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Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

they are screaming Fire!!..no one is listening. The only solution is to split public schools into two streams STEM and liberal arts studies(I don’t know what it’s called).+ more vocational/trade schools. We can’t cater to the lowest common denominator in math.

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This makes no sense - stem and liberal arts aren’t mutually exclusive things you can just separate. In fact math itself is generally thought to be part of the “liberal arts”, along with logic, which could be said to be the precursor to computer science.

I read that as "stem & liberal arts" as one stream and "vocational/trade schools" as the second stream.

We don't need more trade schools though. Over here on hacker news many of us have day jobs eliminating those jobs. While we won't succeed (and trades are still a better job than many artistic degrees) there are a lot of kids going into them. Most trades are also taught on the job. Want to be a carpenter - you can start tomorrow morning at 7am in any large city. From there you can branch out if you want.

The majority of programming jobs, DevOps jobs, etc. could be learned in a trade school. Only a minority of programming jobs really require a four year CS degree.

Also, is that true that most trades can be learned on the job without prior training? I thought you needed a decent amount of training to be a plumber, electrician, etc.

See "Modern usage" in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

"The modern use of the term liberal arts consists of four areas: the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities."

So no, math is not "generally thought" to be part of the liberal arts.

If you read the whole "Modern usage" section rather than just the first line, you will see that mathematics is listed prominently there (and also logic, CS, physics, etc...).

So you're of the belief that Physics, which is considered a natural science, does not require "math"?

Interesting.

I had two different Physics teachers/classes in high school.

One was almost entirely conceptual and provided a fantastic base with which to reason about the world. Everything was explained completely without math and then a little bit of math (usually no higher than basic algebra) was used to describe what we had just developed to fulfill basic requirements of the curriculum. People had wonderful conversations about how things worked and understanding was developed from observation and intuition.

The other was almost completely the opposite direction and calculus based. I often found errors in the application of math and reasoning about the subject. There was a moment where the teacher couldn't be convinced that something he said was wrong because of the math he was looking at. Years later, in a college Physics course, a similar core concept was covered and I was internally vindicated.

Einstein/Feynman were known to be highly conceptual and the math was often worked out after a thought experiment. A famous quote by Einstein, "Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater."

It all depends on how it is taught.

All of that being said, Mathematics is an excellent tool to sharpen ones ability to reason.

It then goes on to say:

Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:

Life sciences (biology, ecology, neuroscience)

Physical science (physics, astronomy, chemistry, physical geography)

Logic, mathematics, statistics, computer science

Philosophy

History

Social science (anthropology, economics, human geography, linguistics, political science, jurisprudence, psychology, and sociology)

Creative arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)

How can you do natural sciences without math?

there is little science without mathematics

liberal arts may include parts of stem, but stem and humanities are pretty much disjoint, which is probably a better way to have this discussion. I think there's an argument for not forcing people who are interested/capable in stem to suffer through perfunctory humanities courses (and vice versa).

is something lost when someone learns about propositional logic and set theory without learning about the vienna circle and logical positivism? yes. does it matter very much practically? probably not, and stem people who are interested in that kind of thing can probably pick it up on their own.

> not forcing people who are interested/capable in stem to suffer through perfunctory humanities courses

I hated my humanities courses all through middle and high school and college. I took as many advanced math/science courses as my high school had. I graduated from a well-regarded technical university.

My humanities courses have probably had more positive impact on my career earnings than my tech courses. I feel like I should find my old English teachers and apologize to them.

You hated them for the reason most STEM track students do- because they're hard.

They're not disjoint. At an advanced level, subjects like linguistics and psychology heavily cross displines with mathematics, logic, and neuroscience at least.

Students probably shouldn't be falling hard on one side or the other any earlier than they already do lest even more of them believe they are completely unrelated.

My take on the core skills for any educated individual:

Be able to write well to communicate your ideas clearly and persuade people to your position.

Be able to apply math to a variety of practical problems.

I think that prepares you to specialize in any field later.

Effectively most high and even middle schools are already split in the sense that students can take more or less math based on interest and skill. At my daughters' middle school there were three tracks: low, medium and high. My kids were in medium and high level and the curriculum was different for each. By the time they were in 11 or 12 grade they had maxxed out math (including calculus) and could have taken college math (but chose not to).

I think the complaint from the left is that minorities don't end up in the higher math offerings because they are either not offered at certain schools or, for whatever reason, unattractive to those students. That's the problem that needs to be fixed. Whether any public school can do that is questionable.

I don't think they're complaining about the programs not being offered, since their "solution" is to stop offering them completely.

Not exactly, it sounds to me that the idea is to push out Algebra I and offer the data-sciency, more "equitable" option earlier. Nerdy kids would still go through the Algebra-Calc-AP track but on a slightly different schedule.

But liberal arts includes math and science. They are two of the cores. Maybe you are thinking of humanities?

In my local school district there is a dedicated Arts School (Art, Music, Dance, etc.) for grades 6-12 and a dedicated STEM school for grades 6-12. Kids within the district have to apply to get accepted to either of them otherwise they just go to the traditional middle/high schools.

A neighboring district has a similar school geared towards Healthcare.

These schools obviously teach all necessary subjects but have more advanced classes geared towards those subjects than your average school would have.

Such fixes are obvious, but they're "racist", and as such won't be resolved in a sane manner.

We've got molten lava in our mouths that we can neither spit nor swallow.

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