Seeking straight A's, parents push for pills

Rosalie B. wrote:
wrote:


But surely 11 years of math should be sufficient for her to determine
if mathematics is her 'thing.' Why assume that one additional year
will make a difference? (And if one year might, why not demand two or
three additional years? Why not insist that all seniors take TWO math
classes?) I'm not suggesting that she should take no math beyond the
basic computational variety. But so far as I know, Calclulus offers
nothing practical for day to day life for ANYONE. Ditto physics. I
never took physics (beyond the basics taught at the junior high level)
and seem to get by ok. And if she should decide, at some point, she
wants to be a scientist, she can catch up. IU offers a basic physics
class that does not have, as its prerequisite, high school physics.

I don't know of too many people who don't change their career plans at
least a little bit from the time of middle or high school. And the
computational math that someone does in school is NOT the same as
mathematics in college. So, no, I don't think she can determine yet
if mathematics is 'her thing'. I don't even think that calculus is
anything but a stepping stone to 'real' math.

So again, how much math does she need to take to reach this point? If
intermediate algebra isn't enough, and calculus isn't enough, what is?
How much math should colleges require for students in liberal arts
fields? (Again, I took 4 years of math in high school. I did very well
through trig, and for the first semester of my senior year, when I took
advanced algebra. But, perhaps because calculus and its cousins IS such
a different type of math, I was completely lost when it came to
analytic geometry. I floundered through the year and ended up with the
only D on my high school report card. In college, I probably should
have taken it again, but decided to push on to calculus (I was, at the
time, a biology major and needed a year of calc). I remained lost that
year too, and ended up with yet another D. (At which point, for
several reasons including that one, I changed my major.))


Somewhere, I don't remember where, I participated in a discussion
about who would ever use calculus or algebra in the real world. Or
would have to find the area of a circle. I happen to have been
(before retirement) in a job, which really did not exist when I went
to college and which did require those things. I was a zoology major
in college and I intended originally to get my MAT and then teach
biology in HS.

Of course many JOBS require higher math, and even certain areas of
general math. (As I noted in an earlier post, my husband is far more
able to help Shaina with geometry questions because, as a sheet metal
worker, he uses geometry on a daily basis to design and create ductwork
and the like.) And I'm sure that if I ended up in a job where I needed
to know that, I could quickly enough relearn how to find the area of a
circle. (I'm sure it involves Pi in some way.) But for 99% of us, our
daily life does not require trig or calculus or even geometry more
advanced than determining how many gallons of paint or how many square
feet of carpeting are required to redecorate a room. (And if the person
DOESN'T know how to do that, I'm sure the store clerk would be happy to
assist.

An amusing aside though ... the other day I was at the butcher. For
whatever reason, the store has a fairly basic cash register, the kind
that adds up your purchase but DOESN'T calculate the change. The bill
was 5.56, so I gave the clerk 6.06, figuing that I'd rather have a
couple of quarters in my wallet than an assortment of dimes and
pennies. He just looks at it and says, "It's 5.56, ma'am." I said I
knew that. And he just stood there, unable to figure out why I'd given
him that much money. I finally had to explain that I was looking for 50
cents in change. And this wasn't some young kid either; he was probably
60ish.



But in addition to being a wife and mother, I did a lot of other
things during my working life. I did medical proofreading and
indexing (for an atlas of anatomy). I coached age group swim teams.
I studied art and painted portraits. I did needlework, including
designing my own needlepoint canvases. I worked as a temp in
offices. I wrote newspaper and magazine articles. I did abstracting
of scientific papers. I was a District Commissioner for a Pony Club.
I did some computer programming and worked a little bit with
databases. [I love computer programming BTW.]

Busy, busy....


I took a two day test in order to get certified - beforehand I studied
very hard for several years (outside of working hours). I passed the
test on my first try - even though I have never had physics or
calculus. But I think that if I HAD studied those courses, I would
have had less trouble with it. Because given my lack of background I
just had to memorize everything without really understanding it.
Fortunately I have a pretty good memory.


But, even if you HAD taken those classes, if you'd taken them several
decades ago, you probably wouldn't have remembered much. I took high
school and college biology and chemistry, and remember very little. I
have only the vaguest idea any more of what trigonometry is, except
that it involves things called sine and co-sine and tangent. What we
don't use disppears from our memories VERY quickly. I remember a bit
more biology than chem, but that's just becuase it's more interesting
to me so it stuck better in my memory. But, new math aside, my ability
to help Shaina with her math homework is fairly limited. (Though I did
find myself needing to use algebra yesterday ... and ended up resorting
to a calculator. I wanted to figure out what base pay I would need if
I was going to work 5 hours of overtime (at time and a half.) and 10
hours at base pay, and end up with an overall pay rate of $11/hr. I
ended up feeding numbers that sounded about right into the calculator
until I came up with the answer. [Which did match the number my
supervisor came up with -- $9.50/hr.]

Naomi

wrote:
We have too many trying to do this; they do a poor job,
are passed because it would be politically impossible
to fail even half of those who should never have even
graduated high school. Again, see IP's remarks about
the functionally illiterate college graduates

Some do a poor job, some do not. I've had good and bad teachers at
every level of education. I have to wonder how anyone who is truly
'functionally illiterate' however (as opposed to lacking some specific
areas of education that YOU believe they should have) could graduate
college, given the intensive reading required to get through even a
single class.

That one is easy - by defining functional illiteracy in terms of
skills not actually relevant to the reading that a college student
does, and setting the standard far higher than anyone actually needs
to achieve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy
In 2003, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), conducted
by the US Department of Education, found that fourteen percent of
American adults scored at this “below basic” level in prose literacy.
More than half of these persons did not have a high-school diploma or
GED. Thirty-nine percent of persons at this level were Hispanic; 20
percent were black; and 37 percent were white. According to the
National Center for Education Statistics, "results showed that the
average quantitative literacy scores of adults increased 8 points
between 1992 and 2003, though average prose and document literacy did
not differ significantly from 1992. Among blacks, average prose
literacy scores increased by 6 points and average documentu literacy
scores rose by eight points between 1992 and 2003. The average prose
scores of Asians/Pacific Islanders increased as well, rising 16
points between 1992 and 2003. The average prose literacy scores of
Hispanics fell 18 points from 1992 to 2003, while average document
literacy scores decreased by 14 points. Average prose and document
literacy scores among whites did not change significantly." Literacy
among college graduates declined between 1992 and 2003, with less
than one-third of all graduates at the highest “proficient” level in
2003, and less than half of all graduates with advanced degrees at
this level.

So 14% of Americans are "below basic", half of them without either a
high school diploma or GED. But less than 1/3 of college graduates are
functionally literate, because the standard of adequacy for them is
"highest proficient" level and not "below basic" level. In other
words, we have a situation that more or less condemns half the
population for being below average because we define the standard that
we hold them to based on our expectations for the average person of
that particular education level.

I took one of the reports from the 2003 assessment, specifically on
"health literacy" which means that the literacy questions tended to
relate to the field of public health.

