Last year I worked at a local school on a long term substitute position teaching Algebra II and Geometry. This year I have been back to that school several times as a regular substitute. There is a math teacher that I have become pretty good friends with there. Last time I was there, she came to be with concerns about some students in her Trigonometry classes. There are several students in those classes that failed my Algebra II class.
This is a bit of an outrage for me. Back when I was in high school there were certain requirements for taking high level classes. Then to take Trig, you had to have a C or better in Alg II. And for a good reason, there's a lot of algebra in Trig. It doesn't make sense with out it. Sadly the school board has done away with such requirements. This doesn't work in the maths where each course builds off the previous. Students can now sign up and take any class they want. A high school senior that can't add fractions and cringes at the sight of a graph or a percent sign can sign up for AP Calculus if they so desired.
The students in question are doing the same thing in her class they were doing in mine - not showing up, not doing their work, failing tests. Personally, while I feel they just as deserving of an education as any other student, they are wasting the teacher's time in a higher level class and need to retake the courses they failed or go to something lower.
Even more sadly, such a system is only seting these students up for failure. They are going to be in for one serious rude awakening if they go on to college.
With the maths, the foundation starts in the elementary school. What I have learned is that at about 3rd grade is when they get introduced to the calculator. We were not allowed those when I was in 3rd grade! The teachers would take them away. That held true up until I was in high school. So many of my students last year were mindlessly dependent on the calculator. Math is not a course in how to mash buttons on a calculator. When a high school Junior cannot multipy 6 by 7 and come out with 42 on his own, somebody failed miserably in his education. Several somebodies. This is something that the public schools need to realize and do something about.
Blindly pushing them through the system and allowing them to take classes they can in no way handle will in the end produce failures.
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