I’ve taken a variety of courses at Camosun: English, philosophy, psychology, and symbolic logic, for example. I achieved a broad education, which is what Camosun wants, and I mostly did it on my terms. But there was one course that was required for my program, and I did everything I could to avoid it.
Getting a broad education is a good thing, but I fail to see why a math credit is a requirement to graduate. Both the Associate of Arts degree and the Associate of Arts degree in English require one. My question is this: when a field doesn’t expressly use mathematics, why should it be mandatory within the degree?
The Camosun website says a numeracy course is supposed to teach students to “use numbers and mathematics to deal effectively with common problems.” Symbolic logic and psychology (which involves statistics) did the job of the math credit, in my opinion. Symbolic logic taught me about problem-solving because it was mathematical in nature. I had to find the answer with logic-based formulas called derivations; it could be said they are distant cousins of algebra. Don’t ask me how to do them now because I forgot; that was about 15 years ago. Regardless, if the college is keen on keeping the math credit then I think that should count.
In the beginning portion of my degree, I avoided taking a math course because I thought it was unnecessary and because I find math to be utterly stressful. It gives me a tremendous amount of anxiety. Being a student is stressful enough without that.
I then took a 14-year break between semesters with only the math course to do. That’s how much I didn’t want to take the bloody course.
So, to get my math credit I took a computer science course. By the end of it, I thought it was a waste of time. The course didn’t do what the website says a numeracy course is supposed to do. As far as I can tell, I didn’t learn how to deal effectively with common problems. I feel that through logic courses and philosophy classes I gained the skills I needed to problem-solve. Even video games can teach problem-solving. The class left me feeling that a math credit is not necessary to learn how to solve problems.
Students ought to have the freedom to choose the education that they want to have. Having a requirement of any kind is a restriction to learning. Let students learn the way they want to learn; this is how they can be best educated. Of course there has to be structure, but let students get the required number of credits in whichever fashion works best for them. Everyone has different learning styles and if they don’t want to take, say, a math course, then so be it.