Question about school curriculums

[jesse220]

At what point did math stop being compulsory in your school and where do you live? Where I went to school in Canberra, Australia math class covered quadratic equations, matrices and logarithms (I couldn't do any of them now) before we were given the option to drop the class. I was wondering if this is common in other parts of the world.

What's interesting to me, is that even though I had no choice but to learn how to graph parabolas I was never given any opportunity to learn about the legal system, the political system, the tax system or even something simple like cooking, all of which would be handy to have learned at school.

 

[Genocidicles]

Maths is compulsory in Britain right up until you finish year eleven, when you leave school to go to college/sixth form at age 16. There are talks about extending it to 18 though, because we have some of the worst maths education in the first world or something.

Not sure how that's supposed to help though. The reason math results are so bad are because most people don't give a shit when they've already learned everything important the subject has to offer when they're about 10 (arithmetic and basic algebra). Everything else like Trigonometry is just thought of as pointless unless you plan on going into a career that requires it.

 

[mad825]

The reason math results are so bad are because most people don't give a shit when they've already learned everything important the subject has to offer when they're about 10 (arithmetic and basic algebra)..

Wait what? Algebra is useful in the real world?

Typically if you were doing a Btec course at collage with a grade lower than C, you'll be offered a chance to take key skills. You can also retake your GCSEs while you're at it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I live in California, and math never stopped being compulsory. I always thought that it was dumb that we had to learn things like Calculus, which the vast majority of us were never going to use, but we were never taught simple life skills, like how to balance a check book, how to pay your taxes, etc.

But yeah, I never had the option of dropping math. I had to take math classes all the way through high school, and then I had 2 more required math courses in college. I was in a major that does not use math.

 

[Esotera]

UK - it was compulsory until the age of 16, although you could choose to do a 'foundation' qualification in it that essentially meant you didn't have to learn most of it. The curriculum wasn't anywhere near enough rigorous & completely lacked the fundamentals of statistics & calculus, which didn't prepare me well for a science degree at all. It would be useful to have more practical applications of maths such as doing taxes/budgeting though, as was mentioned in the OP.

 

[omega 616]

To expand on the UK posters answers, you do have to do math till you leave high school but there are different levels.

The top sets do exactly what you're talking about but I was in one of the lowest ones and I never even did trigonometry. All I did was more basic math to basic algebra, dipping our toes into expanding brackets.

Though I still maintain that most of math is useless. Like I just said, I never did really advanced stuff but even I never use most of stuff I got taught. Since leaving school I have never had to work out an area of anything, I've never used any kind of algebra and I've never had to do anything with fractions.

I say teach kids until they are just badasses at the real basic stuff, you know the stuff that will be used every day. Then as they get to A* level move them on to the other crap, that the education board deems necessary.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

For me every student had to complete at least four years worth of high school level math, but that didn't necessarily mean they had it until they finished high school, for a couple of reasons. One (and the one I got out of math in Senior year because of) is that the middle schools at least used to offer the same honors algebra course students usually take freshman year of highschool in the eighth grade for the advanced students, so that you only have three courses left to take when you actually start with highschool, unless you want to go nuts and take Calculus or something. The other is that there's ways to get more than one of those courses in one year. They don't do this anymore, but when I was in school there was some leeway in how the classes would be scheduled at the individual school level, instead of at the district or state level. So some schools had students going to seven classes every day, some had them going to four each of eight classes total every other day, some had some other variation on that, and then there was the way my school did it: you took eight classes in a year, but only four each semester, kind of like college. So if we wanted to take both a course and its prerequisite in the same year and we had room to do it and still graduate on time, we could. There's also a state run online highschool that students can enroll in while still attending their regular high school. I took a couple of required but useless courses on that Senior year so I could get away with having three electives and only one actual class while on campus every day -- for the first semester, that is. Second semester was more like two and two

TL;DR: It depended. You had to take one every year until highschool, at which point things opened up a bit. There were a certain number of courses you had to take in high school, and there were a few different ways of getting them out of the way. Most students had to take at least one a year until they graduated, but if you were both smart and dedicated enough to handle it, as well as in a school with the right kind of scheduling, you could theoretically be done with math by the end of your second year (of four), although if you were that good with math chances were you planned on taking additional, higher level courses anyway.

