
Down with Algebra II - antman
https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/03/algebra-ii-has-to-go.html
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southern_cross
Throughout my school career I was a top student in math, generally enjoying it
and even sometimes just doing math for fun of it. (I still do this on
occasion.) But probably the single most _useful_ math class I ever took was
"Practical Math" in the 8th grade, which I just did on a lark. All of my other
math courses were of the college-bound and later engineering varieties.

But frankly I'm appalled at the amount of math many college majors still
require today. I eventually grew quite tired of it myself, once I (as a
student already working in my chosen profession) realized that most of it was
just a waste of my time, which could be better spent elsewhere. For example, I
see no sane reason why someone who has spent their entire life dreaming of
becoming a doctor or whatever, and who is otherwise generally well-suited for
that profession, hits an impenetrable barrier at calculus or some such and so
has to give up their dreams. I once asked a medical instructor some years back
how much calculus he and his students (future doctors) actually used, both in
school and afterwards, and his response was that they generally didn't use
much more than basic algebra. Today I'd expect that they just put a few
numbers into a calculator or computer, press a button and they're done.

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jstewartmobile
If our educational complexes can't successfully hammer Algebra II into
someone's head, why does this Wheeler fellow think they'd be any more
successful hammering something else into it?

Compared to the complexity of just about anything that is real, Algebra II is
like learning to crawl or use silverware.

Odds are, the educational system is failing just as badly on every other
subject. It's just harder to screw up the metric on something as objective as
mathematics.

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anonytrary
> coders of the future shouldn’t have to master abstract math that they’ll
> never need

This is awful. Humans should be moving rapidly towards mathematical literacy,
not away from it.

If you only need calculus for .001% of your job, that doesn't mean you only
have to learn .001% of calculus. No one is paying you to use calculus
everyday. They're paying you to know when calculus needs to be used and how to
apply it, the one day they actually need it.

