Over the past 100+ years our education system has improved. We have increased the standards of our curriculum, improve our teaching methods, implemented a range technological tools, brought in social services and child psychologist to address issues beyond the classroom, and are now trying to track, measure, and even standardized the data we collect so we can make more improvements. While all of this is good the strange thing is in all these years the target our education system as not really changed.

The while this system has many goals, the primary focus within mathematics has been to prepared studies for college level calculus while the goal of the sciences has been to introduce students to the scientific methods then provide them with a survive of current theories. As the years have moved on, the sciences have become a bit more applied which I fully support. Today, the high school curriculum requires four units of math which is a focus on algebra leading to pre-calculus and three to four (depending on state) unit of science. Generally these are taken as one math and one science per year.

But during this time, specifically the last 30 years, the sciences and math have fundamentally changed. Data is everywhere and more importantly the computer power needed to process that data is available. 60 years ago, courses is statistics were a low priority for colleges and a team of mathematicians was need to tackle most projects. Today, the standard high school math classroom has enough scientific calculator to give every student the processing power the only college department heads had back in the 1950’s.

Collegiate Math departments are having to grant degrees in not just mathematics, but specifically statistics. Graduate programs have dropped foreign language requirements and added mandatory statistics courses. In fact, courses like Econometrics or Quantitative Analysis have become foundational courses is many programs. Some colleges are even marketing their SAS or SQL certifications over their athletic departments or small class sizes.

What we have seen is a shift from calculus being the apex of mathematics to statistics being the language of researchers. This is a massive shift on how we research at the college level…. and a change that is completely ignore at the high school level.

So problems and preamble aside, what am I suggesting we change? Well, here it is in a nutshell:
Thing to note:

• I’m replacing the goal of mathematics from preparing for college level calculus to students being able to apply statistics to the sciences.
• All math is getting moved into the first 2 years of high school
• All science is getting move into the last 2 years of high school
• All science is “Applied” because students now have the statistical foundation to bridge data and ideas. This is not a survey of science. It is comparing the predicted outcomes from scientific theory to observed data.

This is a complete rewrite of how both mathematics and science are taught. That said, I would argue that it is not a rewrite in how students learn. Sooner or later every high school math teacher gets asked “why do I need to know this?” This question has plagued math classes for decades and frankly, I think the student is right for asking the question. Much of what we teach they don’t need to know… yet. You need it to do calculus but few professions use calculus day to day. What we have done is the equivalent of asking a shop teacher to talk about carpentry to a group of students who do not know what wood is.

There is an old saying: “use it or lose it”. Like many high schoolers, I learn enough Algebra 2 to take the test and then quickly forgot it all. As an undergraduate, I made due without it and still made Dean’s List repeatedly. During my time in graduate school I had a moment that struck me. It was after an econometrics class. The professor used the Sin and Cos functions to adjust a model, specifically she added a wave like effect on top of yearly data. In other words, she used Algebra 2 to make an equation reflect the natural ebb and flow that we were seeing in the data due to the change of seasons. After class, I grabbed something to eat and then headed to the library to find an Algebra 2 book to remind myself of the details around Sin and Cos. As a graduate student I saw tremendous value in these idea that as a high schooler, and undergraduate, I could not even image a need for.

When I got to the mathematics section of the library, I not only found an algebra book but I found about half my econometrics class there as well. We had all completely discard the knowledge that was given to us in Algebra 2 since we saw no need for. Now, in the context of graduate level statistics, we were learning how useful Algebra 2 was. We were reading a mathematics text book and found it invigorating. This was not “why do I need to know this” this was “oh, I can see how this tool is very useful in these specific statistical situations”.

That last part, “useful in these specific statistical situations”, brings us to science. There is a large gap between using the scientific method to produce data, turning that data into a specific mathematical theory, and then comparing different mathematical theories. High school science is currently doing the first of those tasks, it is not even attempting to do the second and third part. Once again, the technology to do those calculations are already in the classrooms. Although we say we want our students to engage in science, really what we are doing is making them memorize a bunch of scientific trivia.

Real science requires not only an experiment to produce data, but quantifying a theory and then comparing your theory with others. That is actually making science, no just memorizing it for the test only so you can forget it later.

Politicians, educators, and innovators are doing their best to promote the STEM fields right now, but what is the choice we are really presenting our students with based on their experiences. Filtered through the high school experience, what high schoolers transitioning in to colleges are hearing from STEM promoters is “our set of trivia is more important than those other sets of trivia.” What is happening, because our curriculums do not allow it to happen, is that during high school the STEM fields are never about creation, discovery, communication, or innovation. Those elements of science, which require mathematics, are within the reach of high schoolers, but under our current system only the few who enter graduate school ever get to see it.