Trend-starting Texas drops algebra II mandate

[Igel]

86. There are two parts to geometry.

The first is the facts. Kids memorize those. Those are "useful" if you're building something. A triangle's angles add up to 180 degrees. Interior angles. All that stuff.

Then there's the important part. We hear how people can't reason things through, can't think logically, can't construct an argument.

The core of geometry is starting with a few simple propositions that are assumed true. Then you use logic, knowledge of the axioms and of how you've put axioms together so far to derive conclusions to build more and greater conclusions. It is where a lot of kids are exposed to logic.

The downside to a lot of fact-based, low-level thinking is that it focuses on the memorization part of the topic. Kids like memorization. It's easy. You can cram the facts in and lose them a week later--minimal effort and minimal education in the game that they call "school". Even kids who want to major in a subject want to learn as little as possible; often these days they want the piece of paper, because if the paper says it's true that they've mastered something it must be true. (They obviously weren't paying attention in geometry.)

You may not use the facts of geometry a lot. But if they taught you right and you understood the goal of the course you'd have a decent ability to think logically and rigorously.