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Comment by ausjke | Hacker News Reader

This is not just Math.

I learnt chemistry, physics, biology and all that from middle to high school. Now as a software engineer they're totally useless and I have long forgotten all those details that I spent months and years to memorize and master. Even reading a science-101 book in one day now will teach me more than what I can remember. Unless you plan to major in those fields, should we just take some introduction courses instead?

Also I can testify that I rarely need use any math beyond 8th grade since graduate school as a software engineer, I mean those calculus, matrix theory, fuzzy logic, neural network, etc. Well I may pick up some AI stuff now, but it's more like a start-from-scratch-now as I forgot what I learnt then totally already.

So yes the education system can be optimized to be more efficient.

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I would argue that it's valuable in itself to actually know what the humanity has found about the universe and how it works and how this method called science is supposed to work.

The only purpose of the continued existence of the mankind is only what we ourselves decide upon and make our purpose. What is the best of ourselves? Towards what end should we aspire to? The greater understanding of nature and ourselves and history and truth and beauty, or being marginally more effective in producing more shiny skinner boxes to enthral our neighbours? The man standing on the Moon, or a new fancy gadget that wibbles and wobbles a bit better than the previous version on wibble-wobbler?

Especially so in the western societies, where the ideal is that citizens vote and participate in the public life and make collectively decisions. Plato claimed that society should be ruled by philosopher-kings. There are many reasons why his utopia would not work out in real life without being utterly horrible, but one thing that we ourselves, who have the right to vote, try our best to be a worthy of the tiny bit of the crown of a philosopher-king that democracy grants us as our right.

Of course, not too many people seem to be interested in being curious about universe. Sometimes it makes me despair.

I firmly believe that one of the failings of the way we teach most subjects is that there is a very low amount of application. Grinding away and learning the theory is almost useless; for most people as soon as they move on it's out of their head and gone forever, with maybe a ghost of a memory that the topic exists.

It's a shame, because some of these things are valuable to know.

If you're felling a tree, trigonometry is pretty useful for trying to figure out whether you've got room to drop it without hitting your house. Also, when you're building that house, for how long you need to cut your rafters to get the right pitch on your roof.

You don't necessarily need to know chemistry to cook, but it doesn't hurt, and you'll understand why you need to use baking powder instead of baking edit: soda when you bake your biscuits.

There's a lot of basic physics and mechanics that can be incredibly useful if you're trying to lift heavy objects with less than adequate equipment.

Matching people with the professional roles that are best for each other is highly valuable - so even if most people forget chemistry, it's often worth teaching, because the introductory chemistry class is how chemists decided to become chemists.

yes my point is how deep you need learn, maybe have some introduction courses at middle school is a good idea.

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