Those who did not complete high school:
49% below basic, 27% basic, 23% intermediate, 1% proficient
Those with "some college"
5% below basic, 20% basic, 67% intermediate, 8% proficient
Those who were college graduates
3% below basic, 10% basic, 60% intermediate, 27% proficient
Those with advanced degrees
3% below basic, 8% basic, 57% intermediate, 33% proficient

From the web site for the testing program, we also find that the test
includes "quantitative literacy". Thus we have the following question
from the 1992 test

You need to borrow $10,000. Find the ad for Home Equity Loans in the
newspaper provided. Explain to the interviewer how you would compute
the total amount of interest charges you would pay under this loan
plan. Please tell the interviewer when you are ready to begin.

And that ad had the text:
FIXED RATE * FIXED TERM

HOME
EQUITY
LOANS 14.25%
Annual Percentage Rate
Ten Year Term

SAMPLE MONTHLY REPAYMENT SCHEDULE

Amount Financed Monthly Payment
$10,000 $156.77
$25,000 $391.93
$40,000 $627.09

120 Months 14.25% APR

Only 22% of those tested got the question correct, but I rather doubt
that those who missed it did so because they couldn't read, or even
because they couldn't calculate. As Herman might put it, they missed
it because they could not "formulate the problem".

(Myself, since I have paid off every loan I've ever taken earlier than
the end of the loan term, would have to say that the answer to the
question is indeterminate)

You need to buy peanut butter and are deciding between two brands.

Estimate the cost per ounce of the creamy peanut butter. Write your
estimate on the line provided __________________________________________________ __

And the two labels given are (this is the text equivalent of two
graphic images with bar codes, looking like grocery store labels):
A.
Unit price
11.8 ¢ per oz.
You pay
1.89
rich chnky pnt bt
10693 16 oz.

B.
Unit price
1.59 per lb.
You pay
1.99
creamy pnt butter
10732 20 oz.

40% got this one right. It requires knowing information not present in
the problem, specifically that there are 16 ounces in a pound (and
knowing how to use that information in solving the problem). Again,
this is NOT testing the ability to read, or even to calculate.

Here was a document literacy question:
James Davidson phones and asks to speak with Ann Jones, who is at a
meeting. He needs to know if the contracts he sent are satisfactory
and requests that she call before 2:00 p.m. His number is 259-3860.
Fill in the message slip below.
The form given was a standard office products telephone message form
with check boxes, and blanks to be filled in, some of which were not
provided in the problem and which therefore need to be left blank (we
aren't told which firm James Davidson represents, but the form has a
place to fill that in; it also has places for the date and time of the
call, which were not given), and a large space for the actual message.

It happens that this question was also scored by specific subtasks.
Thus we know that 86% filled in the name of the caller correctly, 85%
filled in the telephone number correctly, 77% filled in the message
recipient correctly, 74% checked the "please call" box, 61% wrote the
name of the message taker, and 53% correctly wrote the message.

In the prose literacy questions, we have the non prosaic:
What is the poet trying to express in this poem?

The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the Bee—
A clover, any time, to him
Is Aristocracy—
(Emily Dickinson)

33% got that one correct.

For a less interpretive question, for a moderately lengthy description
of SSI benefits, it asks the examinee to underline the sentence that
defines how the SSA defines the term "blind". 83% got that one
correct.

I can easily envision a college graduate who can understand one of
Herman's arcane mathematical papers with no difficulty, but who has no
appreciation of poetry, missing the Dickenson question and therefore
perhaps being considered less than "proficient" in functional
literacy. And while most of the items on the test are the sorts of
things we might want and educated student to know how to do, very few
of them are actually taught in the form that the questions actually
presented - real life situations with lots of extraneous information
that can be misused, and open-ended answers (these were NOT multiple
choice questions).

lojbab

In article .com,
wrote:

Herman Rubin wrote:
In article om,
wrote:

. Also, there are lots of college students who have
not taken that program. Purdue requires one
Carnegie unit in algebra and one in geometry, and
has correspondingly low requirements in other areas.
One can list courses, but not content.

Well ... I could toss in the random comment about Purdue vs. IU ... but
I won't.

I doubt that IU has a higher requirement there. Other
than giving an examination, one cannot get much of an
idea what someone has learned.

IU requires 4 years of English, 3 years of math (Intro and Intermediate
Algebra, plus Geometry), one year of laboratory science and two years
of history. It also requires, for in-state students, a Core40 diploma
which, in itself requires some additional coursework (an additional
year of history and science, foreign language, etc).

I still do not see the need for so many years of English,
which is largely literature, usually chosen to be
politically correct propaganda. As for the math
requirement, unless the honors courses are taken, it
is just so much more playing with numbers.


So ... maybe it's buried somewhere in the 250+ posts, but what DO you
think students should be learning in high school. I learned sufficient
Spanish in 3 years of high school to be able to communicate on a
competent, if basic level. I learned enough in high school biology and
chemistry to gain a fair understanding of how the scientific world
works. (And to take, and get a 5 on, the AP bio exam. Chemistry was
never as strong a subject for me.)

I had 2.5 years of high school Spanish, one year of
college French, and one year of college German. At
the end of those, I could certainly communicate in
Spanish and French, but not that well in German; the
course was not logical enough.

Germanic languages are also very different from Romance languages. The
grammar is more difficult and there's more OF it. I took Spanish in
high school, but didn't learn a ton of grammar in it, because the
grammar of Spanish isn't very complex. I am currently studying a
slavic language, and there's a LOT of grammar in the class, because the
language itself has very complex grammar and you can't possibly frame a
setence without understanding it. So the first year was mostly a
reading course, teaching us a lot of vocabulary and getting us to
understand, on an intellectual level, how to
decline/conjugate/structure a sentence. Now, in the second year, the
focus is on actually using what we learned -- being able to
communicate.

A reading course SHOULD be first. How are we communicating
here?

Just yesterday, on another newsgroup, there were some
postings in French. Some of them had some problems
with conversion, but could be fairly well read, and
the others were as usually printed, which I read well.
My one-year French course was in 1941-42, and I have
read little French except mathematical since then.
But I found this quite easy, and there was no use
of mathematics in it.

I never took any of the regular science courses in
high school; I never had any intention of taking
biology. I deliberately tested out of physics, and
my chemistry teacher kicked me out of class for
asking questions which were too difficult. I did
pass the exam on that course. I do not know what
I would have gotten on AP exams if they had them,
but I doubt that I would have had any problems.

Well, you studied those things on your own. You didn't just intuitively
KNOW physics. And yes, of course most bright students can, if they
choose, read up on any topic on their own and learn quite a lot. (When
I decided to take classes again I first considered taking a history
class, since that's my main area of interest. But then I realized that
I can always (and do, often) read about any area of history I want, and
learn it on my own without paying tuition. But I've always liked
languges, but have had little success learning them on my own. So I
figured that a language course would make the most sense.

If I had received decent guidance, I would have advanced
several years faster. When I was in elementary school,
most of my library reading was history, geography, and
biography. The mathematics and science sections were
extremely weak, although I read what was there, as well.

Seems to me that high school coursework fills 3 basic needs:
1. To give the student the skills and knowledge necessary to function
in the adult world. (Enough math to be able to balance a check-book and
do common every-day computations [multiply a recipe, calculate gas
milage, etc.],

You will find these abilities rare. My late wife,
who was a mathematics professor and certainly knew
what he operations were, did not hesitate to ask
me, especially if she could not find where here
mistakes were. I happen to be an accurate rapid
calculator, and if anything this may cause me not
to use computational aids often enough.

