Math...

[Mageofdancingdr]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

This is so, so true. At my school, there are numerous courses which students (including me) are required to take, yet they hate taking them, simply because they teach nothing of value. Or rather, we learn nothing of value. Teachers are trying to teach something we see no point in learning, like why, or rather, what types of dictatorships there are in the world. There's no point to all of this pseudo-learning going on. It does nothing to help us. When does the value of c cause the limit to exist for this equation.... all garbage.

Maybe I'm ranting too much due to the concussion and the pressure on my brain at the moment, but I've noticed there has definitely got to be something fundamentally wrong with the "teaching" in school today.

I'm firmly in view all classes have an application (though maybe I'm just lucky enough to not have had boring classes). If you can't see the application of the class to the real world, your teacher has failed you, and you have failed yourself. Maybe you could cite some examples of classes you're referring to?

I don't have any experience with non advanced math classes, but in my AP math classes (Calc BC last year, Statistics this year) the major missing part was proofs. Over and over again we were taught subject material that I subsequently went home to wolfram, wikipedia, or even a used textbook to find and understand proofs of why the math works out for things like L'hopital's rule, or how r^2 works in statistics. Math classes have lost their depth (if they ever had it) of helping students to think in terms of the mathematics, as opposed to "simple" application. It's the third step of the what?, how? why? triad of questions that's gone missing. and something I desperately hope returns before I grow up and have my own children enter the school system.