Over-emphasis on mathematics?

[Russ]

I don't think being motivated by a good income and secure future is a sad reality in the majority of cases. If it's your sole motivation, that's one thing, but the idea that it's mutually exclusive with more personal motivations is not true.

[Guest]

Abes you also mentioned this in the Methods lecture booklet. Clearly you agree with my point 

FROM THE AUTHOR (abeybaby)
"Maths plays an integral part in much of the life we currently have. Without it, the computers, machines, buildings and economics that form the basis of our daily lives would never have developed so fully.
Maths is pure knowledge – it is not dependant on any physical truth, and does not need a grounding in observable reality. It remains infallible where other theories might fail.
Maths Methods gives its students a solid foundation to continue studying maths in the future, and to further their understanding of the principles that modern life is built upon.
I wish you all the best with Maths Methods, and hope that you continue your studies in mathematics beyond VCE."

EDIT: Fixed some formatting errors in this brilliant quote.

[thushan]

Haha, well, Maths is an invention if anything; it is a way of modelling the real world. Since it is an invention, there is certainty to it. It's when one applies it to the real world that uncertainties will exist.

Well I guess we're lucky for that fact. You, having gone to Scotch, would have had a smaller bite of the national curriculum. Apparently your textbooks are written by your graduates as well...need I say more?
Going to a school specialized in maths, I can expect to be taught proofs and concepts stepping up from textbooks.

But what about the rest of the state?
Teachers in most other schools are confined to the textbook and only adhere to what is required. They don't see the need in enhancement; only confinement.

The only way to make a meaningful change is to redesign the National Curriculum. The idea is sound as it stands but simply hasn't been emphasized well enough. Even worse, people don't realize this, as evident in the title of this thread.

Interestingly enough, teaching in such a confined fashion prevents the students from getting that ability to reason through any problem thrown at them in the exam.

Moderator action: Merged double-post

[tram]

VCE maths is not essential in the sense that it is necessary for your life skills. VCE however is all just signalling to universities about your skills and abilities. For some courses (things requiring a portfolio of work/med/etc.) there are interviews and other considerations, however for most courses, differentiation of students is about the scores that students get in certain subjects and overall. Maths is not easy, especially methods and particularly spech. But even if you forget everything you've learnt in the classroom, what doing a maths subject shows is that you've been able to slug through a hard subject and work hard and have a certain ability in the sphere of numerical reasoning.

This is what doing the maths subject indicates, and why is it used a a pre-req. For some courses maths skills are directly used so it makes sense that it is a pre-req, but even i you aren't using the maths skills directly, the generic numerical skills can be important to succeed in that course (e.g doing science, but majoring in say biol) even if higher level math proofs aren't needed.

I definitely agree that maths is not the only way that analytical skills can be developed and proven, but written analytical skills are very different to numeral ones and are useful in different contexts. It's definitely possible to be good at one and not good at the other, even though both require you to 'analyse'. Myself as an example, i'd consider myself pretty ok at maths, but shocking at written analysis. If i were doing an arts degree i would be failing, and that's just because my written analysis skills are shoddy to say the least.

Having said that, they don't just put maths pre-reqs onto courses for lols. They do for a reason (you need those skills) and if you haven't done maths there are lots and lots and *lots* of courses that are still open to you! and tbh, they're courses that you would probably enjoy far more, and do significantly better in if you don't like/aren't good at maths!

[abeybaby]

Abes you also mentioned this in the Methods lecture booklet. Clearly you agree with my point 

FROM THE AUTHOR (abeybaby)
"Maths plays an integral part in much of the life we currently have. Without it, the computers, machines, buildings and economics that form the basis of our daily lives would never have developed so fully.
Maths is pure knowledge – it is not dependant on any physical truth, and does not need a grounding in observable reality. It remains infallible where other theories might fail.
Maths Methods gives its students a solid foundation to continue studying maths in the future, and to further their understanding of the principles that modern life is built upon.
I wish you all the best with Maths Methods, and hope that you continue your studies in mathematics beyond VCE."

EDIT: Fixed some formatting errors in this brilliant quote.

Hehehe, cheeky
But then what's the solution? I dont think the solution is to conclude that there is an overemphasis on MATHS in vce, i think it's to conclude that theres an underemphasis on REAL maths in vce, and hence, we need to make sure teachers are teaching the why in maths, and not just the how. But how do you do that? It's practically impossible to get ALL teachers up to a standard like that... just getting ~5% of teachers like that would be an amazing achievement

[Guest]

Interestingly enough, teaching in such a confined fashion prevents the students from getting that ability to reason through any problem thrown at them in the exam.

That's a bad thing isn't it, IF you want your students to ultimately succeed?

Myself as an example, i'd consider myself pretty ok at maths...

Pretty "ok"
LOL! I've heard a lot about you.

Moderator action: Merged double-post

[Lasercookie]

But English in the other hand... I don't understand why it's compulsory, I would've loved to have done another science (biology, currently doing physics and chemistry) that may actually help me with my future (pursuing science at Melbourne) instead of doing a subject VCAA has made compulsory...

Communication skills, learning how to write clearly, learning how to read critically just a few examples of skills you'll learn in English that are essential for everyday life as well as required in multiple fields including the sciences. For example, Maths will become a lot wordier than the typical VCE type questions once you start dealing with proofs, which means having to write concisely. You'll start having to refer to scientific papers at some point too. As far as I'm aware, the need for those skills keep compounding as you move further into the degree too and are expected to deal with those things a lot more. I don't think it's hard at all to see why English has been made a compulsory subject.

[brenden]

Well I reckon maths is more important than English by far but I understand that a lot of people don't have an interest in maths hence why it is not compulsory.

