Saw a post the other day: "I'm so glad I learned what a parallelogram is and NOT how to do my taxes in school."

Generally, people who say such things don't know what a parallelogram is OR how to do their taxes. They have been failed twice. They were presented with the signifiers of a liberal arts education but received none of the substance.

This isn't their fault and replacing alienating signifiers of a liberals arts education with signifiers "trades training" won't do what they think.

In some schools education is just ticking of boxes for topics. The classes are too large, the experienced teachers too few, the administration is too focused on switching textbooks every two years to "solve the problem" rather than cultivating schools as learning communities. Those who are most invested in teaching, leave and find places where they can really teach.

"I'm so glad I learned how do 'do my taxes' in school and not how to assess if an argument is true or false for myself."

Also, and I have thought about this, because I take education very seriously, making lesson plans on "how to do your taxes" for 8th graders (when you generally learn about parallelograms) sounds like such a horrible idea.

The kids would be bored out of their eyeballs. I do teach my seniors about things like banking, loans, reserves etc. but many "applied math" topics are boring and difficult to adapt into excellent lessons.

In some schools education is just ticking of boxes for topics. The classes are too large, the experienced teachers too few, the administration is too focused on switching textbooks every two years to "solve the problem" rather than cultivating schools as learning communities. Those who are most invested in teaching, leave and find places where they can really teach.

"I'm so glad I learned how do 'do my taxes' in school and not how to assess if an argument is true or false for myself."

Also, and I have thought about this, because I take education very seriously, making lesson plans on "how to do your taxes" for 8th graders (when you generally learn about parallelograms) sounds like such a horrible idea.

The kids would be bored out of their eyeballs. I do teach my seniors about things like banking, loans, reserves etc. but many "applied math" topics are boring and difficult to adapt into excellent lessons.

I have worked with idealistic people who wanted to make education "more relevant" for students in inner city schools. They could see the kids were really NOT getting the liberal arts education & the power that comes with such an education. Thought "well at least I could teach them to budget better" These people also tended to think that poor people are bad at managing their money (I find the opposite is the case, poor people are experts at managing money, making it do more.)

The kids HATED it.

Also, and I have thought about this, because I take education very seriously, making lesson plans on "how to do your taxes" for 8th graders (when you generally learn about parallelograms) sounds like such a horrible idea.

The kids would be bored out of their eyeballs. I do teach my seniors about things like banking, loans, reserves etc. but many "applied math" topics are boring and difficult to adapt into excellent lessons.

I have worked with idealistic people who wanted to make education "more relevant" for students in inner city schools. They could see the kids were really NOT getting the liberal arts education & the power that comes with such an education. Thought "well at least I could teach them to budget better" These people also tended to think that poor people are bad at managing their money (I find the opposite is the case, poor people are experts at managing money, making it do more.)

The kids HATED it.

@futurebird "I am glad I learned what a parellelogram is instead of how to do taxes" but unironically

Saw a post the other day: "I'm so glad I learned what a parallelogram is and NOT how to do my taxes in school."

Generally, people who say such things don't know what a parallelogram is OR how to do their taxes. They have been failed twice. They were presented with the signifiers of a liberal arts education but received none of the substance.

This isn't their fault and replacing alienating signifiers of a liberals arts education with signifiers "trades training" won't do what they think.

@futurebird my experience is that well-off people think people are poor because they don't know how to do money, while it's rarely true.

And things that can work when you do have money don't when you have very little. Real poverty creates budgeting needs which are fairly different.

One problem can actually be to move from a poverty budget to a "standard" budget when you do have more money coming in but… "spend less than you make" by definition can't work if you make less than is needed to cover your survival needs ‍️

In a similar situation with not enough resources and two few students my goal was always to try to give them a taste of what I thought was missing from so much of their educational experience. Starting with the idea that they could create meaningful knowledge that their ideas are worthy of respect.

And I also try to share with them some of the joy that I find in mathematics. This is hard work and only when I had fewer than 18 students was it effective.

20 is too many.

Saw a post the other day: "I'm so glad I learned what a parallelogram is and NOT how to do my taxes in school."

Generally, people who say such things don't know what a parallelogram is OR how to do their taxes. They have been failed twice. They were presented with the signifiers of a liberal arts education but received none of the substance.

This isn't their fault and replacing alienating signifiers of a liberals arts education with signifiers "trades training" won't do what they think.

@futurebird what we should be doing is fighting the tax prep lobbies to simplify our tax returns!

Also... what the heck do people mean by "how to do taxes" anyway? It's an *algorithm* How could that take more than 10min to understand?

When I see that meme what I take from it is that a lot of people remember the word "parallelogram" from math class and they don't know what the significance of it was or why they had to be so stressed out about it. They also recognize that taxes involve doing math. Maybe they suppose that it's through math that rich people pay so little tax?

Saw a post the other day: "I'm so glad I learned what a parallelogram is and NOT how to do my taxes in school."

Generally, people who say such things don't know what a parallelogram is OR how to do their taxes. They have been failed twice. They were presented with the signifiers of a liberal arts education but received none of the substance.

This isn't their fault and replacing alienating signifiers of a liberals arts education with signifiers "trades training" won't do what they think.

@futurebird there was a segment on BBC radio 2 (UK public radio) today with a load of people whining about how they were rubbish at maths, but had to do maths.
Some woman said "Why do I need to know Pythagorus, why can't they teach me useful maths?" and I shook my head... If they can't get you to understand that basic idea from many centuries ago, you've no hope with anything complex enough to be useful.

@Dss

I try to be patient but ... a major reason we teach geometry is it's the easiest way to really understand the concept of similarity, ratio and proportion.

You know, the main thing you need to get to "do taxes" ... take a percentage.

I often forget that there are many people who do percentages as algorithms and have no intuitive sense of the difference between 2% and 0.02%

I've seen students show up in calculus who didn't really understand fractions OFTEN. And we must fix that first.

@Dss

I try to be patient but ... a major reason we teach geometry is it's the easiest way to really understand the concept of similarity, ratio and proportion.

You know, the main thing you need to get to "do taxes" ... take a percentage.

I often forget that there are many people who do percentages as algorithms and have no intuitive sense of the difference between 2% and 0.02%

I've seen students show up in calculus who didn't really understand fractions OFTEN. And we must fix that first.