Math, Science <-- Screw Em

[Mulgrim]

lol i'm italian, it helps nothing, i just do my work for it so i can graduate.

 

[Duragon]

Did you know that Italian is closer to Latin than English is? You're helping your Italian more than your English by studying Latin.

 

[Mulgrim]

yes i know that, which just gives me more of a right to say that it's really useless, the point in a language is to know how to communicate.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Latin isn't useless. It definitely isn't very useful though.

 

[Mulgrim]

are you all aware it's a dead language? it can help expand comprehension of some existing languages, but if you already speak that language, then why does it matter?

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I'm just saying it's not useless. People still have uses for the language.

 

[Mulgrim]

yes, to become teachers and make quick buck -.- other than that it's useless for the average student, it's even optional in america, but here as mandatory it's pretty useless...

 

[PurplePoot]

Latin is useful in that it expands your vocabulary and helps you in learning most Western European languages. It is also neat for historical reasons.

 

[Rui]

Like I said, high school math generally isn't about direct practical applications but rather for developing logic and problem-solving skills. Those are things which everyone needs, whether they like maths or not. Also, what is 'basic' math, and where do you draw the line for what people should learn?

True. High school mathematics is based less on applying formulas (which is what you learn mostly during the basic(?) school) and more on rationality and demonstration.
The line is drawn here, I believe. Does the capacity of abstraction need to be learned at school?

I'm fairly sure that children don't have the necessary judgment to realize the importance of education at all (and I think we can all agree that education is important). If it were up to them, they'd be playing all the time. However, it isn't up to them, and they must get an education, and it isn't children who decided that. So whoever figured that out certainly knows better than children what's best for them.

I sometimes find myself asking whether or not the elementary/primary school (that's how it is named in my country) is an excuse to keep the children in school. Yes, it's where you learn reading, summing, subtracting... but besides that? I can't think of anything. Does it take 4 years to learn this (that's how much it lasts in my country)?
At what age do children have to go to school in your country?

lol you think you have it bad? i have to take latin as mandatory, and it counts as much as all the other classes.

Lucky you. I wish I could learn Latin. My language, Portuguese, is highly based on Latin. Plus, I have Biology and Philosophy, and sometimes, especially for the first, some knowledge of Latin would come in handy.
Additionally...

Latin is useful in that it expands your vocabulary and helps you in learning most Western European languages. It is also neat for historical reasons.

...exactly what I was about to say!

 

[Vosty]

Latin not only increase your understanding of words, but your ability spell words and such. I wished my school taught latin.

If kids decided they whether or not they could go to school they wouldn't. Simple as that.

The reason I think is school hated by kids (Except me. I was your learning lover.) is because learning is thought of as a negative thing.
If we could take away the negative energy surrounding learning,more people would like it.
http://www.yourbabycanread.com/
The above link is to a product I saw on a infomercial. It is about kids at 6 months who learn to read, not because these kids are genii (or geniuses for you kids who haven't heard this words) is because:
A) the mind is VERY stimulated at the young age.
B) there is no negative energy, for they think this is a game
Seriously if you watch the vids, you'll want to but this for your kids too. =D

Really, all we need is reverse phycology. Kids dislike school because they are forced to go, whether or not they are curious. After a while, when they are continued to be forced, they dislike. Now if you were to make school a "reward" somehow, you would find kid all competing to get the prize: school.

My argument is exactly as you say it, that humans are innately uninterested in things of development, but only care for what is necessary/entertaining for them in the here and now. The entire idea of thinking ahead to your future (building for college) is a very alien thought for a human that is not influenced by society

Fun things like sports (at least for some people. I know some people who hates sports) can even become not fun by being forced to do so.

Why does it have to be school in the strict manner proposed? To begin with, there are many things school neglects to teach that leave you unprepared for life. Next, it's natural for your curiosity to dwindle if there's as little hands-on education as there is today. We associate so many "necessary evils" with school, like boredom, waking up early, tests, etc. Everything is designed, almost to convince you that you're already in the cubicle farm. Teachers give you a powerpoint, read directly from it, make you copy down notes, etc. There are many teachers who drive away from this kind of droning, but many more who do. And perhaps making school take up all of your daylight is effective training to become a farmer or something, but for most normal people, daytime as well as night are equally good times to enjoy things other than school. It's no surprise that most children consider school some kind of horrific nemesis.

