Any mandatory class will cater to the lowest level, thus making anyone with a brain suffer for little to no reason.

Test to make sure you need it? That sounds better.

/rant from high school student.

I thought it was a huge waste of time back then.

What I do know is that any of the attractive "engineering" girls were ALWAYS I.E.

@Bruce Bayliss: I know our Accounting Manager gets phone calls about unpaid bills...and still spends tons of money on going out to eat. I know he worked in finance before so that is a bit scary.

@RevRagnarok: Ugh, I hate that about history in school. Stop spending months on the Civil War and get to more recent history and how it has a bearing on our government today. And please, while we are at it, can Vietnam get more than one page in the history books? (And I only know this from flipping forward in the book, we never got past the 1900's. I don't think we got to any of the World Wars.)

@mythago: Just think about this when you read the posts...

[www.xkcd.com]

@Con Seannery hates Facebook and Trebek: I used math when I calculated how large the viewing area on a widescreen TV would be when displaying in standard format. Yay for the 3:4:5 triangle and Pythagorean Theorem!

@Ingram81: And the issue with industrial engineers is?

@Jubilance22: I was a computer major and am now back in school for engineering. I tested out of English with my AP score, too. I kind of miss taking English.

@Eyebrows McGee: What???? I took Algebra in 7th grade. Of course, I never had problems with any school subject and didn't really realize it wasn't like that for everyone until I got to the end of high school/beginning of college. I freely admit to being a geek and have done calculus just for fun so I don't trust my abilities and views to be what to hold others to.

@mythago: "engineers don't have the social skills God gave a banana slug." we have quite a good set of social skills. sadly all the business and liberal arts students start crying when we make fun of them and their crayons.

@Princess Leela: I am not berating anyone. I am simply stating the fact that math and science skills are much more critical then the ability to analyze whatever the symoblic meaning behind the character of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights happened to be. I am not stating that basic skills such as literacy and reading comprehension are not important. Quite to the contrary if one is unable to understand and comprehend what they are reading, then what was the point?
My fiance (no Im not going to worry about the punctuation on that word) teaches at one of the local universities (Engl 101) and Ive had both the privledge and completely horror of reading some of her students work. One of her female students wrote a story about wanting to have an tryst with her, and my future wife, and thats just starting the tip of the iceberg of fail for these papers. When I was teaching at the university had one of my engineering students ever submitted some equivalent quality of work they would have been shamed out of the department. Apparently Im not a "free thinker".
My point in all of this is that in this country, the education system has done the future generations a great disservice by placing the greater importance on ones total GPA rather than on what classes the GPA was based on. To say that Art 101 and Cal 101 are of the same level of difficulty would be saying taking a crap and building a functioning space shuttle are on the same level.

When I meant concept-based, I meant they SHOULD be showing you why the formula/method is connected to the real world. I was really meaning concept vs. number-crunching. My high school math courses suffered from "here is a formula, plug numbers into it 200 times for homework, now you know how math works!" Without ever connecting it to reality, and the number-crunching made it excruciating busywork.

I did much better with "what is this for, how does it work?" Then I could always figure OUT how to plug in numbers, even if it took me a little longer to work through the plugging-in and number-crunching. There's a value to number-crunching -- you get fast at actually DOING the math -- but for non-math people, I do think that makes it difficult.

I used the Pythagorean theorem recently when getting a piece of glass cut for my breakfront. Before it occurred to me that instead of measuring the two sides and finding the hypotenuse to figure out if the glass would fit through the opening, I probably could have just measured the hypotenuse to begin with. But, hey, Pythagoras was totally right and math got me the same answer as measuring!

Excellent point.

MA loves to spend forever on Ancient Rome.

@Ingram81: Impressively spelled and punctuated response. Now why can't you do that all the time? Particularly when you're berating other people for not having the same exact education as you?

Also, calling someone a bitch around here is usually grounds for disemvowelment, but I guess the new regime is going to let such things slide ... ?

Agreed with Nigromancer, my public school education in NJ was excellent, and this is one of the few ways in which it'd be improved.

I am amused by the concern the board has over the supposed need to extend the school day over this class. I can't recall anyone from my class that had a full schedule senior year.

And a word of advice from my experience: if you can afford it when in college, keep your math and engineering books. They more than pay for the pittance they'd give you for selling it when you suddenly need to reference something several semesters later on.

