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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Today I will tell you about a personal failure.
In college I flunked one class. And I failed spectucularly. Level 3 algebra.
I should have known I was in trouble at the start. I got a “C” in Level 2 algebra. And the Level 3 class assumed you knew all that stuff.
On my Level 3 midterm I got a 44 – out of 100.
I remember talking to the professor. “What do I need to get on the final to pass the class?”
“A 95.”
“Has anyone who got a 44 on the midterm gotten a 95 on the final?”
“Never.”
So I had to re-take Algebra 3 in summer school. A community college in Connecticut offered the class. Syracuse University would transfer whatever grade I got.
Things went better during summer school; in part because it was the only class I was taking, so it got all of my attention. Also, I was seeing the material for a second time. And the class had fewer students, so there was more time for questions. I got a “B-“. It was the grade I was most proud of during my college career.
Now comes a report that many college students can’t do elementary math – stuff they were supposed to learn in grade school. The University of California-San Diego reports 1 in 8 students are in remedial math classes where they are taught things like long division, how to add and subtract fractions, and rounding.
Never mind being an engineer, or a research scientist. Students in these do-over classes don’t have the math skills to be a blackjack dealer at a casino; they’d get the payouts wrong.
Math is a stubborn thing. It can’t be dumbed down. If you can’t do the math, you can’t build a skyscraper, or a bridge, or make a rocket fly.
I have sympathy for people who aren’t good at math. I’m not. Remember these college kids would have been in junior high school during the COVID years. They didn’t learn basic math at a time when schools were closed and we were trying online learning. That, we know now, was a failed experiment. What are we left with? A generation of improperly educated young people. They will never get back the time they have lost.
Chris Conley
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