Re: Zits 1 Sep: Calculus?

My youngest took pre-calc last year (10th grade); he goes to an unusual
high school and has to go out of the building to take calculus - either
to one of the other high schools or to the local community college,
we're sorting that out as I type.

So calculus *has* moved down, however my impression is that 9th (or
even 10th) grade would be exceptional even today.

I agree that calculus as "moved down" from when I was in high school (late
'70s), when the only on-campus option I had was a 12th-grade "pre-calculus"
class considered a warm-up to real math to come at the university. I could
have taken calc at a local community college and some of my friends did, but
it wasn't the norm.

My girls just graduated from a high school that I believe offered a calculus
class (real calc, not "pre") as early as 11th grade, allowing for time to
take the prerequisites.

In general, I find that kids of my daughters' generation are coming out of
public schools much better educated and prepared than I was, and I was no
slouch. My experience is merely a microcosm of the larger U.S. education
picture and maybe things are worse elsewhere than I can imagine, but when I
hear the chronic lament that today's kids are stupider than ever I just
shake my head. The ones I know are pretty impressive.

Brian F.
momscancer.com


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Prolems in Mathematics Education
    ... of my duties included placement of students with prerequisite issues, including freshmen and transfers from other universities and colleges. ... Most local students taking AP Calculus do not bother to actually ... is a review of things covered in high school. ... College Algebra and then business calculus is too much for their students to handle, and have tried several times to eliminate any math for them at ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Pedagogical uses of a CAS with high school or undergraduate students
    ... > of a CAS with high school or undergraduate ... > students, ... classical Newtonian physics is based on calculus. ... learning the CAS. ...
    (sci.math.symbolic)
  • Re: BC (2-12)
    ... "Mathematicians") had an ongoing rivalry with the senior honors English ... openly give my allegiance to the Poets rather than the Mathematicians ... the calculus teacher (which I could pull off only ... report back to my high school teacher a couple of years later when I ...
    (rec.arts.comics.strips)
  • Re: Socialism in SF
    ... more likely some years ago (vs nowadays) that if you had calculus in ... high school, you probably learned a great deal of it. ... especially with the super-expansion in the offering of AP Calculus, ... stuff you'd want students to learn in a differential calculus course, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Chemical Engineering
    ... >>Although going into my senior year i have exhausted my schools science ... Would my best course of action be to pick up college ... Get all the calculus you can. ... Failure of an optional AP calculus course in high school just means you wasted ...
    (sci.chem)