[HN Gopher] Someone Has to Run the Fabs
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Someone Has to Run the Fabs
Author : mooreds
Score : 43 points
Date : 2021-05-04 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (noahpinion.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (noahpinion.substack.com)
| eschaton wrote:
| The article lost me with the claim that there's some sort of
| "push to de-emphasize STEM." As near as I can tell, they think
| this is something recent, but in my experience it started in the
| 1970s and the emphasis on _increasing_ emphasis on STEM since the
| mid-2000s is the course correction that's taking place now.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| [STEM Education](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=
| STEM+education...) as a term used in writing, has grown quickly
| and steadily from the late 90s through today.
|
| CS grads/year have tripled since the late 90s.
|
| The only "egalitarian" measure I've seen near STEM are efforts
| to bring more STEM education to more people.
|
| But the reality is, this is an opinion piece by a shoddy writer
| who gets paid for clicks and who doesn't care about factual
| errors that stand between him and a storyline that his audience
| enjoys.
| pdonis wrote:
| The article lost me over a much more basic point: its unstated
| and unexamined assumption that "STEM", and indeed education and
| society in general, needs to be centrally controlled. For
| example, consider this right at the end:
|
| "What I insist that we do is to refocus our STEM education
| debates on the right question. And that question is not "Who
| deserves what"?". It's "Who will run the fabs?"."
|
| First, where does he get off "insisting" anything? If he's so
| gung ho on improving education, why is he wasting his time
| writing a blog post instead of going out and doing the hard
| work of actually educating some people?
|
| But even leaving that aside, why do "we" have to debate this
| question? "We" don't determine who runs the fabs; the companies
| that own the fabs do. Nor do "we" need to centrally control
| what education kids get; the fact that we have a huge,
| bureaucratic, centrally controlled public education system in
| the US is a bug, not a feature. But not to this author; in
| fact, he is basically arguing for _expanding_ the central
| control model of education:
|
| "[T]he notion that the purpose of education should be to
| discover and elevate natural talent is fundamentally flawed, as
| the entire previous section of this post argued. Finding a few
| kids capable of defeating China in a math competition is
| useless compared to the task of training millions of kids to
| work in high-tech export industries."
|
| So now the education system is supposed to do job training for
| specific skills? Didn't that used to be called
| "apprenticeship"? And didn't it used to be done as a private
| thing, without having to drag a huge, bloated bureaucracy into
| the mix?
|
| And what, exactly, is wrong with the idea that education should
| discover and elevate natural talent? Isn't that exactly what
| you _want_ if you want to have the best chip fabs? Not to
| mention all the other good things the article mentions. (The
| author does argue that the belief in "natural talent" has bad
| side effects and that what should be focused on instead is
| "long-term motivation". But then he saws off his own branch by
| admitting that "what people _want_ to do is ultimately more
| important than what they're told to do. " And when kids are
| subjected to education to "improve their long-term motivation",
| they see it, correctly, as being told to do things they don't
| want to do. The _only_ handle that _any_ education system can
| really grasp with a kid is "natural talent"--what do they
| _naturally_ want to do? What are they _naturally_ interested
| in? And our regimented, structured, centrally controlled
| bureaucratic education system is perfectly designed to entirely
| _ignore_ that input--and not just ignore it when deciding what
| kids will do, but _kill_ it when it is detected, on the grounds
| that it 's disruptive.)
|
| To this author, the "millions of kids" are just cogs in a
| machine, to be moved around to wherever the central authority
| thinks they will do the most good. (But of course _he_ isn 't
| any such thing.)
|
| I'm all for encouraging more kids to go into STEM and to
| improving the incentives involved so more kids who are
| interested in STEM will see it as a viable career. But we don't
| need to make ourselves into China to do that.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I agree with this. STEM is being shouted from the rooftops from
| just about every major employer in the US I can think of at
| this point.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > As near as I can tell, they think this is something recent,
| but in my experience it started in the 1970s and the emphasis
| on increasing emphasis on STEM since the mid-2000s is the
| course correction that's taking place now.
|
| I believe what underscores the current problem is STEM being
| something special, while current "elite" STEM high school is
| what used to be a normal school curriculum 60-70 years ago.
|
| Everybody miss the fact that curriculums were much more small,
| compact, pushing, and focused in the West before everything
| from basket weaving to "business education" managed to sneak
| into high schools.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| It's all bollocks, of course. There are hardly any jobs in
| Science or Mathematics, not really that many in Engineering,
| and among "Technology" the only genuinely massive sector is
| software ('eating the world', or so I hear).
|
| So in reality what this massive "STEM" push amounts to is an
| excuse to trick children into wasting their time going
| thousands of dollars into debt getting useless degrees in
| mechanical engineering or mathematics before they can attend a
| Javascript bootcamp to become actually-employable.
