BlackSilentMaj's JumboTweets
- Are tough math
requirements
contributing to school
dropout rates? © 2016
In recent years, high schools and colleges have put rigorous math requirements in place for students. Students now are required to complete courses in algebra, geometry, and trigonometry before they can graduate. College business students have to complete a course in statistics before they can graduate with a degree in business.
The motivation behind these rigorous math requirements is perhaps well intentioned and understandable. But are the requirements practical? Author Andrew Hacker, who wrote the book, “The Math Myth,” doesn’t think the requirements are practical at all.
Hacker said, “I don’t see any rational reason for this at all. What I’m suggesting is that at least there should be other options, alternatives, instead of this rigid math curriculum for everyone.
Hacker went on to elaborate further during a recent interview on the PBS Newshour.
ANDREW HACKER: The goal is to have everybody do a full menu of mathematics, up to and including calculus. One of the myths is that every one of us is going to have to know algebra, geometry, trigonometry in the 21st century, because that’s the way a high-tech age is going.
It’s a total myth. At most, 5 percent of people really use math, advanced math, in their work.
Hacker thinks the rigorous math requirements are contributing to high school and college dropout rates.
ANDREW HACKER: One out of every five of our citizens has not finished high school. We have a 20 percent dropout rate. It’s one of the highest in the developed world. And the chief academic reason for this dropout rate is algebra in the ninth grade.
Hacker thinks rigorous math requirements are to blame for high college drop-out rates as well.
ANDREW HACKER: Forty-seven percent of people who start a four-year college do not get a degree. That’s a very high dropout rate, close to half. Chief academic reason, freshman math course, which people fail and don’t make up. And why don’t we ask ourselves, look at the talent we’re losing.
Hacker and many others think basic math and consumer math proficiency should be encouraged more. After all, people will use basic and consumer math every day of their lives.
We’re talking about percents, averages, calculating loan payments, mortgages, overtime, and so forth. Once a person has become proficient at basic math operations, curiousity will often lead that person to want to pursue higher math.
ANDREW HACKER: We use math, the term, indiscriminately. I think we teach arithmetic really very well up through grades, let’s say, five or six. We do it. But then, instead of continuing with arithmetic to what I would call adult arithmetic, or sophisticated arithmetic, we immediately plunge people into geometry and algebra.
At a minimum, we may want to revisit the rigorous math requirements that were implemented over a decade ago, not because we want to lower standards. Rather, we should do because it will actually increase math skills, and it will discourage students from dropping out of school.