She was a math professor and couldnt' balance her checkbook? Or do
simple multiplication and division? Ok....

Understanding what it is, and knowing how to carry out
the manipulations, does not provide skill in carrying
them out. This is also an ability, and while practice
can temporarily improve it, the knack gets lost.

She could do it, slowly. But there is also an error
probability in even copying a number, and enough of
those can build up; she always checked.

Mathematicians do not do much arithmetic themselves,
even numerical analysts or number theorists; much of
it has to be done by machine. There are a few cases
in group theory where I have seen the need for
simple arithmetic, but not too often. My wife's
field was set theory, and using numbers as large as
5 except for numbering statements, etc., is VERY
rare in that.

I repeat; one can be a good mathematician and be
very poor at arithmetic. How many do we lose by
the present extensive use of computation as a
criterion, or even as a diagnostic tool? A bright
child was classed as "not mathematically strong"
because he could not quickly blurt out answers to
routine questions, although he could understand and
know what to do with complicated problems.

the ability to read and understand newspapers and
general adult (non-specialist-oriented) literature,

You are assuming that what is written is capable of
being clearly understood; this is rarely the case.
What is behind the biases of the authors? Also,
they do not know enough to understand much of it.

I doubt that most know enough American geography to
understand the current weather effects, or even what
the weather reports mean. When it comes to getting
any real idea of the science reports, not a chance.

But do we NEED to? Do we need to understand WHY a hurricane is coming,
as long as we know what to do to protect ourselves? By geography I'm
thinking more in terms of knowing where Iraq is located (roughly -- not
necessarily able to pick it out on a blank map)

Do we know what to do to protect ourselves? There are
various risks, and they need to be compared. If one has a
sufficiently stormresistant basement (not too common in
hurricane regions, but not too rare) on high enough ground
to avoid flooding, stay put. Tornadoes are a more
difficult problem, as they are about 100 times as common as
hurricanes, and far more difficult to predict. But not
enough information is given in the warnings; there was one
given for all of Tippecanoe County, where I live, but it
should only have been given for the southeast part; I
could deduce this from the details of where it had been,
and which direction it was moving, and ignored it.

Not a blank map, but one with countries delineated, but
without names. Also, about distances, transit times for
ships and planes, etc.


and to write
clearly and grammatically;

See the quote of IP's comments in another posting.
Lots of college graduates have no idea of grammar.

I am aware of that. That means they aren't learning it; it doesn't mean
it isn't being taught. High schools these days generally put a lot of
focus on composition -- and I think being able to compose a clear
sentence is much more important than knowing how to define a past
participle. (Or much else that is taught in theoretical grammar
classes.)

Have you seen applications for awards based on scholarship?
I got put on that committee, and I saw lots of them, with
formally clear sentences, saying nothing. In fact, they
had nothing to say, which did not surprise me; that someone
with the current high school education would have any idea
of what was going on, and what was needed to use, a field
of science was essentially impossible. So they had learned
to write what was essentially fiction, instead of being able
to recognize their ignorance.

sufficient typing skills to manage a
computer on a basic level;

I use a touch system myself; as I did not read what
the usual one was, I came up with one not as good.
But I know lots of people who gave up touch typing
to use "hunt and peck", which is generally adequate.

Absolutely. Shaina's counselor wanted her to take keyboarding this
year. I thought it unncessary since she's been using a computer for
years and, while she may not be a speed typist or touch typist, she can
get the job done. And, with more typing in high school,she'll get
faster with practice. (She had enough trouble squeezing the classes she
needed and wanted to take into her schedule without also taking a
useless keyboarding class.)

I have never claimed that learning skills is automatically
bad. Learning touch typing provides an advantage. But I
do not think a class is necessary. I wish I had read a
book on touch typing, as it would have given me a better
system than the one I use, but only about 10% better.
She might have a problem in any case with thinking faster
than she types, and this shows up more in touch typing,
which is why I use a spell checker when I can. There are
typos which I make regularly.

some understanding of history, geography and
civics, to allow one to be an informed and productive citizen.

The necessary knowledge of geography and history,
which I deliberately have put in that order, was
still being taught in the elementary schools when
I was there, but is no longer being taught at all.
One needs a good course on ancient history, not
the Marxist version which leaves out the importance
of the conflicts and the movements of peoples, before
American history. This is not being taught.

Why do we "need" ancient history? (Beyond, again, the basics -- who the
Greeks and Romans and Egyptians were and -- which I learned in 9th
grade social studies.)

No, one needs more than that. It started with the
Sumerians and the Egyptians, and possibly other
civilizations of which we have no record; writing
only goes back 5500 years in Sumeria. The ancient
development of writing, commerce, agriculture, and
technology, before the Greeks and Romans, is of
considerable importance. My own education in this
was definitely chaotic and incomplete, and is still
being corrected.

You did not mention the Babylonians and Assyrians
and Persians and Hittites, who were the important
powers in the Middle East before Alexander conquered
the Persian Empire. Nor the minor states with
considerable power before the Persians conquered
them, like Lydia which invented coinage. Alas,
much of this is not too well recorded. We cannot
even do well at reading the voluminous writings
in Etruscan, and their influence directly on Rome
and the rest of Italy. Also, the history of India
before Alexander is poorly known.

2. To teach the student how to think and reason,

How can you do this without teaching enough formal
logic to understand those problems? Otherwise, you
get only "philosophical" reasoning, which ignores
the facts in favor of what is effectively dogma.

In your opinion. My understanding is that modern schools (which
includes both the school I attended in the 70's and the schools my
daughter attends in the 21st century) put MUCH more emphasis on thought
and reasoning (understanding WHY things happened) than pre-war
schools, which were still far more concerned with rote feeding of
facts, names and dates.

I agree about rote. But the emphasis on rote came
from the educationists who tore down the structural
material before the Depression and put in the
emphasis on "objective" tests.

and how to learn,

People do not learn the same way. How can you teach
someone how to learn?

You can help them find how THEY learn best and make it necessary for
them to learn how to study and focus.

The teachers will have to learn this. They cannot imagine
someone who learns like me, or in fact like any gifted
child; they are all different. I have no idea how I came
to learn the way I did and do, nor can I really explain it.

What teachers can do for the good students is let them
go ahead as fast as they can, and not try to teach them
how to learn. The teacher will not understand them.

and
how to be --- generally speaking, an 'educated and well-rounded
person.'

What does that mean?

It's not really definable, which was sort of my point. Schools teach
students what people in our society are expected, in general, to know.
(Who Adolph Hitler was, what "Hamlet" is about, what the Reformation
was and, in general why it happened, why helium balloons float ... IOW,
stuff that has NO real relevence to the day to day life of 99% of the
populace but most reasonably educated people DO know.)

In practice, this means the philosophical and literary
aspects, not sound science and rigorous thinking. I
keep seeing statements like, "If we could put a man on
the moon, why can't we cure cancer?" I am inclined to
think that if the Depression had not occurred and the
concurrent events in Germany, we would have put a man
on the moon in the 1930's; the science was all there,
and the technology approaching what was needed, together
with the will and resources. While for cancer, the basic
science is not there, nor the first line applied science,
and there are hundreds of types of cancer, with different
properties.