| whatshisface wrote:
| By the time the change to school focus percolates through and
| hits the labor market the shortages will have moved around.
| See: Electrical engineers 1980-2000.
| dfmooreqqq wrote:
| Me too. If anything STEM is gaining steam.
| davio wrote:
| My wife sells to schools and librarians every day. STEM is now
| STEAM. I asked what STEAM is...
|
| It's STEM, plus Art
| mooreds wrote:
| Here was a thread that this article was posted in response to:
| https://twitter.com/SteveMillerOC/status/1389456546753437699
|
| "In the name of "equity", California DOE's 2021 Mathematics
| Framework attacks the idea of gifted students and eliminates
| opportunities for accelerated math.
|
| - no grouping students by ability - no Algebra for 8th graders
| - no Calculus for high schoolers
|
| https://cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/ "
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Note that getting rid of tailored instruction does not just
| "eliminate opportunity for accelerated math", it also makes
| it harder to access _remedial_ math instruction promptly for
| those who need it. This is how you get students who can 't
| quite grok negative numbers or fractions when they're in a
| frickin' Algebra I class. It absolutely hurts vulnerable
| students.
|
| Of course the most common 'solution' is then to get rid of
| "advanced" stuff like Algebra as a graduation requirement
| altogether, which is an even clearer disservice to students
| and their surrounding communities.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I do not yet have kids, but shit like this is why i already
| have a bank account saving money for private school. This
| move will not produce more equality - quite the opposite. All
| those whose parents can afford it will be in private school
| learning Algebra, and the rest will be left behind.
| swiley wrote:
| What an idiotic thing to do. This will absolutely hurt women
| and underprivileged people far more than privileged men, and
| it will result in a lot gifted people refusing to cooperate.
| nocommentguy wrote:
| At some point hanlon's razor starts getting dull. Follow
| the money
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Lol you should actually read the thread and replies. It may
| calm some of your fears. The author does a whole lot of
| backpedaling after being called out for the fact that the
| DOE's proposal does not, in fact, eliminate HS calculus.
|
| Edit: The "lol" wasn't directed at you by the way. I found
| it funny that the author of that thread was making a big
| deal about "the elimination of HS Calculus" and then
| immediately followed it up with a bunch of hemming and
| hawing about how that wasn't true.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Algebra is another story but if you ask university math
| faculty their opinions of high school AP "Calculus" you might
| want to sit down first.
| ardit33 wrote:
| whats wrong with it? My AP Calc in high school classes (two
| semesters) in Virgina (Halifax Country) was just as good as
| Calc 1 in college. I wished I had skipped it. Calc 2 was
| the class that I found challenging.
|
| I also in high school, I took Pascal as a learning to
| program/into class. I college I learned Ada, and it was a
| breeze due to my high school.
|
| I feel thankful to my last year in public school in middle
| of no where, rural VA, as it gave me great
| education/foundation that I did really well in college.
|
| I feel bad, as now Virginia is doing the same crap with
| math in the name of equity. Dumbing things down to the
| least common denominator is terrible, especially for
| smart/capable immigrants like I was. We don't have the
| luxury of private schools, and public schools are starting
| to pull the rug out as well.
|
| It is awful
| fastball wrote:
| So the solution to poor instruction is to drop it?
|
| Math is a useful skill for everyone, including calculus.
| Not everybody goes to university, so we should teach it in
| HS.
| intergalplan wrote:
| Approaching 40. Haven't ever needed calculus (or Trig)
| for anything. Sometimes I make an effort to pick math
| back up just because I feel like _I ought to_ , but it'd
| be so purely a hobby with no practical use that I have a
| hard time keeping at it. Some of it's neat but it's not
| really any more valuable to my life than doing even-less-
| useful-but-more-fun recreational math puzzles.
|
| Most people's lives and jobs involve even less math than
| mine does.
|
| More stats probably would have been helpful. Anything
| less-obviously-useful needs a hell of a lot more emphasis
| on what it's used for and how to apply it than I ever
| received, IMO, unless you're a pure-math major, and
| certainly in k-12 since almost none of the kids are going
| to be math majors.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| That's because all of these so called "gifted students"
| flunk our first semester calculus. We have to implement
| curves just to get them through to higher level math
| courses. Which they also struggle in because they only
| needed to get 40% on that Taylor Series test to get through
| second semester.
|
| Ap calc is a joke from my perspective. I'm not sure how to
| solve the crisis, but it's plain to see that American
| students that test into calc are woefully underprepared.
