Mathematics spreads like wildfire. The more you understand numbers, the more you see them everywhere, and the more you wonder why it took us hundreds of years to create numbers. I jest, of course. For the concepts of mathematics and numbers were being used by humans many years before anyone wrote it down. That is the natural progression of mankind. In fact, until the creation of computers, paper and ink were not cheap and one thought deeply before putting ink to paper. Unique to our time, we write about anything and everything before casting it off into the great unknown, like this blog post. However, I digress.
Let’s start again, mathematics spreads like the written word. We see it everywhere when we know for what we are looking. High School students need four years of mathematics study before graduating and many homeschool students struggle to get that fourth year covered. I admit to not understanding this as I know that homeschool students are some of the brightest young people this society is producing, maybe it’s because society isn’t producing them. I am digressing again. Have I told you that I have been under the weather recently?
Let’s start again, mathematics spreads like a germ. We know it is there even if we can’t see it. We know that we must learn something for our fourth year of high school math, but must it be the abstract world of calculus? The mathematician in me screams yes, while the more empathetic side laments the loss and admits to the contrary. What do we study in that fourth year of high school? Calculus is a worthy choice, even for those not math-inclined, but financial literacy, college algebra, or something less abstract is also a competent option. The truth is, if your student has reached an appreciation of math, where he is seeing mathematics everywhere, the only math education left for him to do is dive into the truth around him, and for that, you don’t need a curriculum.