Edit: Oh, and I live in Florida. Education is primarily run by the state governments in the US, and they delegate a lot of stuff further to the individual districts, so what things were like for me may not be indicative of what they were like for someone on the other end of the state, let alone the other end of the country.

 

[CriticalMiss]

A lot of the maths we learned at school was fairly usless in the real world, but was ok for people who wanted to go on to fields that require at least more than the basic maths skills (the sciences, business etc). I think it would be more valuable to kids to learn the maths skills required to handle their finances, understand banking/insurance and do their taxes rather than teach them how to find angles on triangles. That stuff can be important to some kids, but most aren't going to ever need it. Chances are they will have to pay taxes though.

 

[Pseudoboss]

In the US, it seems that maths stops being compulsory right when it starts to become interesting.
Trigonometry is the first class that I realized "holy shit, I can actually use this!" I was so glad that I started on that path. (though admittedly I was also taking trig-based physics at the same time, so that helped.) When I started on Calculus, I started actively trying to find places where it would be useful, and I found quite a few.

Though I think that the maths education is so very wrong in the first place. They teach it as a standalone subject, which it is not.
Maths is completely and utterly useless when on its own. It starts to become interesting when you learn how to apply it to the real world.
If instead of us having calculus and physics as separate courses, if instead we merged it into "calc-based physics" where the math is shown when the science needs it, suddenly you have the elusive beast of context. If we were to do actually interesting problems in calc, rather than "block A has a mass of x, block B has a mass of y." We instead learned about Newton's laws in the context of a rocket, culminating in going outside, videoing a model rocket being launched and then finding all the various parts of it, force, power, work, drag, suddenly both trigonometry (or calculus) and physics is instantly more interesting, the course would take up two classes' or more of time, but be engaging and interesting throughout.
It's a real shame that US schooling has done everything in its power to be as useless and esoteric as possible.

A similar thing could be done with algebra and chemestry.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Canada, grade 10 in most provinces, varies though. There are extra high-school courses you can take if you really want to.

<a href=http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/dropping-math-and-science-comes-with-a-high-cost-report-finds-1.1488321>Math is pretty important for all the top jobs here, which is why a ton of schools like to try and force it as much as possible.

I'm a math guy, so I'd be generally for mandatory till-college math. If just for the logic and problem solving-skills later math courses teach.

 

[Joccaren]

At what point did math stop being compulsory in your school and where do you live? Where I went to school in Canberra, Australia math class covered quadratic equations, matrices and logarithms (I couldn't do any of them now) before we were given the option to drop the class. I was wondering if this is common in other parts of the world.

What's interesting to me, is that even though I had no choice but to learn how to graph parabolas I was never given any opportunity to learn about the legal system, the political system, the tax system or even something simple like cooking, all of which would be handy to have learned at school.

Hehe, Melbourner here.
Math is compulsory until year 10. After that it is highly recommended and at least one math subject is required for a LOT of Uni courses. Of course this usually means Further Maths instead of Methods or Spec, which is basically just a revision of everything done up until year 10 +matrices and networking, but its still a math subject.

Year 10 maths here didn't even cover matrices. We got Unit Circles and Trig, We got Logs and quadratics, we got a lot of geometry, but no matrices. Kinda sad considering they are the easiest thing in maths to do, especially when you're allowed your calculator for every question related to them -.-

In the US, it seems that maths stops being compulsory right when it starts to become interesting.
Trigonometry is the first class that I realized "holy shit, I can actually use this!" I was so glad that I started on that path. (though admittedly I was also taking trig-based physics at the same time, so that helped.) When I started on Calculus, I started actively trying to find places where it would be useful, and I found quite a few.

