I think it would help kids if we teach maths in tandem with the applicable science it is used in. Most kids find it too abstract to bother. I mean why not have an engineering or more advanced chemistry class in like High and Middle School.
I remember my class asking my 8th. grade algebra teacher “When are we going to use this?” regarding some complicated formula and him smugly replying “Never again for the rest of your lives.”
Then I got to college and had to take physics with calculus and it turns out, those formulas came from trying to solve actual problems. Some of them are used to find the integral for the mass of a weirdly shaped object, like a meteor. My 8th. grade teacher was just an asshole who probably killed dozens of children’s interest in math.
I think it would help kids if we teach maths in tandem with the applicable science it is used in. Most kids find it too abstract to bother. I mean why not have an engineering or more advanced chemistry class in like High and Middle School.
I remember my class asking my 8th. grade algebra teacher “When are we going to use this?” regarding some complicated formula and him smugly replying “Never again for the rest of your lives.”
Then I got to college and had to take physics with calculus and it turns out, those formulas came from trying to solve actual problems. Some of them are used to find the integral for the mass of a weirdly shaped object, like a meteor. My 8th. grade teacher was just an asshole who probably killed dozens of children’s interest in math.
I mean, your teacher was right for the majority of your classmates.