3. To give the student the grounding he needs to pursue higher level
studies in the career field of his choice.

We have too many trying to do this; they do a poor job,
are passed because it would be politically impossible
to fail even half of those who should never have even
graduated high school. Again, see IP's remarks about
the functionally illiterate college graduates


Some do a poor job, some do not. I've had good and bad teachers at
every level of education. I have to wonder how anyone who is truly
'functionally illiterate' however (as opposed to lacking some specific
areas of education that YOU believe they should have) could graduate
college, given the intensive reading required to get through even a
single class.

Some classes, maybe. But these can usually be avoided.


While endlesss coursework on 'theory' may, to some extent, meet the
needs of catagory 2,

Who said it should be endless? Concepts when learned are
learned and can be used, and the use should be practiced.
This does not mean memorizing theorems, but understanding
the concepts and how to use them. The use of mathematical
notation as language, which has essentially zero prerequisites,
belongs with beginning reading; with this, someone can
formalize problems for a machine to solve, which is far
more important than being able to laboriously solve a few.

My understanding of what you said was that math should be only theory
(Euclidian proofs) and foreign language and English should be primarily
grammar (forget about being able to communicate.) That says to me that
theory is more important than practice, to your mind.

I said that all should learn the concepts; being able to
produce proofs is secondary, and the requirement should be
to understand what a proof is and what it is not.

The most important part of mathematics for those weak in
the subject is the ability to formulate their problems
in other areas so that an adept or a machine can solve
them, at least if simple techniques are available to do so.
Drilling them in those simple techniques, which may still
require the need of machines, is of at best tertiary value.

Concepts are not understood unless they can be applied to
new situations. Someone who understands grammar will be
better able to learn to communicate than someone who has
learned a spoken language by rote; I can communicate with
difficulty in any of my foreign languages, taken decades
ago, with little use except fro reading. How long would
it take for me to be able to use the language in speaking?

My daughter and I have talked a bit about the courses she needs to
take. And we both wonder WHY she really needs to take pre-calculus and
physics. Her career goal, at this point, is to become either a
journalist or graphic artist, so surely her limited class-time might be
better served by another writing or art class, or by some other
elective (academic or not) that interests her.

If she does not take those, she will not have any idea of
how to use such things. One of the late professors here,
from India, started out as a Sanskrit student, but after
taking mathematics courses, became a mathematical statistician,
and an expert in multivariate analysis.

But surely 11 years of math should be sufficient for her to determine
if mathematics is her 'thing.'

She has not had 11 years of math. She has had less than two
years, and the concepts have not been made clear. I would
not recommend pre-calculus and physics, however, for this,
unless I knew the contents of the pre-calculus course.
Good physics requires an understanding, not the ability to
compute, of calculus.

Why assume that one additional year
will make a difference? (And if one year might, why not demand two or
three additional years? Why not insist that all seniors take TWO math
classes?) I'm not suggesting that she should take no math beyond the
basic computational variety. But so far as I know, Calclulus offers
nothing practical for day to day life for ANYONE. Ditto physics. I
never took physics (beyond the basics taught at the junior high level)
and seem to get by ok. And if she should decide, at some point, she
wants to be a scientist, she can catch up. IU offers a basic physics
class that does not have, as its prerequisite, high school physics.


You would be surprised at how much physics is useful.
Also calculus, but this is not as clear. One may have
to optimize something, and the methods of optimization
are essentially calculus and linear programming.

Catching up will take years. It need not, but the math
program is so designed. If you would like some private
suggestions which may or may not work, I would be glad
to communicate by email.


Naomi



--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

wrote:


Rosalie B. wrote:
wrote:


But surely 11 years of math should be sufficient for her to determine
if mathematics is her 'thing.' Why assume that one additional year
will make a difference? (And if one year might, why not demand two or
three additional years? Why not insist that all seniors take TWO math
classes?) I'm not suggesting that she should take no math beyond the
basic computational variety. But so far as I know, Calclulus offers
nothing practical for day to day life for ANYONE. Ditto physics. I
never took physics (beyond the basics taught at the junior high level)
and seem to get by ok. And if she should decide, at some point, she
wants to be a scientist, she can catch up. IU offers a basic physics
class that does not have, as its prerequisite, high school physics.

I don't know of too many people who don't change their career plans at
least a little bit from the time of middle or high school. And the
computational math that someone does in school is NOT the same as
mathematics in college. So, no, I don't think she can determine yet
if mathematics is 'her thing'. I don't even think that calculus is
anything but a stepping stone to 'real' math.

So again, how much math does she need to take to reach this point? If
intermediate algebra isn't enough, and calculus isn't enough, what is?
How much math should colleges require for students in liberal arts
fields? (Again, I took 4 years of math in high school. I did very well
through trig, and for the first semester of my senior year, when I took
advanced algebra. But, perhaps because calculus and its cousins IS such
a different type of math, I was completely lost when it came to
analytic geometry. I floundered through the year and ended up with the
only D on my high school report card. In college, I probably should
have taken it again, but decided to push on to calculus (I was, at the
time, a biology major and needed a year of calc). I remained lost that
year too, and ended up with yet another D. (At which point, for
several reasons including that one, I changed my major.))

Not being a math person either, I'm not really sure of the answer to
this but I think Euclidean geometry where proofs are required and
perhaps logic (which I think I got in a math class somewhere) might be
a good starting point. We were required to write out the proofs and a
notebook. We couldn't use a theorem to prove another concept unless
we had first done the proof for it.


Somewhere, I don't remember where, I participated in a discussion
about who would ever use calculus or algebra in the real world. Or
would have to find the area of a circle. I happen to have been
(before retirement) in a job, which really did not exist when I went
to college and which did require those things. I was a zoology major
in college and I intended originally to get my MAT and then teach
biology in HS.

Of course many JOBS require higher math, and even certain areas of
general math. (As I noted in an earlier post, my husband is far more
able to help Shaina with geometry questions because, as a sheet metal
worker, he uses geometry on a daily basis to design and create ductwork
and the like.) And I'm sure that if I ended up in a job where I needed
to know that, I could quickly enough relearn how to find the area of a
circle. (I'm sure it involves Pi in some way.) But for 99% of us, our
daily life does not require trig or calculus or even geometry more
advanced than determining how many gallons of paint or how many square
feet of carpeting are required to redecorate a room. (And if the person
DOESN'T know how to do that, I'm sure the store clerk would be happy to
assist.

I worked as a cashier in a cafeteria one summer with one of those
basic registers. And it was even worse because the cafeteria pricing
was a little strange. Iced tea was 7 cents, a hard boiled egg was 8
cents, and a dish of cottage cheese was 6 cents, and one lady got
those three items every day. (This was in 1956.) Plus, I could not
do the addition on the cash register because we had 200 people come
through the line in an hour and half, and I just did not have time to
crank all the numbers in. So I had to add it up QUICKLY in my head,
tell the person the total as I punched it in. In a few cases, I would
take the money and make change, but in most cases I had to take the
register tape and write the persons's number on it. I also had to
remember how much the student nurses and the volunteers were
authorized to charge, and get money from them if they went over that
amount.

