Crazy Lunatic American Academia

@soothfast said
A mathematics course should be concerned primarily with mathematics, which hones the analytical thinking skills required to study a myriad of subjects.

If you want to learn accounting then take an accounting course.

Such a class was never offered at the schools I went to as a teen

@shavixmir said
Maths dude, maths.

Math my fat hairy arse.

I'm gonna screw your fu​ckin' head on straight on this subject even if it takes a pipe wrench.

https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/math-vs-maths/

The usual argument goes that mathematics is plural because it ends in an -s, so maths should be its abbreviation. The problem is that, while it ends in an –s, mathematics is a mass noun and usually takes a singular verb (e.g., Mathematics is my best subject).

@athousandyoung said
Such a class was never offered at the schools I went to as a teen

You were keen as a teen on how to count each bean? 😉

Many high schools have an accounting course. I suspect, though, that there is a class divide, with well-to-do districts offering the course while poorer districts do not. And that is unfortunate.

I've never taken an accounting course, but in high school there was a one-semester required course that taught various "life skills" that included how to balance a checkbook.

Randomly I bumped into this place:
https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-cpa-journal/article-detail?ArticleID=10426#sthash.d16J2Moc.dpbs

An interesting snippet therefrom (emphasis mine):

I have spoken with college professors who share the same sentiment. It seems as if there is a trend of high-school graduates hoping to study accounting who are not ready for college-level courses. The math skills are not there. The communication skills are not there. More importantly, the critical-thinking skills that are needed in the accounting profession are not there.

College professors are spending more time remediating those skills in Accounting 101 than in actually teaching students all of the elements that go into making a successful accountant.

You can see that accounting professors really resent having to spend time teaching mathematics to freshmen in their accounting courses. By the same token, as a mathematics professor I would take exception to having to piss away valuable class time teaching accounting. Aside from the fact that I'm not a qualified accountant, there's the simple reality that I'm already expected to interject an endless litany of application problems involving mortgages, comparison shopping computations, silly problems in sociology, nutrition science, and family and consumer sciences education (yes these are actual things).

Chemistry teachers can teach just chemistry, physics teachers are allowed to teach just physics, and English teachers can coast along teaching nothing but English. But mathematics? No, mathematics teachers and professors are supposed to do almost anything but teach mathematics. And this model is clearly broken: professors of chemistry, physics, engineering, accounting, and on and on all complain that the kids just do not know math!

So I do not do what I'm told, and in the classroom I keep the focus on mathematics at least 90% of the time, "family and consumer sciences education" be damned.

@soothfast said
You were keen as a teen on how to count each bean? 😉

Many high schools have an accounting course. I suspect, though, that there is a class divide, with well-to-do districts offering the course while poorer districts do not. And that is unfortunate.

I've never taken an accounting course, but in high school there was a one-semester required course that taught variou ...[text shortened]... e focus on mathematics at least 90% of the time, "family and consumer sciences education" be damned.

I had no idea what I should study as a teen but I had a naive faith that if I kept going to school I would be taught life skills. So I advanced to multivariable calculus, linear algebra and differential equations; the latter as it turns out is useful only in that there are some hardcore wealthy Asian teens who want tutoring in this advanced math.

But the math needed for accounting I had taken by 7th grade with Algebra. You don't need to do advanced proofs or determine all the angles in some complex geometric figure to balance a checkbook or understand a bank statement; but you do need to know what a "debit" is and why sometimes when you debit an account you subtract but sometimes you add money.

I'm not talking about advanced accounting for people who intend to become professional accountants. Kids simply need familiarity with how the math works in our society with respect to money; or students who struggle with science (I've taught and tutored plenty of them) how to do unit conversions which is simply algebra.