Though I think that the maths education is so very wrong in the first place. They teach it as a standalone subject, which it is not.
Maths is completely and utterly useless when on its own. It starts to become interesting when you learn how to apply it to the real world.
If instead of us having calculus and physics as separate courses, if instead we merged it into "calc-based physics" where the math is shown when the science needs it, suddenly you have the elusive beast of context. If we were to do actually interesting problems in calc, rather than "block A has a mass of x, block B has a mass of y." We instead learned about Newton's laws in the context of a rocket, culminating in going outside, videoing a model rocket being launched and then finding all the various parts of it, force, power, work, drag, suddenly both trigonometry (or calculus) and physics is instantly more interesting, the course would take up two classes' or more of time, but be engaging and interesting throughout.
It's a real shame that US schooling has done everything in its power to be as useless and esoteric as possible.

A similar thing could be done with algebra and chemestry.

Yeah, the same thing down here in Aus, and I'd guess the rest of the world. The given reason for it was, IIRC, that when they previously did have things like calculus based Physics [They also had a dedicated math subject but W/E], fewer people took Physics because they believed it to be too hard. So they simplified the physics subject, and pretty much completely separated Physics and Math. Finding an area under a graph in Physics is a matter of "Count the squares" these days, which is year 3 work. Kinda sad, but down here at least they needed some way to attract people to Physics.

 

[Colour Scientist]

In Ireland, Maths is compulsory until you finish secondary school altogether.

Maths, English and Irish are all compulsory if you want to get into university.

Woop woop!

It's slowly changing though.

 

[jesse220]

Hehe, Melbourner here.
Math is compulsory until year 10. After that it is highly recommended and at least one math subject is required for a LOT of Uni courses. Of course this usually means Further Maths instead of Methods or Spec, which is basically just a revision of everything done up until year 10 +matrices and networking, but its still a math subject.

Cool, I'm moving down to Melbourne at the end of the year and I've been looking at a lot of courses in Melbourne Unis and the entry requirements seem to be more or less the same as Sydney and Canberra.

 

[Matilda Ward]

At what point did math stop being compulsory in your school and where do you live? Where I went to school in Canberra, Australia math class covered quadratic equations, matrices and logarithms (I couldn't do any of them now) before we were given the option to drop the class. I was wondering if this is common in other parts of the world.

What's interesting to me, is that even though I had no choice but to learn how to graph parabolas I was never given any opportunity to learn about the legal system, the political system, the tax system or even something simple like cooking, all of which would be handy to have learned at school.

Really? You had the option to drop maths entirely? At my school maths was compulsory but you could choose between super-hard-maths, not-as-super-hard-but-still-reasonably-difficult-maths or useful maths. We also had cooking but it didn't contribute to your overall OP.

 

[Fox12]

In America you can't drop math at all. It's compulsory through high school, and if you go to college then you can look forward to several more classes, depending on what your major is.

 

[Brian Tams]

Its compulsory in the US. However, the way my state worked it is that they extended the definition of what qualified as a math class your senior year(I did AP Physics my senior year and was exempt from a math class because of it.)

 

[Chemical Alia]

If I recall correctly, I had to take math until 11th grade. I only got as far as Algebra II. I also only had to take one math class in college, in which we drew pictures of pie charts and colored them with crayons and counted in different base numbers. It seemed a lot easier than high school, yet I still got a C.

I had some really poor math teachers over the years, and learned basically nothing. That's why I draw pictures of Mario for a living.

 

[soren7550]

Thanks to the crap public education system we have in place here, dropping math was never an option, as was English and Science due to the fact that the schools get money based on how well the school does on the standardized city and state tests, which preparation for took up about 75% of your time at school.

Safe to say that almost all that time was wasted, since almost none of it has never come up for use in real life, nor do I remember most any of it. Ya know, because training students to take tests is a better use for time than preparing them for the outside world.

 

[joshuaayt]

Here in NSW, we have several compulsory subjects- English, Math, History, Geography, Science- until we hit our Higher School Certificate years, 11 and 12.
Then only English is compulsory. Not really sure *why* it is, but I certainly never complained, I do love me some English.