I DID learn to do it. And I suspect the vast amount of practice made
me better at addition, but I don't usually balance my checkbook very
often because I keep the accounts on the computer now. If you give
the stupid machine the right numbers, it will give you the right
answer.

An amusing aside though ... the other day I was at the butcher. For
whatever reason, the store has a fairly basic cash register, the kind
that adds up your purchase but DOESN'T calculate the change. The bill
was 5.56, so I gave the clerk 6.06, figuing that I'd rather have a
couple of quarters in my wallet than an assortment of dimes and
pennies. He just looks at it and says, "It's 5.56, ma'am." I said I
knew that. And he just stood there, unable to figure out why I'd given
him that much money. I finally had to explain that I was looking for 50
cents in change. And this wasn't some young kid either; he was probably
60ish.
snip
I took a two day test in order to get certified - beforehand I studied
very hard for several years (outside of working hours). I passed the
test on my first try - even though I have never had physics or
calculus. But I think that if I HAD studied those courses, I would
have had less trouble with it. Because given my lack of background I
just had to memorize everything without really understanding it.
Fortunately I have a pretty good memory.


But, even if you HAD taken those classes, if you'd taken them several
decades ago, you probably wouldn't have remembered much. I took high

I don't think that is the case. I have a good memory. As an example,
although I graduated from college in 1959, in 1978 when I wanted to
do the student teaching without being a full time degree candidate at
our local college, they had that same objection - that I would not
remember from 20 years previous, my coursework. So they told me that
I would have to take the previous year's biology final and get a B or
better on it. (I don't think they expected me to be able to do it -
they were trying to get out of letting me student teach.) But I did
it, and then they had to let me into the program like they had said
that they would.

school and college biology and chemistry, and remember very little. I
have only the vaguest idea any more of what trigonometry is, except
that it involves things called sine and co-sine and tangent. What we
don't use disppears from our memories VERY quickly. I remember a bit
more biology than chem, but that's just becuase it's more interesting
to me so it stuck better in my memory. But, new math aside, my ability
to help Shaina with her math homework is fairly limited. (Though I did
find myself needing to use algebra yesterday ... and ended up resorting
to a calculator. I wanted to figure out what base pay I would need if
I was going to work 5 hours of overtime (at time and a half.) and 10
hours at base pay, and end up with an overall pay rate of $11/hr. I
ended up feeding numbers that sounded about right into the calculator
until I came up with the answer. [Which did match the number my
supervisor came up with -- $9.50/hr.]

Estimating is also a valuable skill.

I had one parent who complained about the children learning the metric
system. She said she couldn't help her child with her homework
because she (the mom) didn't use or understand metric - it was too
complicated. My response was - You use money don't you? Money is
metric.

"Herman Rubin" wrote in message
...
You would be surprised at how much physics is useful.
Also calculus, but this is not as clear. One may have
to optimize something, and the methods of optimization
are essentially calculus and linear programming.

But the average person who has not taken physics and calculus can manage to
live without them. You'd be surprised how much music is useful, or foreign
language, or English literature, or biology, whatever other fields you can
think of. It is because math and the hard sciences is your specialty that
you see their application in everyday life. If you were a music teacher,
you'd see music's application and the so on and so forth. Everyone wants to
think that their own field or strength is the only thing anyone needs to
know. It certainly is an ego boost. I'm not saying math is not important.
It obviously is. However, everything has its place. There is no need to
put down other fields because you hold no interest or strength in them.

Herman Rubin wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

I still do not see the need for so many years of English,
which is largely literature, usually chosen to be
politically correct propaganda.

A lot of writing too. And being able to understand complex written
materials and pull out the important ideas.


I had 2.5 years of high school Spanish, one year of
college French, and one year of college German. At
the end of those, I could certainly communicate in
Spanish and French, but not that well in German; the
course was not logical enough.

Germanic languages are also very different from Romance languages. The
grammar is more difficult and there's more OF it. I took Spanish in
high school, but didn't learn a ton of grammar in it, because the
grammar of Spanish isn't very complex. I am currently studying a
slavic language, and there's a LOT of grammar in the class, because the
language itself has very complex grammar and you can't possibly frame a
setence without understanding it. So the first year was mostly a
reading course, teaching us a lot of vocabulary and getting us to
understand, on an intellectual level, how to
decline/conjugate/structure a sentence. Now, in the second year, the
focus is on actually using what we learned -- being able to
communicate.

A reading course SHOULD be first. How are we communicating
here?

I think it depends a lot on the language. Again, a Spanish class can
jump right into a lot of conversational practice, because the grammar
is fairly simple. But in Croatian, knowing that "kuca" means "house"
is of only limited use in constructing a sentence ABOUT a house, since
you need to know which case to use. Depending on the sentence it might
be kuca, or kuce, or kuci or kucom or kucama or kucu. (BTW, there
should be an acute accent over the 'c' in every one of those forms.)
But in Spanish "una case" is "una casa" whatever you're doing with it.

I doubt that most know enough American geography to
understand the current weather effects, or even what
the weather reports mean. When it comes to getting
any real idea of the science reports, not a chance.

But do we NEED to? Do we need to understand WHY a hurricane is coming,
as long as we know what to do to protect ourselves? By geography I'm
thinking more in terms of knowing where Iraq is located (roughly -- not
necessarily able to pick it out on a blank map)

Do we know what to do to protect ourselves? There are
various risks, and they need to be compared. If one has a
sufficiently stormresistant basement (not too common in
hurricane regions, but not too rare) on high enough ground
to avoid flooding, stay put. Tornadoes are a more
difficult problem, as they are about 100 times as common as
hurricanes, and far more difficult to predict. But not
enough information is given in the warnings; there was one
given for all of Tippecanoe County, where I live, but it
should only have been given for the southeast part; I
could deduce this from the details of where it had been,
and which direction it was moving, and ignored it.

I'm not sure how any level of study of geography would make a
difference there. Extremely local geography usually ISN'T taught in any
high school class, but our local phone book has a map of the county.
Even if I didn't have a fair sense of where my house was located,
relative to the rest of the county, if the weather report says
"Tornado warning for southwest Monroe and Northwest Lawrence County,
with storm traveling Northwest at 15 mph, I would only have to check
the map to see where I stood and if I needed to head for the cellar.
(Our cellar is so nasty that I never go down there until I can hear the
freight train.) But the physical geography of how tornados are formed,
or why they may be more common in certain areas (trailer parks ....) is
pretty much irrelevent.


Not a blank map, but one with countries delineated, but
without names. Also, about distances, transit times for
ships and planes, etc.

Again, I like geography. I could probably fill in 90%+ of a world map
(countries, major islands, most capital cities -- names only, can't
always place them on the map) without too much difficulty. But I don't
think that a student's inability to locate Zambia on a map is
necessarily a sign of major illiteracy, as long as he knows that Zambia
is in sub-saharan Africa. (And similarly, "Iraq is a fairly large
county located in the Middle East" should really be fine -- even if the
student isn't positive which blank blob on the map is Iraq as opposed
to Iran or Afghanistan or Uzbekistan.)

..

I am aware of that. That means they aren't learning it; it doesn't mean
it isn't being taught. High schools these days generally put a lot of
focus on composition -- and I think being able to compose a clear
sentence is much more important than knowing how to define a past
participle. (Or much else that is taught in theoretical grammar
classes.)