Which is why out of school things should be less associated with school. Homework (which I never get, so I can't be sure) is hated because it is associates the two periods of time kids live: school and out-of-school.

One other note. I would have to say only HALF the things you learn in life (not necessarily school) is HOW? School mostly teaches you WHY? You do not need to know WHY? to live, but to morely understand HOW? to do things betterly and do things better, you should know WHY?

 

[Damage]

Mathematics is the language of the universe itself. It is always correct, unambiguous and irrefutable.
Nothing else comes close.

 

[Vosty]

Mathematics is the language of the universe itself. It is always correct, unambiguous and irrefutable.
Nothing else comes close.

Not all mathematics is completely correct, but I get the point.
+ rep, though I wish I had the power to double rep.

 

[Duragon]

Mathematics is the language of the universe itself. It is always correct, unambiguous and irrefutable.
Nothing else comes close.

Actually, physics is the 'language' of the universe, and mathematics would be the alphabet for that language. Furthermore, it's a far cry from always correct, unambiguous (notations), and much of theoretical mathematics is refuted regularly.

 

[Damage]

That line above aren't my own words though, they're a quote from a teacher I had back in Secondary School (high school for you americans).

 

[Oohforf]

If only ONE course was to be mandatory, it would be math.

 

[Snarewave]

Im tellin ya, average people can live day to day life without highschool geometry.

 

[bounty hunter2]

History is a very important class to ensure that past mistakes aren't repeated, WWI and WWII for example.

Did knowledge of WWI stop WWII?

History does help in preventing mistakes, take the League of nations for instance, they did not have an army and the failed. Take UN, they now have an army, and they don't fail as much.

WWII was bound to happen, damn you Poles and your corridor to Gdansk, you just had to have the seaside.

Sarcasm, but who honestly cares? Russians. The French. The surrounds countries which I admit I do not know. I don't care. I failed my "Name every state and its capital" quiz. If and when I want to know these things, I look them up. I don't want to learn them otherwise. Nevertheless, geography information gets into my brain. The information is there and I pull it in, without trying. Can't be helped really

It's the world. I suppose you should know the bigger and more important countries, heck you should know atleast 50% of the countries, or you can spend the rest of your days living in a bubble in a house in some country.

---

To the topic. Some things should be mandatory, atleast in elementary school, and perhaps half of your high school education. Immaturity overcomes, no one would ever want to go to half of the subjects if you'd make them selectable.

Nothing is a must know, maths, literature, basic calculus. You can crawl somewhere and just die, knowing that you never knew anything and be happy about it. Or you can just go with the flow and do what the rest of the world does and takes for granted.

 

[Snarewave]

Nothing is a must know, maths, literature, basic calculus. You can crawl somewhere and just die, knowing that you never knew anything and be happy about it. Or you can just go with the flow and do what the rest of the world does and takes for granted.

Ehhh... you right, Im gonna stop whining now.

 

[Rui]

Im tellin ya, average people can live day to day life without highschool geometry.

They can, but remember that high school is also a preparation for the university. If you're not into Sciences or Economy, I don't understand why you're learning geometry. What course are you taking?

[...] To the topic. Some things should be mandatory, atleast in elementary school, and perhaps half of your high school education. Immaturity overcomes, no one would ever want to go to half of the subjects if you'd make them selectable. [...]

I'd select all the subjects, if the government let me =P. Then the school would be unable to fit me into a class's schedule. Actually, there would be no room in my schedule for all the courses.

 

[bounty hunter2]

Ehhh... you right, Im gonna stop whining now.

You missed my point, it being that you don't have to take any classes if you really don't want to, but some things just should be mandatory.

I'd select all the subjects, if the government let me =P. Then the school would be unable to fit me into a class's schedule. Actually, there would be no room in my schedule for all the courses.

Hehe, you would, along with perhaps 1% of the population, the rest 99% would take three subjects I suppose.

Btw, I used to have over 20 subjects in 4 years, having 18 subjects max (English, Spanish, Croatian, Latin, German, Math, Computer science, History, Geography, Politics, Ethics or Religion, Philosophy, Physics, Chemistry, Gymnastics, Art, Music, Psihology, Biology, Turistical Geography, Sociology.)

Only Turistical geography and Spanish weren't mandatory, seriously some of this subjects should have been selectable.

 

[sadvisor]

I hate maths.
It's not at all useless....I just hate it.

History and geography are not useless, not even a little bit. And if you think otherwise, then you sure don't know much about the world you're living in, that's for damn sure.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.", George Santayana.

