I will preface this by acknowledging that I am heavily biased on this topic, but I see this bias as justified.
I think the writier here falls into the trap of being a sheep (if you saw Karthik's presentation from St. Louis then you know what I'm talking about). His best evidence in the entire essay are rates of failure and dropout and educators quoted as saying algebra is the problem. Where the mistake comes in is immediately assuming that taking algebra out of the equation solves the problem.
This would be akin to if you asked someone from a robotics team why they were losing 90% of their matches and they said to you "because of our ball collector". Is it then the right move to take away your ball collector entirely? Will that make you win? Certainly not, and likewise removing algebra will not better educate our society! As a student, I would be insulted that people consider lowering standards because people are supposedly not capable. Maybe I'm failing to see something because math has always interested me and come easy to me, but I strongly feel close to 100% of people are inherently capable of passing basic algebra.
The writer needs to take a closer look at what the root cause of the issue is. Is it, as he suggests, a structural problem where we are trying to educate people in a subject that they are incapable of learning and it is a waste of their time and effort? Is it ineffective teaching in mathematics (and furthermore, is this a developmental problem early on or a problem isolated to MS, HS, and early college?)? Is poor parenting the culprit? There are too many parents I have seen who are willing to blame anything but themselves or their child for failure; the problem MUST be that someone else messed something up. Is the problem with the students? Are they actually incapable or are they just unmotivated and don't want to work for their success? In my opinion, every case is different and all of these problems contribute to each failure in some way, except for the first problem which this writer suggests.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi
I really loved history in high school as well as biology, math (geometry, algebra, calc), and especially physics all because it was taught by pretty great teachers. It taught me to break down a problem, analyze root causes, and evaluate what to do next or interpret data (even in our AP history classes). AP bio was awesome when the teacher taught us how to diagnose simple diseases or predict outcomes when, let's say, a few proteins are missing. AP history classes I had really really made me learn how to analyze a situation and find a root cause/event. Heck, even AP English classes I had made me analyze (maybe over analyze) why a wall in a character's room was yellow. I loved it all though.
Maybe more kids in high school need to take AP classes or non-AP classes need to emulate the type of thinking and skills AP classes/instructors teach? These classes were more fun than my regular/honors classes.
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Well said. I loved the way my AP classes always challenged us to understand the "why"s and "how"s behind history, science, and mathematics. I really appreciated the teachers who went the extra mile to get us to THINK and ASK QUESTIONS. It's really given me the skills I've needed now in college, skills which many of my classmates are still struggling to learn because the expectations were never that high for them.
I still keep in touch with my favorite teachers and get together from time to time. This past week I met with my AP biology teacher and when I asked about how the next school year looked, she expressed frustration that the college board was removing the most challenging parts of the AP bio and AP US history curriculums. Specifically they are removing cellular respiration and the cell cycle from the cirriculum. The goal is to get more people to take AP courses, which I agree is a good objective, but to do so by dumbing down the expectations is ruining what made AP classes worthwhile and challenging for many of us in the first place!
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt