江苏省常州市天宁区常州市第一中学2023-2024学年高二上学期开学英语试题

(H117). It's a fact not lost on American educators,who faced with rising math faiture rates are debating how mathcanbettermeetthe real-life needs ofstudents.Shouldwechangethe waymath istaughtinschools, or climinate some courses entirely? Andrew Hacker, Queens College political scienceprofessor, thinks that advanced algebra and other higher-level math should be cutfrom curriculain favorofcourses withmore routine usefulness. likestatistics. "We hear on all sides that we're not teaching enough mathematics, and the Chinese are running rings around us," Hacker says. "I'm suggesting we're teaching too muchmathematics to too many people. . . not everybody has to know calculus. If you're going to become an aeronautical engineer, fine. But most of us aren't." Instead, Hacker is pushing for more courses like the one he teaches at Queens College: Numeracy 101. There, his students of "citizen statistics" learn to analyze public information like the government budget and corporate reports. Such courses, Hacker argues, are a remedy for the numerical illiteracy of adults who have completed high-levelmath like algebrabut are unable to calculate the price of, say, a carpet by area. Hacker's argument has met with opposition fromother math educators who say what's needed is to help students develop a better relationship with math earlier, rather than teaching them less math altogether. Maria Droujkova IS a founder of Natural Math, andhas taught basic calculus concepts to 5-year-olds. For Droujkova, high-levelmath is important, and what it could use in American classrooms is an injection(vE ) of childlike wonder. "Make mathematics more available," Droujkova says. "Redesign it so it's more accessible to more kindsof people: young children, adults who worry about it, adults who may have had bad experiences." Andrew Hacker, for the record, still has his doubts. "I'm going to leave it to those who are in mathematics to work out theways to make their subject interesting and exciting s