 

[Snarewave]

Will you merry me?

 

[Destroyer25]

Obviously Math and Science are completely useless for some people. I want to be a History Teacher, so obviously they are of no importance at all. But if you want to be an Engineer, you need them. So it just depends on what you want to be, personally I think it would be awesome being able not to take them. But its part of your education, it might not be important in your career, but its good for your brain.

 

[Azeroc]

Math is a must for programming and architecture + few other proffesions.

Science... Well I guess that would be chemistry, physics and that stuff - good if you want to be chemist, biologist, doctor and etc.

It's "marry" btw.

 

[TwistedImage]

It's "marry" btw.

I think he misspelled it on purpose.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Maths is important. . . So is science. . .

Imagine not being able to calculate the impedience of a capacitor, where would your computers be...

Basically manditory maths is there for a reason, circle, compound interest, and shapes are all used in your everyday life. You may eventually want to buy a table, so you better understand what all the measurements will mean. Compound interest prevents banks from screwing you when paying for that table by you recognizing that on monthly payback scheems you will pay 2.5 times more for it. Stuff like that.

As for manditory science, it lets you understand basic underlying concepts, like how electricity behaves, why you get pregnant, how water boils etc.

All that stuff is pretty useful. . .
Now manditory english, thats pretty usless. . .

Anyway, if you think they are annoying, wait till you do University mathimatics, there they only care about giving you the concepts and mention nothing about why the hell you need to know them. They did not even explain what a complex number was proplerly, I had to pick that up from engineering.

 

[Rui]

[...] I want to be a History Teacher, so obviously they [Mathematics and Science] are of no importance at all. [...]

Do you work with Trigonometry and Vectors? That kind of Mathematics (called Mathematics A in my country) should be taught only to be people into Science or Economy. For people into History and Geography (which is what you're taking, I assume) there is Mathematics Applied to Social Sciences, which deals mainly with statistics.

 

[PurplePoot]

Why only to economists, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, etc? High school is about getting a basic understanding of the world, not specializing for your major.

 

[Rui]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but when I said «should be taught only to people into Science or Economy», I meant that that is the way the system should be like right now and not in the future. It works the way I stated in Portugal.

 

[Vulcano]

Daelin (if anyone still remembers who that is) once told me (or wrote?) he knew good computer programmers who failed at Mathematics. I assume that, likewise, you'll be able to do good at Physics without Maths(?), but you will always be conditioned on certain aspects.

Good at Physics is 100% impossible without Maths, and i can know it, I tried too study physics at university but it was to hard because of the high difficulty of the math (both in math classes and physics classes). Integration and differential equations are very common in proving theorems and making exercises in both math and physics classes.

I still remember daelin btw .

 

[TwistedImage]

Maths is important. . . So is science. . .

Imagine not being able to calculate the impedience of a capacitor, where would your computers be...

There would still be people interested in maths, thus there would still be computers. You don't see people making computers because they're forced to, hmm?

Basically manditory maths is there for a reason, circle, compound interest, and shapes are all used in your everyday life. You may eventually want to buy a table, so you better understand what all the measurements will mean. Compound interest prevents banks from screwing you when paying for that table by you recognizing that on monthly payback scheems you will pay 2.5 times more for it. Stuff like that.

You learn all that the first 5-7 years.

As for manditory science, it lets you understand basic underlying concepts, like how electricity behaves, why you get pregnant, how water boils etc.

All that stuff is pretty useful. . .
Now manditory english, thats pretty usless. . .

Hell yes, imagine a world where no one except those who were interested in language could communicate with foreigners! That would be so awesome!

Anyway, if you think they are annoying, wait till you do University mathimatics, there they only care about giving you the concepts and mention nothing about why the hell you need to know them. They did not even explain what a complex number was proplerly, I had to pick that up from engineering.

Answered in bold inside quote because I'm lazy.

 

[Dr Super Good]

TwistedImage. . . .
You failed to see the sarcasim of my first statement, 99.99% of humanity does not know how to do that, as you only need to know that for electronic engineering. . .

Secondly, in years 5 - 7 you learn shit all maths. Compound interest is only taught in highschool in about S3-S4, so is trigonometry (who says furnature is square?). All manditory maths you learn is useful, even if you think you never use it, your brain should still be able to understand it to help explain what happens around you.