Now that I got that out...back to Differential Equations and Logic Design homework at 1:30 AM

I currently live in Oklahoma. Things here are backwards in many ways, but we are very progressive when it comes to financial literacy. It is required within the curriculum and soon will be on the state test. The State Regents for Higher Education also has a financial literacy outreach program associated with the federal student loan guarantor. BTW, if you want to know what laws are on the books for your state visit [www.jumpstart.org]

Oh and when I finally made it through, it was the worst Hell class I'd ever been in.

@RStui: Well, I strangely ended up using a combination of my major and minor (I'm an IT tech) so had I further pursued Econ, I might have used it.

Speaking of stuff you'll never use, I've been hooked on the Open Yale Courses. I think I like "college" a lot better when I am paying nothing, don't have to write papers or take tests.

Learning is fun. :)

Too bad I'm graduating high school this year.

/Future Engineer

Also up the number of english classes, I've read enough bad thesis statements for a lifetime. People need to know how a semi colon works!

While i agree with you that in urban districts, you would be lucky to get most students to pay attention long enough to learn something, I must also point out that there are definitely some bright students that are stuck in urban districts and we shouldn't deprive them the chance to get something out of a class like this.

I know, I am a proud graduate of a NJ urban school district and am about to receive my bachelor's in a few months

@yagisencho: Agreed. My Canadian husband knows more about U.S. government, history, and politics than most of the people we know around us. That's just sad.

@TecmoTech: If I wasn't already married, I'd ask you to marry me. YES! I have argued this point all the time! Why are science majors required to take all sorts of social-related courses and everyone else is required to take middle school level math and science??? Please!

My education involves a B.S. in Computer Engineering, a minor in Advanced Math, and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering. So if I'm lacking anything in my education it was a lack of learning to color with crayons in college also known as liberal arts.

I have a bachelor's degree and a graduate degree, and I haven't done any math since Grade 11! I took Math 12 in Grade 11 because I was worried that if I took a semester or two off math between Grade 11 and Grade 12 I would forget it all. I did them back-to-back instead. I don't feel like I need more or higher level math skills- I can more than get by with the skills I have.

However, I definitely could have used more "life skills" education in high school. I am eight years out of high school and one year out of grad school; I am actually flying my mom out to my new city because I'm too scared to go car shopping on my own. I have NO idea how to shop for a car, get financing, etc. I file my own taxes but inevitably I end up in tears at least once during the process. Today, I had to get my landlord to come get the burner back into my stovetop after I cleaned it and couldn't figure out how to plug it back in. I am lacking a lot of basic skills that would make my life a lot easier. It would be awesome if schools taught more of this stuff. And I speak as a teacher. If the government would be willing to cut back on the Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum I would be happy to devote some of my class time to teaching life skills.

QUOTE: "I don't know that calculus specifically is a super-useful tool for everyone outside of fields that require it, BUT I think that it's a good thing for everyone to know because it exposes you to a different type of thinking (which is supposedly one of the real purposes of a university education)."

If engineers have to take so much history and English, the rest of the bunch should have to take some freakin' math. It ain't rocket science, it's Cal I!!

And whoever said statistics should be required as well, +1.

The 10th Grade AP American teacher skipped the Revolutionary War and before and made a point of going into WW II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement.

No explorers except for a 4th grade unit on them.

@calquist:
We learned how to balance checkbooks in 1st grade (North Kitsap school district, Washington), but this was back in the seventies. The decades since haven't been kind to public education.

I actually think that even more so than calculus, everyone should be forced to take some basic statistics in college. Misunderstanding of statistical data is very widespread and actually a big problem with understanding how to interpret lots of data that is used in all kinds of areas including business, finance, and other non-engineering/science areas. In fact, understanding stats is probably pretty important to even comprehend a newspaper or magazine these days.

@yagisencho: The sad thing is I learned almost everything I need for my citizenship exam from America: The book. No, really. I've poked at afew test ones and done fine by it. Now to wait the year and a half until I'm eligible to take the test.

i've been begging for this kind of thing for a long time, i was horrible with money in high school and for a while afterwords. If I could have dumped my 12th grade Accounting course for Personal Finance, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Only reason I took accounting was because I required a math course and I certainly was not going to take Calc or Trig. Personal finance would have been a great option to have. I think all school should have a senior level personal finance class.

Way to go New Jersey!

did I just say that...

