When I’m in a complaining about things that are actually good competition and my opponent is crankyrebel
Sometimes what they’re teaching you isn’t what they’re teaching you.
Maybe you don’t need to know how to find the exact surface area of a cone ever again, but the idea of unwrapping a cone to measure the surface area leaves an impression of a technique for deconstructing a problem, or that problems can be deconstructed into simpler parts at all. It also leaves you with a feel for roughly what the surface area of different shapes would be.
Using a protractor teaches you how to measure accurately and use tools.
Cursive and recorder teaches hand eye coordination, and music is just fundamental to human beings.
Then again maybe you do need to find the surface area of a cone one day, and you could probably go ahead and work out how that would be done even if you don’t remember exactly.
What’s the counterproposal for a curriculum? I’m genuinely curious here, not trying to jump down anyone’s throat. What would school look like without these things?
Well, concepts come to me easy and then stick with me forever. But memorization? Not at all, thus i’m not fit for the science route.
That’s why in ny opinion it’s criminal that for most high school math stops before calculus. Calculus wraps up so many loose ends and replaces rote memorization techniques with understanding. Why exactly is the area of a ___ = (formula)? Calculus answers that.
The quadratic formula too, calc replaces it. In fact if I had my way with the curriculum we would skip that one entirety in algebra. I’d also throw in a statistics class, which would directly impact just about everyone’s lives, but that’s another matter.
I never learned my times tables either. We don’t teach them anymore anyway.
A = pi*r2*h/3
That’s not the area
Shit you right, that’s volume.
I guess if you’re an ape-man living alone in the woods, a broad education is pretty useless. ;)
Critical thinking is important, y’all.
That listicle in the link includes as 2 of the 13 items using a protractor and knowing the pythagorean theorem.
I have needed both of those things just this summer, and just as part of a hobby! When building things even just knowing the 3-4-5 shortcut for the pythagorean theorem is incredibly handy.
Yeah this seems generally opposed to the concept of a general education. I get that many people don’t like that they had to learn all these things in an environment that generally sucked to be in, but also basic understanding of math, science, language, music, etc is just a nice thing for everyone to possess.
Like several of these things will be tangentially encountered at various points in your life. Yeah I’ve never had to write in cursive, but I’ve had to read it. I haven’t done much chemistry since college, but carbon sure comes into the news a whole lot. I don’t use a protractor much, but I’ve had to imagine them for various uses of space. I don’t diagram sentences often, but it’s really useful when learning a foreign language, and also way too much of the country thinks pronouns were invented in the 21st century. Communal making of music is something that used to be normal as a fun way to pass an evening and recorders are cheap and easy for children to learn.
also basic understanding of math, science, language, music, etc is just a nice thing for everyone to possess
Hear, hear!
You know, it also kind of sucks to live among a bunch of ignoramuses that don’t know how anything works, who fear and hate people who look and act different, and who fall for the most low-effort lies and propaganda out there.
And yeah, since my experience is that I enjoy and appreciate life more as I learn more about the universe, and I would like others to enjoy existence, it IS a nice thing for everyone to possess!
The contempt for education is mind-boggling even on Lemmy.
The literal Science Memes community was mocking higher education and the thread was full of people trying to convince others to never go to college. It’s bizarre how strong the anti-education sentiment is around here.
There’s a weird anti-intellectual contingent on Lemmy. I saw a dude the other day who was going on about how debt was the ultimate evil and then when questioned on it said that the entire study of economics was a conspiracy to make people want debt. Now there are kooky people on all platforms but this guy was getting upvoted a decent amount. I have also been downvoted a few times for pointing out flat out inaccuracies people have said about various religions and their beliefs because “religion bad” outweighs all logic.
one time the state of Indiana almost made pi equal to 3.2. This is the dumb shit that happens when you aren’t introduced to these topics in school. Please don’t return us to dark times.
I don’t need to find the surface area of a cone to smoke it
Except special needs, in our daily life is often needed geometry, trigonometry and algebra more than we think, but in the professional use it’s more like this:
You can lead a horse to water … I get the sentiment though. Schooling is a great idea that is too often poorly executed. I’ve found that educational materials for math and science sometimes have a circlejerk kind of attitude, like the authors are laughing at the thought of students struggling with a problem “left as an exercise to the reader” immediately following a wall of dense, incomprehensible text.
Where can I find examples of otherwise dry subjects taught well? Is there an educational system that’s praised in the same way they praise Scandinavian prisons? Or is the pain of learning just a necessary evil?
Lots of subjects are taught well in video games, intentionally or not
Some people can absently smoke a cigarette by the river, fully unaware of the fact that the volume of their tits has changed by .17% in the last 24 hours.
It’s not about the area of the cone. It’s about dissecting a problem to find that it is composed of smaller problems that you can solve more easily. It’s about recognizing the similarities to what you know in something you haven’t seen before.
Unfortunately that isn’t something you can teach without lots of arbitrary and pointless examples.
Also as a joke, it’s so unoriginal. I’ve seen a million of these same jokes about ‘useless stuff they taught you in school’ and they’re all so unfunny and tired—especially after the first time. Say something new.
Working in agriculture and you’ll find the need to calculate the area or volume or something very often.
All of these people who don’t apply the things they learn in school just don’t really think that much in my opinion.
When I was in the military in a leadership class, we had to use a protractor to calculate angles and distances on the map given a bunch of coordinates. I realized these were all right triangles, said fuck the protractor, and used trigonometry to get exact answers. I earned distinguished honor graduate, ie top of the class, despite my lab nerd POG ass being mixed in with a ton of infantry and ranger battalion guys.
I use dimensional analysis on a near daily basis because it’s just so damn handy. You can convert anything to nearly anything else as long as you have some numbers with the appropriate units in between.
Dimensional analysis needs to be taught way sooner (referring to USA education here). I’m sure I had some sense of it earlier, but it wasn’t explicitly spelled out to me until college engineering courses. That’s despite taking a significant number of AP and community college math and science courses in highschool. It seems like it should be part of middle school.
I just can’t believe they found a practical use for geometry.
Have you already heard about a thing called “carpentry” ?
