Screaming Penguin

But come on, there would be a ton of people who would have absolutely no chance of graduating if integral calc was a requirement.

I honestly thing it wouldn't be that big of a deal, if we would do better with math earlier. There is no reason that if 6th and 7th grades did their job, every kid couldn't take Alebra I in 8th grade and still have plenty of time to work through higher math in High School. I just don't buy it.

I agree with all of you (for a change ;)). I hated math in junior high and high school, but I think my math teachers were less than compelling (I have some very crazy stories about what I was "taught" in Florida public schools concerning math). I took "advanced" (relative in those schools ;)) english and science courses but never was good at math prior to college. Then I went to college right out of high school for 2 years and pretty much just skipped classes and drank beer (sadly, even in Texas where I first went to college, no degree was awarded for that). Long story short I am still taking college courses (took an Algebra test last night ;)) a decade and a half after high school. The difference is now I think math is cool as hell and really regret not having taken it more seriously at every other juncture in my "education". I go out of my way to read tutorials on the web and so on to "get" a concept in relation to something real I am trying to understand (astronomy, physics, etc). For example I recently got Hawkings "On the Shoulders of Giants" with the orignal works of Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Huygens and Einsten. That stuff is not really all that difficult of math if you have some foundation and in the context it is INTERESTING. (I have not read all of the works yet, just Newton, but even that is fascinating, here is a guy, without a computer and a calculator and so on, who challenged the theocracy of his time, albeit somewhat reluctantly in some means, to change the human races view of the solar system - using some high school level understandable math - OK, not a Florida high school, but you know what I mean ;)). I was always taught, memorize this formula and do this to get this. Why, because I said so. That is what is wrong with math. Teach it in a context and once the reasoning sinks it it becomes literally "beautiful" and you start to see applications all over the place. And in terms of teaching I think math is very interesting because there is only one "truth". 1 + 1 = 2. Whereas with many other subjects things are much more subjective. I dont know if it is the fault of the teachers or the system or what, but yes we do a pretty lousy job of teaching math in public schools in the states, at least in my personal experience (and based on test scores, interest, so on).