In Alberta they have (had?) a course called Career and Life Management (CALM) that was required to be completed for graduation. It involved a combination of information on sex ed, personal finances, family/relationships, and how to enter the work force. The final project when i did it was to build a personal portfolio and complete a fake resume.

It was, for the most part, a total waste of time. It was the fifth or sixth year of sex ed I got stuck in, the family thing was a joke, but learning how to balance a chequebook was nice. They also did a week-long module where we had to compile "essential" grocery lists, price compare, and see what was a need vs. a want. That was more interesting, but in a town that was small enough to have a single grocery store, price comparing wasn't exactly easy.

@Ingram81: Your apparent inability to spell correctly or use apostrophes suggests that your education, too, has lacked a certain something. As does the OP's inability to make the very basic distinction between "your" and "you're".

How about we all agree that the best education is a well-rounded education?

@gqcarrick:

Most students would benefit from such a requirement. Since a majority of High School graduates have to deal with money and the banking system in one form or another, it only seems logical that they receive rudimentary education in how the system works.

Well said.

Math > Humanities

Whatever happened to schools handling academics and your family handling the rest. Perhaps that is a bad idea, look how many people took out loans they could never pay back.

It's also possible to do that without ever taking a history class, but it makes you a poorly-educated citizen who, frighteningly enough, still gets to vote.

I realize that the value of the BA has been deflated by credentials INflation in job requirements. But a BA IS supposed to say, "I have a comprehensive liberal arts education which makes me competent to engage in a wide variety of tasks." Maybe the solution is to create more task-oriented college degrees, more AAs, etc.

I don't think catching up to the state-of-the-art mathematics of 1680 is asking too much for a BA. And, frankly, might do a lot to help the current dire state of scientific literacy in the US. "Math and science are irrelevant to my life" is part how we got to people pushing creationism in schools.

Moreover, it's very possible to teach math in a more CONCEPTY way that is often easier for language-oriented types to understand without watering it down. It doesn't have to be "plug and chug" number crunching; understanding the concepts and their applications is far more important for most people. If you understand the basics of HOW trig and calculus work, as an English major, you can always go look up the formulas if you need them. I know what calculus is and what it does, but if I had to actually DO any, I'd have to get the textbook out and refresh my memory. But the point is, I know what it is, what it does, and when it's needed, so I CAN get the textbook out and work it out if I have to.

At my high school we all had the core classes and then you could choose if you wanted to go to higher levels (advanced, Honors, then AP) if you wanted to. I stopped at advanced chemistry but was all about the Honors & AP lit/English.

It's not for everybody.

In other words, I'll believe the braying about a Well Rounded Education right about when I hear engineering students demand everybody have a good grasp of world history and possibly Latin.

@battra92: I hate to say it, but I use calculus, and I'm a BS/BA graduate. It is, on occasion, the solution to your problem.

Rarely, though, thank god.

I would have other things to say about my "business student" status, but a lot of the rest of it is lost in a haze of sex and alcohol.

Fortunately, it was enough to get me going, and now I'm gainfully employed and using (yeah! really!) by degree.

REALLY wish that my HS had this when I was a young lad... If I knew the mess I could get into with credit cards, I would have never opened my first... and second... and third... and so on. You live and you learn, I guess.

I agree that those courses have been a big loss at most high schools (even middle schools, where I took home ec for two years and learned to sew and cook and budget).

While I realize I should be teaching them, my own kids don't know how to sew a hem. I did make them learn how to iron their own shirts and cook basic stuff, as well as clean the bathrooms!

I'm old enough that girls were not required -- heck, I don't think they were allowed -- to take "shop", but I wish I had.

Sorry to disagree, but it's entirely possible (I've done it!) to live one's life and do one's job competently without ever taking calculus. I never went beyond solid geometry and trig in high school and, while I may sometimes feel wistful about not going any further (just as I feel wistful that I only studied one foreign language), I really have no regrets.

I've heard that canard about "if math majors spoke English as poorly as English majors do math..." but it's a false comparison. Communication is a skill necessary to succeed in any modern society, and a mastery of language is needed every day in almost any situation. Not so with higher math.

@parkavery: As it was in (at least my experience) CT... despite having separate cooking and sewing classes in middle school. Figure that one out.

Calculus is difficult when your professor has the grasp of English that a 1st grader has. Failed it and then dropped it and decided I could get the credits elsewhere.

