[HN Gopher] An update on the campaign to defend serious math edu...
___________________________________________________________________
An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in
California
Author : Tomte
Score : 325 points
Date : 2022-04-26 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottaaronson.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottaaronson.blog)
| spicymaki wrote:
| The tension here is that educational achievement is a proxy
| measurement for IQ and in capitalist societies IQ is directly
| correlated with income. The cultural ideal here in the US is that
| hard work, effort, and grit is what is necessary for success. It
| is supposed to be purely egalitarian; you get what you give.
| However whether you are born with a high IQ is purely random, and
| even worse IQ is heritable. This is creating a technocracy which
| is at odds with the egalitarian ideal. This along with the
| expanding wealth gap is causing the schism you see today.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > whether you are born with a high IQ is purely random, and
| even worse IQ is heritable
|
| This sounds contradictory to me.
|
| Moreover, how does IQ differ in this respect from "capacity and
| willingness to do hard work"?
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| Who you are born as is random, but who will have children
| with higher IQ is not. Work ethic is less nature and more
| nurture than IQ, or at least feels that way intuitively.
| akomtu wrote:
| > Who you are born as is random.
|
| The essense of materialistic nihilism.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| I mean they are completely different measures. They both
| contribute to success but can be tested independantly.
|
| Also assuming that "capacity and willingness to do hard work"
| is a personality trait, that is also largely random. So no
| matter which way you slice it, you gotta get lucky on either
| the intelligence or industriousness axes (or both) to be
| successful.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| High IQ by itself doesn't get rewarded very much without hard
| work, effort, and grit. If you have all of that, yes you'll be
| rewarded more than others who lack one or more of those
| qualities. And you should be.
| kube-system wrote:
| Intellect is not 100% inherited. The percentage is debated, but
| it is almost certainly not 100.
| TimPC wrote:
| Something is rotten in the state of academia when looking at the
| evidence there are mathematicians, scientists and social
| scientists standing bravely in favour of a high bar and a quality
| education program in mathematics.
|
| On the other side of the argument you have people from the
| Department of Education who specialize in Mathematics Education
| who seem happy to lower the bar as far as possible in the name of
| equality.
|
| When I was in University the Department of Education was the most
| woke department on campus, except for perhaps the Department of
| Gender Studies. We are now seeing policies that favour wokeness
| ahead of the best interests of the students affected by the
| policies.
| klodolph wrote:
| I don't live in CA and this isn't my circus, but I have some
| things to say about math education. From the statement:
|
| > We write to emphasize that for students to be prepared for STEM
| and other quantitative majors in 4-year colleges, [...], learning
| the Algebra II curriculum [...] in high school is essential.
|
| Problems with math are one of the most common reasons why
| students encounter difficulties in STEM education and careers.
| The most common problem is difficulty with high-school level
| algebra.
|
| I agree, fundamentally, with the relevant premise of the CA
| effort here (and agree with Aaronson's criticism of its
| implementation). That premise is that you shouldn't have to be on
| an accelerated track in middle school in order to take calculus
| in high school. And yet... the fact is, we get a lot of adults in
| college or graduate school pursuing STEM degrees, who have shaky
| foundations in high-school algebra.
|
| Just looking at the "typical" math track in US high schools it
| does seem a bit arbitrary. Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-
| Calculus, Calculus--this is the most common math track I see,
| with accelerated students starting Geometry in 9th grade,
| Calculus in 12th grade.
|
| The thing is... individual performance is highly variable in math
| classes, and to make sure that everyone gets good foundations in
| mathematics, we see high-school mathematics curricula that repeat
| the core algebra concepts in different classes. This repetition
| and focus on fundamentals is why the division between classes
| seems so arbitrary--what is presented as a sequence of classes is
| really more of a unified curriculum spread across multiple years.
| When you combine these two factors (variable performance,
| repetition in the curriculum), you end up with a population of
| high-school students who develop good foundations in algebra
| early on and are bored by the repetition, and a population of
| students who really benefit from the time spent mastering
| algebra, and it's hard to serve both.
|
| I think we can figure out a way to let high-school students take
| AP calculus in 12th grade without expecting them to take Algebra
| I in 8th grade, and we don't need to push everyone into calculus
| faster in order to do it. And yet, my experience with high-school
| education in the US has left me very cynical about it. Letting
| students progress through the high-school math curriculum at the
| right rate requires a kind of "personal touch" that seems to only
| happen to individual students when their parents are involved,
| but not _pushy_. It 's rare. The school system would rather do
| the easy thing (everybody moves in lockstep to the next class in
| the sequence), and parents are largely either uninvolved or
| overinvolved.
|
| (This is more or less what the article says, I'm agreeing with
| the article.)