Have you seen applications for awards based on scholarship?
I got put on that committee, and I saw lots of them, with
formally clear sentences, saying nothing. In fact, they
had nothing to say, which did not surprise me; that someone
with the current high school education would have any idea
of what was going on, and what was needed to use, a field
of science was essentially impossible. So they had learned
to write what was essentially fiction, instead of being able
to recognize their ignorance.


I think it's worth recognizing that different people have different
talents. You are a rapid calculator. I generally write well. Other
people are skilled in other areas. I think that all students should,
as I said, know how to contruct a sentence. They should know how to use
capital letters and basic punctuation and how to use a spell-check AND
a dictionary. They should know what nouns, verbs, and adjective are
and how to use them. They should be able to put relatively clear ideas
down on paper. But not everyone will EVER be a elegant or fluid
writer, no matter how much they work at it, just as I will never be a
theoretical mathematician.

.

Absolutely. Shaina's counselor wanted her to take keyboarding this
year. I thought it unncessary since she's been using a computer for
years and, while she may not be a speed typist or touch typist, she can
get the job done. And, with more typing in high school,she'll get
faster with practice. (She had enough trouble squeezing the classes she
needed and wanted to take into her schedule without also taking a
useless keyboarding class.)

I have never claimed that learning skills is automatically
bad. Learning touch typing provides an advantage. But I
do not think a class is necessary.


Right. I was agreeing with you there. I took a typing class in junior
high. It was helpful to me because, of course, there were no home
computers yet, so my exposure to keyboards was fairly limited. I am a
fair touch typist, but am happy for the backspace key.
..

Why do we "need" ancient history? (Beyond, again, the basics -- who the
Greeks and Romans and Egyptians were and -- which I learned in 9th
grade social studies.)

No, one needs more than that. It started with the
Sumerians and the Egyptians, and possibly other
civilizations of which we have no record; writing
only goes back 5500 years in Sumeria. The ancient
development of writing, commerce, agriculture, and
technology, before the Greeks and Romans, is of
considerable importance. My own education in this
was definitely chaotic and incomplete, and is still
being corrected.

You did not mention the Babylonians and Assyrians
and Persians and Hittites, who were the important
powers in the Middle East before Alexander conquered
the Persian Empire. Nor the minor states with
considerable power before the Persians conquered
them, like Lydia which invented coinage. Alas,
much of this is not too well recorded. We cannot
even do well at reading the voluminous writings
in Etruscan, and their influence directly on Rome
and the rest of Italy. Also, the history of India
before Alexander is poorly known.

I didn't mention every ancient culture mostly because I'm trying to do
this stuff on short breaks at work, and don't have time for really
lengthy posts.
But more to the point, I'm not grasping WHY this is all vital knowlege
for every high school graduate. We could argue until the cows come
home about what areas of general knowlege are most vital, and never
come to any consensus. Given the limited time for coursework in high
school, choices have to be made. Is it more important that students
learn ancient history than modern history? Is knowledge of renaissance
England more important than studies in Pre-Columbian New Mexico? Who's
to say? Should students read Shakespeare or Toni Morrison, or should
they read a little of each? Should the focus be on political history or
social history? When I was in high school I opted to take AP American
History rather than "American Studies" which was the standard 11th
grade course. (One of the two was required.) As a result, I learned a
lot more history, but a lot less civics. I'll freely admit that my
understanding the the American political process isn't all that it
might be. Shaina will be required to take half year courses in both
U.S Government and Economics, along with a year of US history. OTOH,
she won't be studying ancient history. I don't think it's even offered,
unless it's part of the AP World History course. (Which she does want
to take.) Is physics more important than geology? Should high schools
offer psychology? Anthropology? Paleontology? The Indiana University
course catalog offers courses in dozens of fields that aren't even
touched upon in high school.




In your opinion. My understanding is that modern schools (which
includes both the school I attended in the 70's and the schools my
daughter attends in the 21st century) put MUCH more emphasis on thought
and reasoning (understanding WHY things happened) than pre-war
schools, which were still far more concerned with rote feeding of
facts, names and dates.

I agree about rote. But the emphasis on rote came
from the educationists who tore down the structural
material before the Depression and put in the
emphasis on "objective" tests.

19th century schools definitely emphasized rote learning. It wasn't
something new post-Depression.


The teachers will have to learn this. They cannot imagine
someone who learns like me, or in fact like any gifted
child; they are all different. I have no idea how I came
to learn the way I did and do, nor can I really explain it.

Sweeping generalizations do nothing to support your thesis.


Some do a poor job, some do not. I've had good and bad teachers at
every level of education. I have to wonder how anyone who is truly
'functionally illiterate' however (as opposed to lacking some specific
areas of education that YOU believe they should have) could graduate
college, given the intensive reading required to get through even a
single class.

Some classes, maybe. But these can usually be avoided.

Not to graduate from IU, which has distribution requirements.

But surely 11 years of math should be sufficient for her to determine
if mathematics is her 'thing.'

She has not had 11 years of math. She has had less than two
years, and the concepts have not been made clear. I would
not recommend pre-calculus and physics, however, for this,
unless I knew the contents of the pre-calculus course.

Well, her options as a senior would be pre-calc (presumably analytic
geometry, among other things), finite math (the same course offered for
freshmen at IU, and, I believe, required for all students who are not
in majors that require calculus) or AP statistics. She isn't ahead in
math (didn't take Algebra in 8th grade) so she won't have the
prerequisites for calculus.

And if she should decide, at some point, she
wants to be a scientist, she can catch up. IU offers a basic physics
class that does not have, as its prerequisite, high school physics.


You would be surprised at how much physics is useful.
Also calculus, but this is not as clear. One may have
to optimize something, and the methods of optimization
are essentially calculus and linear programming.

Catching up will take years. It need not, but the math
program is so designed. If you would like some private
suggestions which may or may not work, I would be glad
to communicate by email.

At the moment we're going on what she thinks she wants to do. We've
roughed out her high school program based on her present career goals.
If they change along the way, and of course they might, we'll adjust
accordingly. If they change when she gets to college, she'll adjust
again. (I started out as a biology/pre-med major. I switched my
sophmore year to journalism with a biology minor, and my junior year to
journalism with a history minor.) But we'll have to see how it goes.

Naomi

On 22 Sep 2006 07:32:52 -0700, wrote:

But so far as I know, Calclulus offers
nothing practical for day to day life for ANYONE. Ditto physics. I
never took physics (beyond the basics taught at the junior high level)
and seem to get by ok. And if she should decide, at some point, she
wants to be a scientist, she can catch up. IU offers a basic physics
class that does not have, as its prerequisite, high school physics.

Well, understanding how things work while it is not *necessary* is a
good thing, imo.

http://www.stmary.ws/physics/home/li...ryday_life.htm

http://www.math.montana.edu/frankw/c...ntro/learn.htm


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

In article ,
toypup wrote:

"Herman Rubin" wrote in message
...
You would be surprised at how much physics is useful.
Also calculus, but this is not as clear. One may have
to optimize something, and the methods of optimization
are essentially calculus and linear programming.