I did take it later on with a nice old professor (I think he was retired but still teaching) and I got an A.

I haven't used any of it since ...

@parkavery und @RevRagnarok: This, this, eight thousand times this. The only time I ever got past Reconstruction was in college... when I got to pick a course on the progressive era. What the hell mang.

That's why I laugh whenever a teacher complains of getting paid too little. ;)

Those basic consumer skills are taught in Home Economics (now called Family and Consumer Sciences or FACS). Since Home Economics/FACS was deemphasized over 20 years ago, we are now into the second generation of young people who may not recognize the household as a single economic unit, and the need to manage it as such. When I taught Home Economics/FACS I had kids in my class who were brilliant at Algebra and Geometry, but couldn't calculate half of a recipe or figure simple interest.

Young people need to be shown the practical applications of what they learn in math; rather than teaching them basic math skills and then just sending them into the world to figure out when and how to use it.

Yeah, that's a shame -- and yes, it would be swell if we quested for well-roundedness instead. But if that's your goal, what is it about calc that makes someone well-rounded and not a thorough grounding in Victorian literature? Or basic physiology? Copyright law?

@Ingram81: Thankfully, if that's your life's pursuit, there's always communications...

They used to...now they let you overdraw so they can sock you with fees.

It's also funny how you can deposit money and it takes a day and a half to go in and be available, but if you write a check somewhere, they cash it in a half a second.

: |

I almost didn't graduate because I'm LD in math...I can't even do division. I still had to take the basic course. I passed with a C minus. I think it was because the teacher felt sorry for me.

If I could have gotten out of doing it, I would have. The only thing the school would give me was extra time to do the physics math on my science test, and even with the formulas in front of me (the teacher allowed everyone a cheat sheet), I still got every question wrong. I don't even know what calculus IS.

It sucks because there are jobs I can never do.

@Ingram81: You, sir, have hit the nail squarely on the head.

The "social studies" curriculum has always annoyed me for this reason. What exactly is "social" about re-learning the Civil War 4+ times (and I'm not saying it's not important, but it's not ALL there is)? I actually had an acquaintance ask me a few years ago why she should vote, and whether Republicans were "good" or "bad". Umm...

@Mr_D: NJ actually has a great educational system.

You can learn it in high school (when you more than likely don't have any/very little money) but when you get out there and start getting a paycheck, you can choose to or choose not to apply what you've learned.

And then there are all those "services to make our lives easier" that banks offer that seemingly prevent us from using what we've learned. Sometimes doing it the hard way is actually doing it the smart way.

Choice.

I know people who teach in Elizabeth High School. In a school like that, as long as a student turns in one assignment the entire year, they aren't at the bottom of the class...and thus, pass (since only a small percent is "allowed" to fail). So a course like this, in a school like that, isn't going to help much. In fact, it is most important in more poor areas like this, since a few credit mistakes would be far harder for a lower income NJ residen to recover from, comparied to a student racking up a credit card that their father can pay off after they "learned their lesson".

Then the old man made me balance his checkbook and then sent me out to see if I could buy 2 weeks worth of groceries with $50. And I did.

There's even an easy trick to getting through it! Just stick with someone that's good at math and sucks at another subject. Then save them by explaining "Hills Like White Elephants" is actually about abortion, and they will be eternally loyal in your pursuit of surviving math!

Basically, it scares me that I went to a pretty good school and did fine by not doing much. How many other people are getting degrees they didn't even have to work for? What's the point?
/rant

I have a friend who's upset because she can't find a BA program that will let her graduate WITHOUT DOING ALGEBRA. That just upsets me.

I like this idea, I hope this is the start of a trend toward more useful, practical classes in school.

I had a whole year's science class in HS devoted to evolution, but my dad had to teach me to write a check. Although that evolution info will come in handy when the monkeys develop a written language and try to take over the world.

I was very fortunate that my high school offered general ledger accounting as an elective. I learned a lot from that class. And it's probably part of the reason why I stay on top of my personal finances.

Also, if you really want to be fair, if engineers have to take 4 semesters of writing, shouldn't everyone take 4 semesters of math *starting* with calc 1? That should take them all the way through DiffEq, and vastly improve the engineering students' place on the curve.

/engineering major currently tearing her hair out over aforementioned short story

Besides, most non-engineers already have to take many math classes.