| I've tried to advise students to start with more
| fundamental courses, but they've been told they are
| "gifted" their whole lives. They ignore you and charge into
| calculus. Then they come back when the semester is about to
| end to reassess options. Just like that, what would have
| been another perfectly serviceable American engineer is
| lost.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Calculus is a joke anyway, colleges should just teach
| real analysis which will go through the same material in
| a way that's actually rigorous. If the students are
| lacking in mathematical fundamentals, teach those via
| discrete math and linear algebra.
| yaacov wrote:
| It's still bad, but the tweet mischaracterizes the report.
|
| Nowhere does it say that 8th grade algebra or 12th grade calc
| will be removed.
| tonymet wrote:
| There is a superficial push to "get more people into STEM". But
| STEM is undermined by reducing competitiveness. What we are
| creating is a watered down and un-competitive STEM
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I remember there was some sort of push to shift from STEM to
| STEAM, where A is Arts. And that signaled to me that other
| groups of people were trying to pile on to get access to
| funding opportunities. It also means a dilution of focus. STEM
| is already pretty broad. This article is all about fabs. That
| is a very niche part of STEM. How do you make sure the U.S.
| becomes strategically focused on developing the skills for
| running fabs if there's such a political debate over the
| importance of various majors who want to be incorporated into
| an already broad category?
|
| See: https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/stem-vs-steam
| cperciva wrote:
| I've also recently come across Science Technology Engineering
| Arts Mathematics and Design.
|
| It's absolutely about other groups trying to pile on and say
| "we're important and deserve extra funding too".
| KirillPanov wrote:
| It's almost like certain decisions don't benefit from being
| politicized.
|
| But try telling that to millenials today and you'll get an
| earful.
| amirhirsch wrote:
| Teachers aren't just piling on for funding. Like the blog
| post you linked says, teachers find that creative/artistic
| applications of technology/science/math/engineering tends to
| increase joy and interest in students. Push back to this
| "shift" feels like: "Back in my day, we wrote accounting
| software and called it STEM"
|
| fwiw I sell LEGO drone kits
| samatman wrote:
| > _On international tests of reading ability, the U.S. scores
| well above the average for developed countries, but in math we
| score below average._
|
| The average is completely irrelevant here, and this is important
| because we could burn a lot of money, and make a lot of children
| miserable, by trying to move the average up.
|
| What we need is as many students with exceptional math abilities
| as possible. I'm not going to offer my opinion on good ways to do
| this, what I am going to point out is that moving a bunch of
| students from the global 40th percentile to the global 60th is
| completely irrelevant, we have no evidence that it would be good
| for those students, and we shouldn't do it without a compelling
| reason, which this isn't.
|
| Keeping students who could be 99th percentile from ending up 90th
| due to sub-par education, and lack of opportunity, would be a
| very big deal.
| nostromo wrote:
| I'm very concerned about how our welcome push for equity and
| representation has been evolving from pulling underachieving
| people up to pushing overachieving people down.
|
| You see this in canceled AP courses across the country. You see
| this in the deemphasis on testing outcomes (SAT for example). And
| you see this in challenging classes being made easier, or
| focusing on group work rather than individual contributions.
|
| A while ago I read about how a school started introducing Khan's
| material into classrooms. It increased GPA on average. But it had
| a much greater effect on white and Asian American students, so it
| increased the achievement gap, and was canceled outright rather
| than improved. So a program was canceled that increased student
| performance... insanity.
|
| This isn't the way to go about improving equity.
| klodolph wrote:
| > I'm very concerned about how our welcome push for equity and
| representation has been evolving from pulling underachieving
| people up to pushing overachieving people down.
|
| I would be interested in seeing any historical evidence for
| this, because I'm a bit skeptical. This is something that
| swings back and forth, based on the location where you live and
| what happens to be popular. I remember advanced classes being
| pulled in the early 1990s. Then at some point, focus returns to
| the gifted students. Then you get No Child Left Behind. It
| seems to be partly a cycle and partly just a bunch of
| unintended consequences.
|
| > You see this in the deemphasis on testing outcomes (SAT for
| example).
|
| SAT isn't a good test. GRE is worse. They _should_ be
| deemphasized.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I saw this somewhere: It's through the lawn mower, not the
| fertilizer, that the lawn achieves equality.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I think Rush said it best:
|
| "There is trouble in the forest
|
| And the creatures all have fled
|
| As the maples scream, "Oppression"
|
| And the oaks just shake their heads
|
| So the maples formed a union
|
| And demanded equal rights
|
| They say, "The oaks are just too greedy
|
| We will make them give us light"
|
| Now there's no more oak oppression
|
| For they passed a noble law
|
| And the trees are all kept equal
|
| By hatchet, axe, and saw"
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iDM8fXhRdWs
| vermontdevil wrote:
| Where is the de-emphasizing of STEM in the US? I see nothing but
| STEM being promoted everywhere in colleges, high schools, camps,
| etc.
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