People whose brains don’t function in a mathematical way and will never need math for their profession or major shouldn’t have to take it.
For those people, like me, whose interests are art- and literature-based, we have no need for math. Beyond the basic skills of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, I will never need any other math in my personal or professional life.
So why are we forced to learn it from a young age and all the way until college?
I have never done well in the subject. Arithmetic has left ugly dents in my transcripts, causing me to have GPAs that don’t properly represent how smart and hardworking I am as a person and as a student.
I am not alone in this.
The current system of forcing everyone to take analytical reasoning classes, regardless of their personal skill set, ability, or future plans, has been wasting the valuable time of people who just don’t need to be extensively learning about math.
For the less mathematically challenged, taking a math class or two wouldn’t be so painful if it wasn’t for the current way it’s run at LSU.
A lot of the math courses only have a one hour class a week. I’ve talked to people in other math classes and the complaints are all the same — the teacher doesn’t have enough time to properly teach any of the lessons, and students are still expected to do homework and take quizzes on them.
Yes, there’s math lab, and yes, there are tutors. The lab itself and the way it’s run hold their own problem.
Every week, most math students must spend three hours in the math lab. For those lucky enough to have never needed to visit Pleasant Hall, a hall with a very inaccurate name I might add, I’ll enlighten you.
You’re in a huge room surrounded by people. You can’t talk, can’t listen to music, can’t check your cell phone and can’t do anything but math. You must have three clocked hours in this hellhole a week. Homework and quizzes are due at 9 p.m. each week.
This requirement to sit in a room surrounded by people in silence and do only math infuriates me. It’s part of the lazy system of “teaching” that benefits some students and shackles others.
I can’t study or do homework with people. I need to be alone and I need some sort of background noise, specifically classical symphonic and piano music. The math lab bans listening to music, so I am hindered.
Lastly, there’s the 9 p.m. deadline. Why is it at 9 p.m.? Last semester I took Math 1029 and thrived. The deadline was at 12 a.m. on Sundays and Tuesdays and there was no math lab. I came out of that class with a B and was proud of how I’d done.
Why can’t students do their math homework on their own time in the comfort of whatever environment they can best focus? Because they need the three hours of math lab to be considered class time for their school hours.
Why don’t we just have three hours of class time a week? That’s a great question that I wish I had the answer to.
Some people would consider it effectively systematic. I call it a negligent attempt at running a program, even if it’s just the intro-level classes.
While the current system of math lab — minimal time with your teacher and 9 p.m. deadlines — works for some people, it has had such a negative impact on my grade and ability to learn that it shouldn’t be the standard.
If students are forced to take a class that doesn’t benefit them at all, they should at least be given the option of taking it in a way that’s more effective for their way of learning.
Math department, I urge you to think about this problem.
A system that cripples the ability of a large portion of the students to learn, regardless of how pointless it is on their life path, needs to be re-evaluated and improved.
Mariel Gates is a 20-year-old mass communication sophomore from Baton Rouge.