larkandkatydid:

probabilitydirigible:

foxnewsfuckfest:

rad-roach:

Higher math being a requirement to graduate high school is fucking insane and has pretty much no parallel in any other subject. Science, history, english, ect. all focus on giving you general knowledge on a wide variety of topics, but no, you’d better be able to do this advanced calculus formula that’s useful in only one (1) specific situation if you want that diploma. It would be like if 1/5th of your graduation exam depended on you being able to recite detailed facts about the biology of New World frogs entirely from memory. 

Wait where is this Earth 2 where high schools are requiring advanced calculus?

Also wait what- calc formula? Calculus is mostly just learning integration rules. That’s like saying “division formula”

I think this is one of those situations where, because all of us, at some point, went to high school, it’s easy to think that we all have an understanding of “what high school is like”, when we really have just a deep but narrow understanding of what our personal high school experience was like, heavily filtered through things like geography, race, class, etc. 

In the real world, the lack of access to advanced math coursework is a pressing civil rights issue and has a serious impact on everything from the (standardized testing) achievement gap to the continued under-representation of black and latinx people (especially women!) in STEM fields. 

First of all, only about half of American Public High Schools even offer calculus at all, and among  segregated high schools (schools that are more than 75% black or latinx) only a third offer calculus.  Only 75% of segregated high schools even offer Algebra 2, even though that is a standard college pre-req, meaning that black and latinx youth are often already starting college behind their white, suburban counterparts.

The links above are two short Atlantic articles, but the articles quote from the Office of Civil Rights at the Dept of Education’s report on the topic….however, the link is dead because that article was from June 2016 and the Office of Civil Rights at the Dept of Ed no longer exists. 

I also absolutely reject the idea that because a lot of people struggle with math the solution is to teach less math and let more kids!! (kids!!) take fucking wood shop as their math credit instead of investing in better math instruction.  Anyone is capable of mastering high school math and the belief that some people are just “not math people” or “not college material” is so toxic….if for no other reason than because of how smoothly our society is able to assign the quality of “not a math person” to the people we already have stereotyped as less smart or labelled as less worthy of access to power.