It is unrealistic to expect all students to take and pass advanced math. That’s life and we spend a lot of time and money in a failed effort to prove the lie.
It’s also a lie that all teachers are able and prepared to teach advanced acadmeic level courses. A lot of teachers are unable to accomplish the advanced math understanding and knowledge they are expected to teach. It’s over their heads.
One thing I think should be taught, as early as grade school, is what taxes are and what they’re used for.
A child should know her local sales tax rate and know how to calculate it and apply it to a purchase. She should also know about local postal rates and how much it costs to send a package somewhere.
A parent could set up a child with a simple savings account and teach them about interest rates and how they cause savings to grow (yeah, I know interest rates on savings are almost nonexistent these days, far behind the rate of inflation).
While we’re at it: teach them about inflation, and the present value of money.
I think these things would be a good start.
Or: building a playhouse. Even if the kids are using scrap cardboard, take a ruler or tape measure and help them figure out dimensions and square footage.
I failed Algebra in 1964 and I’m still not over it.
Note, it was a class taught by the second string
foot ball coach, they used us as an experiment.
Algebra is not “advanced math.”
I used to work at a community college helping students with math that had rec’d a HS diploma but couldn’t pass college entrance exams. At the same time my own kids were having problems with math because their teachers couldn’t teach it; after a few conferences I found they had no compehension of math and just followed their teaching guides. And now Obama says he can just “decree” 100,000 new math teachers?
I used to work at a community college helping students with math that had rec’d a HS diploma but couldn’t pass college entrance exams. At the same time my own kids were having problems with math because their teachers couldn’t teach it; after a few conferences I found they had no compehension of math and just followed their teaching guides. And now Obama says he can just “decree” 100,000 new math teachers?
Algebra is not advanced math. It's the the most elementary kind of mathematics after arithmetic. Any person of even modest capacity can learn it.
A lot of teachers are unable to accomplish the advanced math understanding and knowledge they are expected to teach. It’s over their heads.
Again, algebra is not advanced math. The second part should be modified to read: elementary mathematics like algebra, plane geometry, and trigonometry are too difficult for most teachers, many of whom are not even proficient in arithmetic.
In order to train a dog, you must know more than the dog. Many teachers are no more than an "answer key" ahead of their charges. Competent teachers using competent methods can teach any motivated person to understand algebra.