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Comment by oculusthrift | Hacker News Reader

hm, that's very debatable. alot would contend history and science are core but others aren't. I've heard many complain that they never use math in the real world. I think math is core but the problem is its very opinion based. I don't see how other subjects don't build on each other.

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If you sleep through European history, you can still learn American history. If you sleep through biology, you can still learn chemistry.

If you sleep through algebra, you can't do calculus, period.

100%

so true. STEM master race.

that's why anyone can just sit in a history or physics graduate level course and be fine because they don't build on each other.

Organic chemistry would never depend on bio or chem 1.

however, if you sleep through algebra 1, its not used at all in geometry so its fine. And neither are used in discrete math.

such a bubble..

what if i told you most students don't learn anything past algebra anyway?

Physics is applied Maths, of course they build on each other. History and historical knowledge builds on other things, geography most obviously, but primarily on itself. It’s easier to learn and remember history if you already know some. But having studied history it’s quite obvious that at an undergraduate level it builds on itself much, much less than something like Math or Physics. The degree to which upper level courses depend on lower level courses is minimal.

Different fields differ in how much they are built on mental models and how much they’re just a grab bag of connected facts you have to know and learn. Biology has more disconnected you just need to know it stuff than Chemistry.

I think you're reading a lot more into my comment than what's there. I'm not claiming that math classes have a completely linear dependency chain, nor am I saying that no other subjects have classes with meaningful dependencies, and I'm especially not claiming anything about graduate level course work in any subject.

Organic chemistry is not an elementary school course. Science taught in grade school usually has few inter-dependencies because it aims to cover a very broad range of topics at a very basic level. Ditto history.

> If you sleep through algebra, you can't do calculus, period.

Despite my best efforts in high school

Math is like going to the gym but for your brain. I consider it the most expensive sport that you can play. to do math You may never need anything you learn in math but I know it changes my problem solving abilities for the better. The more Math I know the more creative I can be when solving problems.

I agree with you 100% that the average person doesn't need math throughout their lives. We need to stress teaching statistics though in schooling (high school especialy) because that is something that manipulates people constantly .

I suspect it depends on the age of the students. In grade school when kids are learning to read and do addition, it's hard to imagine anything more core than that and science/history taught at that age is more about getting kids exposed to those concepts rather than actual learning. But once kids get to secondary school and English transitions to British Lit, American Lit and other variations on "read books and write an essays", the actual class time seems much less important than science classes where high school students actually learn the core tenets of Bio, Chem and Physics.

This policy is at an elementary school, but it’s probably a good assumption that a similar policy could adjust in high school for exactly that reason.

the importance of the ability to calculate and communicate are debatable only by people in total denial about how pervasive both are in our society. should those people really have any say in the curriculum of our children's future?

hm, that isn't what i said. You were ranking them relative to eachother and i said people might disagree on the relative rankings. I said that "people may disagree that math and english are more important than history and science". You responded as if i said "Math and english aren't important". Those are two completely different arguments.

Are the people who never use math high earners? If not, then their complaint actually supports the importance of math.

yeah. they start and run successful small businesses across the country. making millions of dollars. Outside of engineering and accounting, very few professions need math.

just because someone doesn't use math in the real world doesn't mean that it wouldn't benefit them to.

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