alt Hacker News>“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” they warned.
i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math.
i teach. my courses have prerequisites. if a student somehow makes it into my class without a passing-grade grasp of the prerequisites, i will point them in the right direction to get caught up, but i am not spending any class time on it. its not fair to the other students.
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> i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math.
"gaps" implies a critical mass of students who require middle-school math reteaching.
> i teach.
If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time, you did one of the following with that class:
* graded on a curve so you don't fail half the class
* failed half the class, and got suspended (pours one out for my compsci professor in college who did that!)
Which was it?
They could just accept the kids who are at or above grade level. There are way more kids at or above grade level who graduate from California high school like my nephew who took AP calc and missed only question on the math of his SAT. He couldn't get into any UC schools and instead had to leave the state for college.
We could set up a standardized test for the UC schools ensure that the students being accepted have minimum baseline normalized across all applicants. We could call it scholastic aptitude test or the American College Test.
It's a different country and a different time, but when I studied (a natural science) there were dedicated courses at the start for refreshing high school math. Those were optional, and covered relatively simple topics.
There was also a real math lecture that went into topics above high school math, but also contained some repetition. All other courses mostly relied on what was contained there.
So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed.
I agree with you and think this claim needs a lot more evidence. In my university we have been providing remedial math classes for freshman students for a long time. They must pass these before taking regular classes that have math prerequisites.
Now imagine a significant portion of your students are missing the prerequisites.
Do you really think these professors are up in arms about a few students who don't have the prereqs? It obviously must be a large enough proportion to worry about.
It's no longer "if a student somehow makes it into my class", it's "many students are currently making it into my class"
What isn’t fair is for schools to take students’ matriculation and set them up for years of debt, apparently without any intention of educating them properly as per your comment. Better for schools to just screen based on standardized test scores
Have you observed a reduction in the number of students who match those pre-requisites over time?
Because the like teaching and believe in giving their students/customers the best possible education?
I get not wanting to waste the time of the better students, but if too many student are behind, whose time are you really wasting?
Professors who fail large swathes of their classes get in trouble.