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Re: Doubling math classes
Posted:
Feb 21, 1995 9:43 AM
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If I may disagree, to a degree.
I doubled up when I was a student, and thanks to the AP exam started
college with the second year of calculus. This enabled me to start
taking more advanced mathematics courses sooner in college, and was
very helpful to me.
OTOH, I strongly feel that students who do not expect to pass out
of first year calculus should not take calculus in high school.
The only purpose that serves is to make them bored in college
calculus, where they often do badly because they've slept through
important concepts they didn't learn in high school. They also
often lack the skills in algebra, geometry and trigonometry that
are necessary in calculus.
(I often remind students that calculus is actually easy. What
makes students think it's hard is that they're unable to easily
do the algebra that's necessary.)
Alan H. Stein stein@math.uconn.edu
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