, I can't imagine how they could make it a requirement. Art ed in the US sucks, pardon my French. It's a joke, compared to the art curriculum in European schools, where kids learn a lot, progressing grade by grade through different skills.
The reason higher math, beyond basic algebra, is required is many schools is that it's required for university admission. That was the only reason my school began requiring a 2nd year of algebra (trig); the local state university began requiring it for general admission. If universities drop it as an admission requirement for students interested in humanities or arts, and retained it for students interested in STEM, that's the only way your proposal would be accepted by the schools, it seems. This overlooks the fact that not all HS students are college-bound, or 4-year-university-bound.
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A possible theory: maybe the books we were required to read in English class and the topics we were required to write about were especially uninteresting to the type of people who become engineers. Whether rightfully or wrongfully, engineering fields tend to be male dominated, and most English teachers are women, who (whether intentionally or not) tend to choose books that are of more interest to girls. Remember, as I said earlier, my parents said that my 7th grade English teacher was bragging at meet the teacher night about how much boys hate the books that she chooses to have us read.
I'd say part of it is engineers communicate well with other engineers. The problem in their writing is they assume they are writing for people who think like they do and forget most of the audience is clueless and that they have to back up ten steps on everything.
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Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
I often felt that many (not all) math teachers were more about teaching discipline, rather than math or even logical thinking. I've mentioned my 8th grade math teacher (who I despised) many times. In her class, we could spend a half hour solving a complex problem, but if you did not show every trivial step, including something as trivial as showing that 1+1=2, she would give you zero credit for it. Also, she would only give credit for things that were done exactly her way, which meant that I had to unlearn everything that I learned the previous year.
I'm actually glad your math teachers required every step; most don't. It may seem useless on the easy stuff, but teaches a critical thinking skill for the more complex problems where skipping a step can be disastrous.
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Originally Posted by JerseyGirl415
I agree but math isn't the only class that teaches that. Basically all core classes, including humanities, if taught right should teach and require logical thinking.
I'm curious how English and Lit can teach logical thinking so they are so much about rote and emotional response to the story.
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Originally Posted by 17thAndK
If an "engineer" bristles at having to diagram a sentence, how will he ever be able to design a bridge?
And just as an FYI, I took Probability & Statistics as a high school junior, concurrent with Calculus I. The latter as a pre-req for the former does not compute.
This gets to the root of the discussion in some topics. Probability & Stat without Calc isn't really Probability and Stat but cookbook application. Which is the problem in so much high school coursework -- it provides just enough information to be dangerous in a subject.
It baffles me how anyone can say History is useless.
The annoying thing is that both of these statements make sense to me.
My junior year in high school I had a history teacher ask on a test, "What general said 'NUTS' to the Germans when they asked him to surrender at the Battle of the Bulge?"
I saw that question on the test and thought, "Who would give a damn about remembering something like that?"
But was there any discussion of the Proximity Fuse and what effect that had on the war. NOOOO!
History is usually turned into propaganda to promote some nationalistic or cultural perspectives. Especially in grade school and high school. It was not even required at my engineering college.
I have found history in SF stories like 1632, 1636: The Kremlin Games and The Proteus Operation very interesting.
The annoying thing is that both of these statements make sense to me.
My junior year in high school I had a history teacher ask on a test, "What general said 'NUTS' to the Germans when they asked him to surrender at the Battle of the Bulge?"
I saw that question on the test and thought, "Who would give a damn about remembering something like that?"
But was there any discussion of the Proximity Fuse and what effect that had on the war. NOOOO!
History is usually turned into propaganda to promote some nationalistic or cultural perspectives. Especially in grade school and high school. It was not even required at my engineering college.
I have found history in SF stories like 1632, 1636: The Kremlin Games and The Proteus Operation very interesting.
I was one of the people who posted that my history class was useless, but that history has the potential to be a very useful subject. We had such a huge volume of material to plow through every week, that everyone was struggling to keep up. To be able to sit back and digest all that, notice trends, analyze and discuss themes, wasn't possible much, due to the overwhelming amount of reading required.
I don't think we had to memorize petty stuff; it was more about important dates, and understanding the reasons behind events, election politics, how the divide between North and South played out throughout history, etc. But I recall very little from the class, because I was so consumed with just getting the readings done. My brother saw the book we used, and commented that the author was radical, so he was surprised we were using that book. I wouldn't have any idea; there was so much detail to cover, none of us noticed if there was a particular political leaning to the whole thing. It didn't come across that way.
