• dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 years ago

    I don’t understand, out of all of the things that we teach students in schools, out of all of the things that people don’t demand justification for learning, why Maths gets all of the flak. It’s the foundation on which the universe exists. If people don’t understand that they’re not just learning trigonometry “just cuz” then they probably don’t have much of a career in STEM planned for themselves. Which is fine, but western society’s blindspot for STEM is 100% attributed to the intentional undermining and dumbing-down of the education system.

    We regularly don’t give students justification for why they learn grammar, biology, chemistry, physics, visual art, and music. But as soon as you show someone a standard polynomial, they lose their fucking minds.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      2 years ago

      For me, my “education” with math was "when you see this: 5/73¥π7^t then you use 5-8(25&6)_9gh8/6 not 5&6(9!4_89) ok memorize it for the test.

      Oh you want to know why or what it does or what it even is? No that’s college work. You’re in highschool, memorize it because reasons.

      Yeah… That’s not how my brain works no matter how badly I wish I did. I need to UNDERSTAND not memorize! I can’t memorize seemingly arbitrary bullshit that has no explained meaning. My brain instantly tosses it as irrelevant information.

    • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I dunno, I see people complain about “why do we have to read books that are hundreds of years old?” too pretty frequently. Some people are just hostile to education. Honestly, cost aside, I’m a little disappointed in the number of people who complain about college as if the only thing you get out of college is a piece of paper.

    • DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      It’s the exposure that undermines it. Their isn’t enough exposure to real life application and examples. How many people never realise that velocity is a derivative of position over time or acceleration is a derivative of velocity over time. Or that the speed of light is a horizontal asymptote for matter.