Once upon a time, an education used to simply consist of the three Rs: reading, ’riting and ’rithmatic. But that was decades ago and long before the advent of Curriculum 2000. Since C2K, Duke students have been struggling to fill the boxes marked CZ and EI and SS. The letter that students have been having the most difficulty checking off, though, is M. Math.
One of the subjects students try to duck, math is one of the few areas where universities often fail to create interesting courses. Math classes continually build on fundamentals and even for students who succeeded at geometry in high school, the idea of calculus can range from daunting to dull. Still, quantitative skills are an integral part of the liberal education Duke promises. And M credits are a valid way for University deans to ensure that 6,200 students are getting at least an introduction to mathematical thought.
When C2K revisions took effect this year, one of the main alterations was increasing the number of math courses to two. In theory, this will encourage more students to follow a path of inquiry in a mathematically-based field. In practice, however, Duke doesn’t offer many classes like that.
This is a problem the University has recognized. A new committee is working to develop ways to make quantitative classes appealing for student who claim to be “not math people.”
In order for these two-course series to work, faculty need to tailor the classes to an audience that is far more interested in the social sciences or the humanities. Math in high school often seems like an abstract realm with a plethora of rules and little use. Most of us have limited need for calculating the area under a curve. The easiest way for the University to excite students about math would be to demonstrate its practical applications.
Many statistics classes, such as stats for psych majors and stats for biologists, already do this. A level-two class along this vein is a great first step. Other fields, however, also offer the chance for students to become engaged with arithmetic without the classes earning nicknames such as counting for credit.
Engineering as a discipline is based on using math and science in practical applications. Computer science also offers opportunities to see how mathematics fit into actual products that are relevant even to art history majors.
If the University would offer accounting classes, those would be well received as students could see a variety of uses for complicated equations.
In a more creative sense, departments could team up to offer sequenced classes among disparate disciplines. Some scholars have suggested that Jackson Pollack’s paintings are not random paint drips, but visual expressions of mathematical formulas. Music and acoustics are deeply grounded in mathematical formulas. Why can’t these serve as jumping off points for a Duke math-for-non-majors curriculum?
That would certainly mean more than checking off a couple of M boxes.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.