Finally you failed to see what I meant about english being usless as a subject. I meant it from the point of view of someone who lives in a english country being forced to do it it later years not as a forighn lannguage. In my S3 - S4 English I learnt nothing new that I did not know when finishing S2, so ontop of ruining my report card it also equivently wasted 4 hours a week for 2 years. I would much rather put that time into maths or sciences so that you understand the world around you properly.

 

[Vosty]

^^^
Excuse me, but I would have to ask what S3 - S4 means. Then I will understand your post more...

 

[Dr Super Good]

They are years at school...
It goes P1-8 then S1-6. I left for university at the end of S5 after doing highers.

 

[Vosty]

I see, I was just lost at the P and S part.
Here we have:
Preschool (4 year olds. Basically social interaction. You don't learn anything, so I skipped it and stayed home instead.)
Kindergarten(6 year olds)
Grades 1 -8 (From 7 to about 14 years old.)
Highschool:
Freshman
Sophmore
Junior
Senior
Colledge:
Freshman
Sophmore
Junior
Senior

Yeah.

 

[TwistedImage]

Eh, no wonder I failed to see the sarcasm - you gotta make it really really obvious when you don't have your voice to complement it.


Also, you live in an English country..?

 

[Damage]

If I recall correctly, the S + P system is attributed to Scotland... I'm probably wrong though...

My stand on Maths, and Science is that both are needed for an every day understanding of the world. I think it also gives everyone at least some concept of how none-everyday objects function and generally improves the thinking capacity of the general populous.

In a world where people only learn what they want to learn I think we'd all be overly focused on particular tasks and it would be very difficult to retrain ourselves to do anything else should we lose our job or whatever.

The only thing I disagree with in Dr.Super Good's post though is that I do consider English (not as foreign language) to be a very important subject anyway. Beyond Spelling Punctuation and Grammar, I do believe that the ability to write reports and formal letters etc. are key skills in today's society.

 

[TwistedImage]

Damage here pretty much voiced my opinion. I'm not too good at that myself >_>

I do, however, think that courses shouldn't be mandatory after you're sixteen.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yes but like I said, S3 and 4 english which is still manditory does not teach you any of that.

 

[PurplePoot]

English makes you write essays where I am, and I assume where you are too. It seemed stupid and useless to me all through high school, but I now have noticed that I'm a much better writer due to it.

 

[TwistedImage]

I get essays in both Norwegian and English.

Everyone else whines about them being useless and suchlike, but I never saw them as such.

Direct reply to your post though: The average person really doesn't need to be a good writer.

 

[PurplePoot]

People going to university should be. The rest can drop out if they don't want to learn something.

 

[MySpaceBarBroke]

Direct reply to your post though: The average person really doesn't need to be a good writer.

The average person does, however, need to, at times, be able to present their thoughts in an efficient, well-organized manner.

 

[Dr Super Good]

University does not care one bit about how good your english is, as long as you can output and learn in the language. Well logically the art degrees do, but as long as you have some level of english, they let you in.

 

[PurplePoot]

University does not care one bit about how good your english is, as long as you can output and learn in the language. Well logically the art degrees do, but as long as you have some level of english, they let you in.

Not true. If you take any course involving writing (which spans beyond the arts) you need to be able to communicate effectively. Most peoples' writing is horrible, and that's after having improved it in English.

 

[Vulcano]

I see, I was just lost at the P and S part.
Here we have:
Preschool (4 year olds. Basically social interaction. You don't learn anything, so I skipped it and stayed home instead.)
Kindergarten(6 year olds)
Grades 1 -8 (From 7 to about 14 years old.)
Highschool:
Freshman
Sophmore
Junior
Senior
Colledge:
Freshman
Sophmore
Junior
Senior

Yeah.

woow, that's completely different then where i live:
3 years kindergarten (3-6 year olds)
6 years primary school (6-12 year olds)
6 years secondary school (12-18 year olds)

followed by any of the following:
-7th year secondary school
-3 years high-school, called professional bachelor.
-3 years high-school (called academic bachelor), followed by one 'master' year
-3 years university (called bachelor), followed by two 'master' years

 

[Slaydon]

[ offtoppic]

Frog

God Bless.

[ /offtopic]

They are usefull if you are going to have a job, my teacher had an example with this, that math is very usefull for any jobs, i agree with the circles, triangles and stuff, but not FROG. I cant remember the example tho

EDIT: I thought this thread was still on page 1, XD