But English in the other hand... I don't understand why it's compulsory, I would've loved to have done another science (biology, currently doing physics and chemistry) that may actually help me with my future (pursuing science at Melbourne) instead of doing a subject VCAA has made compulsory...

If it wasn't compulsory, there'd be plenty more people doing another subject that they're actually interested in.

I'd like to see you communicate in this debate using only numbers :p

[pi]

The basic skills I have from VCE English has helped me a LOT in writing assignments. It helps in a more subtle way, but it does help to write well.

[b^3]

I'd like to see you communicate in this debate using only numbers :p

Spoiler

01001000011001010010000001110100011001010110001101101000011011100110100101100011011000010110110001101
10001111001001000000110100101110011001000000111010101110011011010010110111001100111001000000110111001110101
01101101011000100110010101110010011100110010000001110011011010010110111001100011011001010010000001101001011
10100001001110111001100100000011001110110111101101001011011100110011100100000011101000110100001110010011011
11011101010110011101101000001000000110000100100000011001000110100101100111011010010111010001100001011011000
01000000110001101101111011011010110110101110101011011100110100101100011011000010111010001101001011011110110
11100010110000100000011000100111010101110100001000000111001101110100011010010110110001101100001000000110111
00110010101100101011001000111001100100000011101110110111101110010011001000111001100100000011101000110111100
10000001100010011001010010000001101001011011100111010001100101011100100111000001110010011001010111010001100
10101100100001011100010000001001101011000010111010001101000011100110010000001101001011101000111001101100101
01101100011001100010000001101001011100110010000001101110011001010110000101110010011011000111100100100000011
01001011101000010011101110011001000000110111101110111011011100010000001101100011000010110111001100111011101
0101100001011001110110010100100000011101000110100001101111011101010110011101101000001000000011101001010000

And yes I know you said only numbers.

As said above, you still need to be able to communicate yourself to the world around you though.

Also lately maths assignments seem to be more words than actual numbers....

On a seriously note though, what I feel the problem is that we're not really properly encouraging the next generation of mathematicians because of the way our system is set up at the moment. I've seen people get to uni, wanting to do maths majors, getting there and going "wtf is this, this is what I thought maths was", because we don't get a proper taste of what it actually is in VCE, more it's a tool we use for other things. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have this 'tool' there, just that our top maths should be more towards proper maths. Although I guess you could argue that's what uni maths is, but then again it's not as accessible to everyone, or some of us are just not told that it exists until it's too late.

EDIT: Probably started tangent-ing into a different debate here..

[Professor Polonsky]

VCE maths is not essential in the sense that it is necessary for your life skills. VCE however is all just signalling to universities about your skills and abilities. For some courses (things requiring a portfolio of work/med/etc.) there are interviews and other considerations, however for most courses, differentiation of students is about the scores that students get in certain subjects and overall. Maths is not easy, especially methods and particularly spech. But even if you forget everything you've learnt in the classroom, what doing a maths subject shows is that you've been able to slug through a hard subject and work hard and have a certain ability in the sphere of numerical reasoning.

This is what doing the maths subject indicates, and why is it used a a pre-req. For some courses maths skills are directly used so it makes sense that it is a pre-req, but even i you aren't using the maths skills directly, the generic numerical skills can be important to succeed in that course (e.g doing science, but majoring in say biol) even if higher level math proofs aren't needed.

I definitely agree that maths is not the only way that analytical skills can be developed and proven, but written analytical skills are very different to numeral ones and are useful in different contexts. It's definitely possible to be good at one and not good at the other, even though both require you to 'analyse'. Myself as an example, i'd consider myself pretty ok at maths, but shocking at written analysis. If i were doing an arts degree i would be failing, and that's just because my written analysis skills are shoddy to say the least.

Having said that, they don't just put maths pre-reqs onto courses for lols. They do for a reason (you need those skills) and if you haven't done maths there are lots and lots and *lots* of courses that are still open to you! and tbh, they're courses that you would probably enjoy far more, and do significantly better in if you don't like/aren't good at maths!

+1 if I could, pretty much covered all I was going to say.

[Guest]

Communication skills, learning how to write clearly, learning how to read critically just a few examples of skills you'll learn in English that are essential for everyday life as well as required in multiple fields including the sciences. For example, Maths will become a lot wordier than the typical VCE type questions once you start dealing with proofs, which means having to write concisely. You'll start having to refer to scientific papers at some point too. As far as I'm aware, the need for those skills keep compounding as you move further into the degree too and are expected to deal with those things a lot more. I don't think it's hard at all to see why English has been made a compulsory subject.

Exactly. You've summed it up very well. English is definetely worthy enough to be a compulsory subject. After all, we are in Australia.
On the contrary to the maths curriculum, It's hard to fault the VCE English syllabus. Especially in Victoria, we are lucky to have three different categories to cater for our interests. As was discussed before, many courses now don't require extensive knowledge of maths; whereas every course requires English. I'm not referring to simply the prerequisites, but jobs in particular and the tasks when you actually enter the workforce.

Well I reckon maths is more important than English by far...

I wouldn't even go as far as saying maths is more important than English. It may have been, but not anymore. It shouldn't be that general.

[abeybaby]

I wouldn't even go as far as saying maths is more important than English. It may have been, but not anymore. It shouldn't be that general.

[shadows]

Medicine is far more likely to pay the bills

I've heard that mathematicians and actuaries) are actually really well paid, and in very high demand. Job prospects and pay are also set to get better in the future too.   

[pi]

I've heard that mathematicians and actuaries) are actually really well paid, and in very high demand. Job prospects and pay are also set to get better in the future too.   

You have to be pretty good to get to that level though, a lot of natural talent and/or some serious hard work.