You're right, why does anybody need anything? I certainly am not using 90% of the classes I was forced to take in college.

History? Who needs it? English? I learned how to write in kindergarten. Science? What do I need that for, I have the Discovery channel!

Yeah, who cares about having well rounded students. Oh yeah, It doesn't take four+ semesters to learn how to write a memo.

Geeze, the original thread was about raising standards. I'd like to see standards raised in college too.

@Eyebrows McGee: I remember that class in High School. Most of it was about general economic theory and some about consumer shopping (e.g. 1 32 is cheaper than 3 for 99, etc.). I would say it was OK, at best. I took it as a sophomore and so I really didn't face the full brunt of those isses for another 2-3 years.

In my high school in MI, in advanced econ, we learned stuff like how to figure out if you had enough $ to buy a car (which required that we scour car ads, call up banks for financing, and get insurance estimates).

We also had to take Government/Civics. Where are these schools where Economics and Civics aren't required?

i'm actually teaching part of an economics class as part of a volunteer initiative & i have to admit - i'm struggling with relating the curriculum. you can convey the ideas, but without a firm grasp of finances (which teenagers rarely have), you're lucky if a handful of people retain the knowledge.

instead, i have a plea to parents: please, don't leave your kids in the dark - talk to them about money. teach them how to budget. have them pay the bills & balance the household checkbook. this real world experience will help them a lot more than the abstracts learned in a classroom.

Besides, why stop at calc? Make them slog through some topology, I say.

@TecmoTech: Engineering major who successfully got out of my English req with my AP score. Now if I could have skipped my rhetoric req I would have been a happy camper.

You are exaggerating my point. I'm talking about basic math. Calculus is not difficult. It is very basic.

You must not be familiar with this bastardization of calculus called "Calculus for Business majors". Most kids in those classes can't even handle fractions. Seriously.

Why is it OK to be math illiterate but horrendous if you are English illiterate?

Besides, most engineers already have to take many English classes.

Awesome idea. I wish I had this kind of knowledge when I got my first job. Since my working career began in 2001, I've probably thrown away $30+ dollars on stupid crap!

It pains me to think what I could've done with that money.

/Engineer

I never had a history class get past the Civil War, in public nor private K-12. Same sh*t, more detail. Still don't care.

I'd love to see some hard numbers on the efficacy of these programs, because I haven't seen anything to suggest that Illinoisians who complete the course are any better with these issues than folks who don't.

So kudos to them.

(I'm sure I'll catch a ton of flack for this one, even if only in my mind, so apologies in advance.)

@TecmoTech: Since we're on the same page here, I think we have a plan.

I do miss tutoring the rich "calc for business" students. I am glad I got to them before they took economics, or they may have figured out I was gouging them terribly.

Our local school district in Tennessee requires it, but not the state.

Going to highschool in wisconsin, part of our curriculum was an Agriculture class. No offense to anyone who works in the agriculture industry, but people being able to balance their checkbooks is more important than learning how to milk a freaking cow.

That is not news to me, I would enforce real calculus. At minimum. If engineers have to take four+ english classes, the rest can at least take Cal 1.

I learned how to write a check in the fourth grade, just after we learned how to keep score bowling.

In Kansas, we weren't allowed out of the 5th grade without learning how to balance a checkbook.

When I was in school, we actually learned a lot of basic financial stuff in home ec. (I have some real issues with the pedagogical strategies of my high school, but I think it was GREAT that everyone, regardless of gender, had to take home ec *and* shop.)

@TecmoTech: I hate to break it to you, but calculus for business majors is a joke.

/Engineer

@TecmoTech: So calculus and geometry, then?

It's a little embarassing when New Jersey is one of the last forward-thinking states in the union.

Can we please add a Civics course requirement while we're at it? Immigrants to this country know more about how our government works than your average high school graduate.

Great Idea! but what is NJ going to do when these kids realize they will be payin wayyyy too much for property taxes and car insurance?? Maybe this requirement will produce someone in future NJ government that can figure out the state's mess without raising property taxes! I mean come on, $7,000/yr for a 1200sqft house on .2 acres?

This is starting to catch on in Texas at least...

Great Idea!! But what is NJ going to do when these kids realize that they will be paying way to much for property taxes and car insurance? lol.

/tangent

Excellent Idea, I wish my school in NY State would have done that when I was done with High School in 1998.