We’ve heard some pretty crazy things in the last year, but this one may just top the list.
According to recent reports, the chancellor of the California Community Colleges System has just argued against forcing college students to learn algebra. Apparently, Eloy Ortiz Oakley things this is a “civil rights issue,” arguing that if college was easier, more people would obtain degrees.
According to recent reports, the chancellor of the California Community Colleges System has just argued against forcing college students to learn algebra. Apparently, Eloy Ortiz Oakley things this is a “civil rights issue,” arguing that if college was easier, more people would obtain degrees.
“This is a civil rights issue, but this is also something that plagues all Americans — particularly low-income Americans. If you think about all the underemployed or unemployed Americans in this country who cannot connect to a job in this economy — which is unforgiving of those students who don’t have a credential — the biggest barrier for them is this algebra requirement. It’s what has kept them from achieving a credential,” said Oakley.
Oakley claims this is not just an attempt to make college easier.
“I hear that a lot and unfortunately nothing could be farther from the truth. Somewhere along the lines, since the 1950s, we decided that the only measure of a student’s ability to reason or to do some sort of quantitative measure is algebra,” he continued.
“What we’re saying is we want as rigorous a course as possible to determine a student’s ability to succeed, but it should be relevant to their course of study,” Oakley concluded. “There are other math courses that we could introduce that tell us a lot more about our students.”
What do you think of Oakley’s proposal?
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