But the average person who has not taken physics and calculus can manage to
live without them. You'd be surprised how much music is useful, or foreign
language, or English literature, or biology, whatever other fields you can
think of. It is because math and the hard sciences is your specialty that
you see their application in everyday life. If you were a music teacher,
you'd see music's application and the so on and so forth. Everyone wants to
think that their own field or strength is the only thing anyone needs to
know. It certainly is an ego boost. I'm not saying math is not important.
It obviously is. However, everything has its place. There is no need to
put down other fields because you hold no interest or strength in them.

Music may be interesting, but useful? Also, does taking
music in school improve this? If you play an instrument,
probably, but otherwise?

I also question the utility of English literature, unless
you are going to discuss that literature.

Mathematics is basic for all precise subjects, whether
physics or education or psychology or economics, and
is not being used in linguistics and literary analysis.
I do not mean advanced mathematics, but understanding
integers, rational numbers, and for most of them, real
numbers. It is understanding the concepts and being
able to use them to formulate or clarify, not to
calculate. And from my personal experience with
medical procedures, and from the literature, intelligent
decisions depend on probability analyses, and not just
the ultra-crude analysis made by medical people. Your
doctor frequently does not know what is best for YOU.

The current mathematical knowledge of most people is
not up to the English needed to communicate information.



--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

In article om,
wrote:

Herman Rubin wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

I still do not see the need for so many years of English,
which is largely literature, usually chosen to be
politically correct propaganda.

A lot of writing too. And being able to understand complex written
materials and pull out the important ideas.


I had 2.5 years of high school Spanish, one year of
college French, and one year of college German. At
the end of those, I could certainly communicate in
Spanish and French, but not that well in German; the
course was not logical enough.

Germanic languages are also very different from Romance languages. The
grammar is more difficult and there's more OF it. I took Spanish in
high school, but didn't learn a ton of grammar in it, because the
grammar of Spanish isn't very complex. I am currently studying a
slavic language, and there's a LOT of grammar in the class, because the
language itself has very complex grammar and you can't possibly frame a
setence without understanding it. So the first year was mostly a
reading course, teaching us a lot of vocabulary and getting us to
understand, on an intellectual level, how to
decline/conjugate/structure a sentence. Now, in the second year, the
focus is on actually using what we learned -- being able to
communicate.

A reading course SHOULD be first. How are we communicating
here?

I think it depends a lot on the language. Again, a Spanish class can
jump right into a lot of conversational practice, because the grammar
is fairly simple. But in Croatian, knowing that "kuca" means "house"
is of only limited use in constructing a sentence ABOUT a house, since
you need to know which case to use. Depending on the sentence it might
be kuca, or kuce, or kuci or kucom or kucama or kucu. (BTW, there
should be an acute accent over the 'c' in every one of those forms.)
But in Spanish "una case" is "una casa" whatever you're doing with it.

I doubt that most know enough American geography to
understand the current weather effects, or even what
the weather reports mean. When it comes to getting
any real idea of the science reports, not a chance.

But do we NEED to? Do we need to understand WHY a hurricane is coming,
as long as we know what to do to protect ourselves? By geography I'm
thinking more in terms of knowing where Iraq is located (roughly -- not
necessarily able to pick it out on a blank map)

Do we know what to do to protect ourselves? There are
various risks, and they need to be compared. If one has a
sufficiently stormresistant basement (not too common in
hurricane regions, but not too rare) on high enough ground
to avoid flooding, stay put. Tornadoes are a more
difficult problem, as they are about 100 times as common as
hurricanes, and far more difficult to predict. But not
enough information is given in the warnings; there was one
given for all of Tippecanoe County, where I live, but it
should only have been given for the southeast part; I
could deduce this from the details of where it had been,
and which direction it was moving, and ignored it.

I'm not sure how any level of study of geography would make a
difference there. Extremely local geography usually ISN'T taught in any
high school class, but our local phone book has a map of the county.
Even if I didn't have a fair sense of where my house was located,
relative to the rest of the county, if the weather report says
"Tornado warning for southwest Monroe and Northwest Lawrence County,
with storm traveling Northwest at 15 mph, I would only have to check
the map to see where I stood and if I needed to head for the cellar.
(Our cellar is so nasty that I never go down there until I can hear the
freight train.) But the physical geography of how tornados are formed,
or why they may be more common in certain areas (trailer parks ....) is
pretty much irrelevent.

The forecast in question stated Tippecanoe county, and
stated that the tornado was moving in a southeasterly
direction, and that it was in the south part of Lafayette.
This told me that it was already both south and east of
where I was by several miles.

Not a blank map, but one with countries delineated, but
without names. Also, about distances, transit times for
ships and planes, etc.

Again, I like geography. I could probably fill in 90%+ of a world map
(countries, major islands, most capital cities -- names only, can't
always place them on the map) without too much difficulty. But I don't
think that a student's inability to locate Zambia on a map is
necessarily a sign of major illiteracy, as long as he knows that Zambia
is in sub-saharan Africa. (And similarly, "Iraq is a fairly large
county located in the Middle East" should really be fine -- even if the
student isn't positive which blank blob on the map is Iraq as opposed
to Iran or Afghanistan or Uzbekistan.)



I am aware of that. That means they aren't learning it; it doesn't mean
it isn't being taught. High schools these days generally put a lot of
focus on composition -- and I think being able to compose a clear
sentence is much more important than knowing how to define a past
participle. (Or much else that is taught in theoretical grammar
classes.)

Have you seen applications for awards based on scholarship?
I got put on that committee, and I saw lots of them, with
formally clear sentences, saying nothing. In fact, they
had nothing to say, which did not surprise me; that someone
with the current high school education would have any idea
of what was going on, and what was needed to use, a field
of science was essentially impossible. So they had learned
to write what was essentially fiction, instead of being able
to recognize their ignorance.

I think it's worth recognizing that different people have different
talents. You are a rapid calculator.

Which I have already pointed out is not as important as
most make it to be, and not an indication of my mathematical
ability. That I am a rapid thinker is of more importance,
and it does not make much difference what field. I aced
the radio code aptitude test on that, and the mechanical
aptitude test got a high score because of that. As for
what those tests were supposed to be showing, I should have
done rather poorly.

I generally write well. Other
people are skilled in other areas. I think that all students should,
as I said, know how to contruct a sentence. They should know how to use
capital letters and basic punctuation and how to use a spell-check AND
a dictionary. They should know what nouns, verbs, and adjective are
and how to use them. They should be able to put relatively clear ideas
down on paper. But not everyone will EVER be a elegant or fluid
writer, no matter how much they work at it, just as I will never be a
theoretical mathematician.

Now the mathematics I am asking for "everyone" is how to
use variables for formulation, what is a well-formed formula
and what is a sentence, and what is a formal proof. The
first part belongs with beginning reading, the next in
primary school, and the third in elementary school. To
be a theoretical mathematician, one has to be able to come
up with proofs of hitherto unknown theorems, within a
field defined by certain axiomatic formulations. Being a
theoretical mathematician and being able to calculate are
no more related than other mental abilities.

Absolutely. Shaina's counselor wanted her to take keyboarding this
year. I thought it unncessary since she's been using a computer for
years and, while she may not be a speed typist or touch typist, she can
get the job done. And, with more typing in high school,she'll get
faster with practice. (She had enough trouble squeezing the classes she
needed and wanted to take into her schedule without also taking a
useless keyboarding class.)

