As you know I largely loathe and despise English teachers. It is nothing short of child abuse that we force millions of children every year to essentially sit in a prison, 9 months a year, and learn a language they already know.
Yes, I know grades K-4 are necessary to learn to read and write.
Yes, I know things like penmanship, reading and writing are necessary to become effective communicators in the real world.
But the mental abuse (post 4th grade) of forcing children to learn obsolete, unnecessary, and idiotic things like "dangling participles," "dipthongs," and diagramming sentences is mere make-slavery-work-child-labor to employ (largely) 20 something girls too lazy to do math and instead chose to become English teachers.
But before we get too riled up about the all-too-common liberal arts teachers, we need to focus on math teachers.
Oh yes.
For while they may (and for all practical points and purposes do) deliver a real and needed education to the children, there is one subsegment of math that is as obsolete as learning the difference between an adjective and an adverb.
Integers
Whole Numbers
Rational Numbers
Irrational Numbers
Natural Numbers
and any other vocabulary terms anal retentive math purists foisted on otherwise unsuspecting and innocent child math geniuses
Not once, in all of my math studies, was it necessary for me to know what the hell those aforementioned things are/were.
Multivariable regression was used to program models that would predict GDP growth.
Correlation coefficients and other statistical measures used to test relationships with different economic and financial phenomena.
I've even used trig to measure the side of a roof for a shed I was building.
But never, EVER have I or anybody else ever had to know what an integer was or what a "natural" number was.
The truth is the only thing these "things" serve is to lower the test scores of math geniuses and give math teachers who can't do math something to belabor their children over for a week's worth of material and lesson plans. No doubt there's going to be some idiot "professional educator" that's going to parrot the reason why we teach such unneeded poppy cock, and I'm sure some mathematician is going to explain the "importance" of differentiating between and integer and a "whole number." But in the end we all know it's an unnecessary hoop we make children, math textbook publishers, and teachers jump through, wasting calories of energy that could be used studying and teaching math that actually matters and has real world applications.
Yes, I know grades K-4 are necessary to learn to read and write.
Yes, I know things like penmanship, reading and writing are necessary to become effective communicators in the real world.
But the mental abuse (post 4th grade) of forcing children to learn obsolete, unnecessary, and idiotic things like "dangling participles," "dipthongs," and diagramming sentences is mere make-slavery-work-child-labor to employ (largely) 20 something girls too lazy to do math and instead chose to become English teachers.
But before we get too riled up about the all-too-common liberal arts teachers, we need to focus on math teachers.
Oh yes.
For while they may (and for all practical points and purposes do) deliver a real and needed education to the children, there is one subsegment of math that is as obsolete as learning the difference between an adjective and an adverb.
Integers
Whole Numbers
Rational Numbers
Irrational Numbers
Natural Numbers
and any other vocabulary terms anal retentive math purists foisted on otherwise unsuspecting and innocent child math geniuses
Not once, in all of my math studies, was it necessary for me to know what the hell those aforementioned things are/were.
Multivariable regression was used to program models that would predict GDP growth.
Correlation coefficients and other statistical measures used to test relationships with different economic and financial phenomena.
I've even used trig to measure the side of a roof for a shed I was building.
But never, EVER have I or anybody else ever had to know what an integer was or what a "natural" number was.
The truth is the only thing these "things" serve is to lower the test scores of math geniuses and give math teachers who can't do math something to belabor their children over for a week's worth of material and lesson plans. No doubt there's going to be some idiot "professional educator" that's going to parrot the reason why we teach such unneeded poppy cock, and I'm sure some mathematician is going to explain the "importance" of differentiating between and integer and a "whole number." But in the end we all know it's an unnecessary hoop we make children, math textbook publishers, and teachers jump through, wasting calories of energy that could be used studying and teaching math that actually matters and has real world applications.
