Recently, students finished submitting their course request forms for next school year. When requesting courses, students had to keep in mind the credits and courses that are required in order to graduate, as outlined in the Educational Planning Guide. Four years of English and history are required, which makes sense since these are important and foundational subjects. However, only seven STEM credits are required: three years of science, three years of math and one elective. Science is also a foundational subject that is essential for learning, but it is not required for all four years. Instead of just requiring seven STEM credits, MTHS should have all students take four science credits just like history and English.

Science education is more important now more than ever, with scientific misinformation becoming commonplace. In particular, inaccurate science can spread rapidly on social media and be easily seen by high school students. Online algorithms don’t value and spread true facts. Instead, they push whatever is attracting the most attention. As a result, incorrect information can spread very quickly, with no indication that it’s false. At MTHS, students need to learn true science, as well as how to identify and debunk misinformation they see online. Requiring students to take four years of science would allow them to be more informed, as well as better equipped to handle misinformation.

Adding this requirement would be easy for students to meet because of the wide variety of science electives offered by the high school. If a student really doesn’t want to take chemistry, they could take two electives each worth half a credit instead. English electives are already an option to fulfill the required four years of English, so it would be easy to use a similar system for science.

However, the math courses offered do not have the same level of flexibility as these other subjects. No math electives are available, meaning less options are available for students to choose from. In fact, it is impossible to require four years of math, since you can run out of math classes. This is the situation I am in for my upcoming senior year: I have already taken all of the math that MTHS offers. Since I got ahead in math in elementary school, I was able to take Algebra 1 as a sixth grader. Following the math track through middle school into high school, I took Calculus as a sophomore and am currently taking Statistics as a junior. For me to take more math classes with new material, I would need to use Dual Enrollment, which isn’t possible for every student. So, while math is a very important subject for students to know, the school needs to add more math courses first before adding more requirements.

All in all, science is a very important subject, especially in today’s age of science misinformation online. To account for this and prepare students for any misinformation they may encounter, MTHS should require four years of science instead of the current STEM seven arrangement. Although math is also very important, the school cannot require more math credits until they add more courses. Graduation requirements can be annoying to understand and complicated to fulfill, but they might make more sense if they were directly connected to the issues students actually face.