I think that if the same material had been spread out over a year, instead of a semester, we would have had a chance to really learn something, and retain it. History is supposed to help guide you in the future, right? So you can benefit from past experience and mistakes, and know what works and what doesn't, to be a more informed citizen. If it's not taught effectively, that will fly over the heads of the students.
It does when you get to higher levels and econometrics.
The point was over Calculus as a pre-req for Probability and Statistics, most of which can be done simply by defining "favorable over total." Urns with multi-colored marbles in them are not the stuff that Stata or MatLab will help you with.
This gets to the root of the discussion in some topics. Probability & Stat without Calc isn't really Probability and Stat but cookbook application. Which is the problem in so much high school coursework -- it provides just enough information to be dangerous in a subject.
If there are five red marbles and three black marbles in an urn, what are the odds of pulling out two black marbles in a row. I don't care if you do it with or without replacement, there is no Calculus needed to answer the question.
Is art a required course in HS? It wasn't in my school, thank heaven! We didn't receive any actual instruction in art class in gradeschool. We were just told to draw this or that, without being instructed as to how. We didn't learn any techniques, didn't work with a variety of media to learn their different qualities (pastels, charcoal, watercolor), etc. Fortunately, art was no longer required in middle school. If that's what HS art classes are like, or if having art talent is assumed, I can't imagine how they could make it a requirement. Art ed in the US sucks, pardon my French. It's a joke, compared to the art curriculum in European schools, where kids learn a lot, progressing grade by grade through different skills.
The reason higher math, beyond basic algebra, is required is many schools is that it's required for university admission. That was the only reason my school began requiring a 2nd year of algebra (trig); the local state university began requiring it for general admission. If universities drop it as an admission requirement for students interested in humanities or arts, and retained it for students interested in STEM, that's the only way your proposal would be accepted by the schools, it seems. This overlooks the fact that not all HS students are college-bound, or 4-year-university-bound.
1. Art was required in NY State when I went to school. I love art. In fact, my son recently graduated from a prestigious college with a degree in art. He is currently working as a curator, and he intends to obtain his masters degree in fine art. I am I fact, tired of being told that "Art is useless".
However, in HS, there are students who might want to try a studio art class, but are afraid to do so, because students are graded on innate talent, and they do not want to ruin their GPA.
I think Art, Acting, Dance etc. should be offered on a pass/fail basis.
I am an advocate of the arts.
Not ALL colleges require higher math. That simply is untrue, State schools do.
I'd say part of it is engineers communicate well with other engineers. The problem in their writing is they assume they are writing for people who think like they do and forget most of the audience is clueless and that they have to back up ten steps on everything.
Good point. Perhaps that needs to be taught more in school.
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I'm actually glad your math teachers required every step; most don't. It may seem useless on the easy stuff, but teaches a critical thinking skill for the more complex problems where skipping a step can be disastrous.
Trust me, based on your posts, you would not have liked this teacher at all. While you have a valid point, there is no point in showing trivial steps, such as 1+1=2, which should be trivial long before 8th grade. And, this teacher absolutely did not want to teach us critical thinking. She was all about rote memorization, and discipline. She hated high achieving students, she used grades for disciplinary purposes, and she very blatantly favored girls (she had 2 teenage sons, but wanted a daughter). She was the ultimate teacher who felt it was her job, as you say, to generate compliant students to work at the mill (to use your phrase), and not to teach critical thinking.
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I'm curious how English and Lit can teach logical thinking so they are so much about rote and emotional response to the story.
They should be about teaching logical thinking, but in practice, all they teach is rote and emotional response.
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This gets to the root of the discussion in some topics. Probability & Stat without Calc isn't really Probability and Stat but cookbook application. Which is the problem in so much high school coursework -- it provides just enough information to be dangerous in a subject.
Calculus based probability and statistics would be a college class, not a high school class, since calculus is not taught until late high school at the very earliest. On the other hand, if we didn't waste 2nd-6th grade math by just re-learning the same garbage we learned in kindergarten and 1st grade (I literally learned nothing new in math until 7th grade, when honors classes began), I do wonder if it would be possible to teach calculus early on. Or are our brains not yet developed enough for calculus until late high school, regardless of math knowledge? Given that I learned nothing new in math from 2nd to 6th grade, could I have learned what I learned in 7th grade in 2nd grade? And learned calculus in 6th and 7th grade? Honestly, I doubt most people brains are developed enough for it by then. Kind of like how another poster said that we learn home ec and shop in 6th-8th grade since that is when they are appropriate for our brain, even if they are not yet useful at those ages.
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