The Battle Over What Students Should Be Taught in Their Math Classes Rages On April 1, 2016

The Battle Over What Students Should Be Taught in Their Math Classes Rages On

Following up on what I wrote a couple of weeks ago, there’s still a lot of debate among the math educators I know about Professor Andrew Hacker‘s new book The Math Myth.

shutterstock_269736812

Hacker doesn’t think we should burden kids with algebra and higher-level math classes in high school because most won’t use it later in life. He’d prefer teachers stick to the basics, the things you need to know to do your taxes and plan a budget and… basically all the things computers can already do. Only students who need to specialize in math for their careers, he says, ought to take classes like trigonometry and calculus.

I’ve explained why that’s a horrible idea here, and I would encourage you to check out these articles, too.

Cindy Long at the National Education Association wrote an article about the controversy that gives a nice overview of both sides. She reached out to me and some of my thoughts are included in there as well:

“I don’t blame students for focusing on what they think they need to know, but the whole point of a high school education is to immerse yourself in different subjects before you specialize in any one of them,” Mehta explains. “You never know what your future will hold, so it’s to your benefit to learn as much as possible. It’s up to teachers to understand and explain the bigger picture of how a particular topic fits into the broader mathematical world.”

Feel free to chime in on the debate over there.

(Image via Shutterstock)

"The way republican politics are going these days, that means the winner is worse than ..."

It’s Moving Day for the Friendly ..."
"It would have been more convincing if he used then rather than than."

It’s Moving Day for the Friendly ..."

Browse Our Archives

What Are Your Thoughts?leave a comment
error: Content is protected !!