Rational Ignorance
By Bob
Picking up on some of the recent discussions concerning education, I would like to offer up one of my pet peeves about the subject. The Orange County Register reports that students, in the place for which the paper named, did well on the new test needed to graduate. However, right in the middle of the article, it qoutes a student saying something which drives me up the wall:
"You're probably not going to be using ... something like geometry for the rest of your life," he said. "Common sense, that's what you're going to use the rest of your life. So make it simple, and make sure the teachers are doing their jobs."
Excuse me, how the hell does he know what he'll need for the rest of his life? I have heard this a lot from high school students. "My older sister says that you don't need X in the real world." Well, do you want to be a stripper like your sister who flies off to Vegas every weekend? Perhaps a few weeks ago I should have posed the question "don't you wish you studied a little harder back in school?" to the woman, in said town, at the end of her career of "dancing" while she was lamenting going to cosmetology school.
Few people in high school actually know what employment they'll pursue later on in life. I always thought I would go into politics or government up until my last semester in college. I wound up in finance where all that math from an early academic stint as a computer science major paid off. Many of the people I worked with lacked any math ability and it showed.
The problem lies in the fact that students have the view that geometry and calculus takes a lot work, yet, they don't see the rewards that competence in the math and science fields gives, hence, rational ignorance. I have no problem with students going into vocational school rather than calculus, but most students don't go into this training. By allowing students to avoid challenging subject matter, their later careers are limited.
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