I have never claimed that learning skills is automatically
bad. Learning touch typing provides an advantage. But I
do not think a class is necessary.

Right. I was agreeing with you there. I took a typing class in junior
high. It was helpful to me because, of course, there were no home
computers yet, so my exposure to keyboards was fairly limited. I am a
fair touch typist, but am happy for the backspace key.


Why do we "need" ancient history? (Beyond, again, the basics -- who the
Greeks and Romans and Egyptians were and -- which I learned in 9th
grade social studies.)

No, one needs more than that. It started with the
Sumerians and the Egyptians, and possibly other
civilizations of which we have no record; writing
only goes back 5500 years in Sumeria. The ancient
development of writing, commerce, agriculture, and
technology, before the Greeks and Romans, is of
considerable importance. My own education in this
was definitely chaotic and incomplete, and is still
being corrected.

You did not mention the Babylonians and Assyrians
and Persians and Hittites, who were the important
powers in the Middle East before Alexander conquered
the Persian Empire. Nor the minor states with
considerable power before the Persians conquered
them, like Lydia which invented coinage. Alas,
much of this is not too well recorded. We cannot
even do well at reading the voluminous writings
in Etruscan, and their influence directly on Rome
and the rest of Italy. Also, the history of India
before Alexander is poorly known.

I didn't mention every ancient culture mostly because I'm trying to do
this stuff on short breaks at work, and don't have time for really
lengthy posts.
But more to the point, I'm not grasping WHY this is all vital knowlege
for every high school graduate. We could argue until the cows come
home about what areas of general knowlege are most vital, and never
come to any consensus. Given the limited time for coursework in high
school, choices have to be made. Is it more important that students
learn ancient history than modern history?

Yes, because the developments of modern history were
influenced by ancient history. Much of the American
Constitution was influenced by what happened in
Athens and Rome, by the general flow of history, and
by medieval Europe and especially English history.

Is knowledge of renaissance
England more important than studies in Pre-Columbian New Mexico? Who's
to say?

Definitely. For one, what we know about pre-Columbian
New Mexido is almost entirely prehistory, and for another,
it had essentially no effect on what happened later.
On the other hand, the political and religious changes
during that period in England were quite influential.


Should students read Shakespeare or Toni Morrison, or should
they read a little of each?

I think very little of modern writers.

Should the focus be on political history or
social history?

We understand political history. As for social history, you
will find major groups of historians whose opinions are
opposite, and so most of what goes for that is propaganda.

The life style of the typical Egyptian, or for that matter
of almost all of the ancient and modern peoples, does not
matter very much, except to sociologists studying them,
and Marxist historians, of which the US has a huge number.

When I was in high school I opted to take AP American
History rather than "American Studies" which was the standard 11th
grade course. (One of the two was required.) As a result, I learned a
lot more history, but a lot less civics. I'll freely admit that my
understanding the the American political process isn't all that it
might be. Shaina will be required to take half year courses in both
U.S Government and Economics, along with a year of US history. OTOH,
she won't be studying ancient history. I don't think it's even offered,
unless it's part of the AP World History course. (Which she does want
to take.) Is physics more important than geology?

One cannot understand geology without physics. There
should be no attempt to teach it that way.

Should high schools
offer psychology? Anthropology? Paleontology? The Indiana University
course catalog offers courses in dozens of fields that aren't even
touched upon in high school.

None of these. Get the basics first; these fields do
require mathematics which she has not covered.



In your opinion. My understanding is that modern schools (which
includes both the school I attended in the 70's and the schools my
daughter attends in the 21st century) put MUCH more emphasis on thought
and reasoning (understanding WHY things happened) than pre-war
schools, which were still far more concerned with rote feeding of
facts, names and dates.

I agree about rote. But the emphasis on rote came
from the educationists who tore down the structural
material before the Depression and put in the
emphasis on "objective" tests.

19th century schools definitely emphasized rote learning. It wasn't
something new post-Depression.

They had too much rote, but they had structure and logic.
As an example of educationist introduction of rote, for
about 20 years, beginning reading started in most places
with memorizing whole words, and not paying any account
to letters and letter combinations being associated with
sounds. Language went from grammar oriented, which cuts
down the memorization needed, to learning conversational
phrases and sentences. The proof geometry course was
replaced by recognizing geometric shapes and computing.

Separate history and geography were replaced by "social
studies" because children taking history needed to do
some referring to maps or texts for geographical facts.
This mean they forgot the geography (they did forget
some facts, but could still use it) so it had to be
taught together, and in such a way that it was easy
to forget.


The teachers will have to learn this. They cannot imagine
someone who learns like me, or in fact like any gifted
child; they are all different. I have no idea how I came
to learn the way I did and do, nor can I really explain it.

Sweeping generalizations do nothing to support your thesis.

That teachers are poor at recognizing gifted children
is rather well established. In the public schools, the
best advice I can give is to let them go at their speed,
with possibly some guidance, but not likely from teachers
who do not understand their subjects.

Some do a poor job, some do not. I've had good and bad teachers at
every level of education. I have to wonder how anyone who is truly
'functionally illiterate' however (as opposed to lacking some specific
areas of education that YOU believe they should have) could graduate
college, given the intensive reading required to get through even a
single class.

Some classes, maybe. But these can usually be avoided.

Not to graduate from IU, which has distribution requirements.

But surely 11 years of math should be sufficient for her to determine
if mathematics is her 'thing.'

She has not had 11 years of math. She has had less than two
years, and the concepts have not been made clear. I would
not recommend pre-calculus and physics, however, for this,
unless I knew the contents of the pre-calculus course.

Well, her options as a senior would be pre-calc (presumably analytic
geometry, among other things), finite math (the same course offered for
freshmen at IU, and, I believe, required for all students who are not
in majors that require calculus) or AP statistics. She isn't ahead in
math (didn't take Algebra in 8th grade) so she won't have the
prerequisites for calculus.

And if she should decide, at some point, she
wants to be a scientist, she can catch up. IU offers a basic physics
class that does not have, as its prerequisite, high school physics.


You would be surprised at how much physics is useful.
Also calculus, but this is not as clear. One may have
to optimize something, and the methods of optimization
are essentially calculus and linear programming.

Catching up will take years. It need not, but the math
program is so designed. If you would like some private
suggestions which may or may not work, I would be glad
to communicate by email.

At the moment we're going on what she thinks she wants to do. We've
roughed out her high school program based on her present career goals.
If they change along the way, and of course they might, we'll adjust
accordingly. If they change when she gets to college, she'll adjust
again. (I started out as a biology/pre-med major. I switched my
sophmore year to journalism with a biology minor, and my junior year to
journalism with a history minor.) But we'll have to see how it goes.

Naomi



--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

"Herman Rubin" wrote in message
...
In article om,
wrote:




http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

AGAINST SCHOOL

How public education cripples
our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto

{....}
Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education..... breaks
down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic
functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent
enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits
of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment
completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting
material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience
until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring
things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity
function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible.
People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who
wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each
student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence
mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent
record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been
"diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as
their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further.
So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to
Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the
favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously
attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the
unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments -
clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively
bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little
humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down
the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules
will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of
the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how
to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed
in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might
never want for obedient labor.



{....}