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Considering the fact that the vast majority of students _aren
| 't_ going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn't make sense
| to track all students towards that goal.
|
| I feel as though there is too much focus on giving everyone
| more or less the same type of mathematical education in high
| school. This is probably due to limited resources (ie teacher
| availability and class sizes), but ideally there would be room
| for a more varied approach wherein students don't need to have
| every year build on the next if the _aren't_ STEM tracked. Too
| many students fall behind and never are able to recover. Math
| class just becomes dead time, and those that do make it to
| college end up retaking the same subjects over again.
| klodolph wrote:
| > Considering the fact that the vast majority of students
| aren't going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn't make
| sense to track all students towards that goal.
|
| It sounds like we agree 100% on that point.
|
| I'm mostly thinking about the students who are going into
| STEM degrees later in life, who will (hopefully) come from
| varied backgrounds in high school and middle school. If you
| decide in high-school that you're interested in STEM, then it
| makes sense to develop solid foundations in algebra during
| high-school. Just like it doesn't make sense for all people
| to take math like a STEM major, it doesn't make sense to
| fast-track all future STEM majors to take calculus in high-
| school, and it doesn't make sense to make decisions in middle
| school that lock students out of high-school calculus.
|
| The thing that confounds this is that people overvalue high-
| school calculus as _the_ ticket to a STEM degree, when (like
| the article says) many people would be better served by
| developing stronger foundations in algebra. And public
| schools are generally not good at educating students at their
| own rate & level.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Irrespective of specific educational curriculums, I'm curious
| what does HN think about Calculus?
|
| I absolutely loved learning Calculus in high school in Math and
| 1st and 2nd year of University. I consistently got 97+% on my
| grades.
|
| And I've never had to use it in my Computer Science degree or my
| 20 year Software Engineer career since.
|
| Am in a bubble because I don't spend much time in the Machine
| Learning domain?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Also you don't need calculus to "do" ML (even deep learning
| research!)
|
| I got to the point of writing my own toy neural network from
| scratch, seeing backpropegation, figuring that I'd have to use
| the chain rule myself on my forward pass, understanding what
| "automatic differentiation" was and why it's important, and
| decided "screw that I'm not putting myself through this hell
| again" and decided to look into
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative-free_optimization
|
| You can literally just find your own hetrodox subset of
| scholars in your field who are like "calculus? pfft!"
| npunt wrote:
| I've never understood the cult of calculus. I think it comes
| from mistaking the importance of its discovery for the
| importance of teaching it. It was a huge unlock for science,
| but is in no way a huge unlock for most people's lives.
|
| On the other hand, I feel psychology and stats are the biggest
| missing pieces in K12 education. We need to build greater
| awareness of human needs and fallibilities, and awareness of
| how to make decisions in uncertain environments by
| understanding probabilities. Both are about developing a
| nuanced perspective on life and making better, more sober
| decisions, and they build a great deal of empathy to boot.
|
| Finally, psych & stats are inherently relatable - everyone
| deals with people and has to make decisions. So much of the K12
| experience isn't relatable, which is why students often hate
| school.
| eesmith wrote:
| As I recall from when this came up a few years ago, the "cult
| of calculus" was because in the post-war era 'the end-users
| of mathematics studies [were] mostly in the physical sciences
| and engineering; and they expected manipulative skill in
| calculus.' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math .
|
| One way to see how curriculum has changed over the last 70
| years is in Sheldon Glashow's autobiography. He graduated
| from the Bronx High School of Science in 1950. Quoting https:
| //www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1979/glashow/biogr... ,
| "High-school mathematics then terminated with solid
| geometry."
| ecshafer wrote:
| Calculus is critically essential for learning many later math
| fields, and many important topics. Mechanical Engineering,
| Electrical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Civil
| Engineering, Aerospace, etc. There is a lot of very critical
| fields to modern society that requires knowledge of calculus.
| You can't build a modern bridge without calculus.
| npunt wrote:
| I don't dismiss its value in the broader education system,
| nor for certain industries and jobs. But specifically in
| the context of K12 requirements & expectations in the
| process of applying for college, it's hardly foundational
| knowledge for most of life's paths.
|
| Ergo, it's best to a) not to have college expectations be
| built around most/everyone having it before college and
| punishing those who don't, b) focus on teaching it where
| it's needed (eg when in college for those majors), and of
| course c) if a kid knows their path involves it earlier,
| make it available to learn when they want to.
| MatteoFrigo wrote:
| It depends upon where you think calculus starts.
|
| If you take the position that calculus is the concept of limit
| and all its consequences, then things like exp() and log() are
| calculus and it's hard to get anything done in CS without
| those. In this view, saying that quicksort is O(n log n) is a
| statement of calculus.
|
| If you say that calculus is derivatives and integrals, then I'd
| say that calculus is not that important in a digital world, and
| that discrete math is much more useful. However, discrete math
| is harder than calculus, but you can use calculus as an
| approximation to the discrete answer (i.e., compute the
| integral if you don't know how to compute a sum, or use a
| derivative to approximate a difference). Ironically, this is
| the opposite of the old attitude that the continuous answer was
| the true one and the discrete answer was a poor man's
| approximation to the true one.
| charlescearl wrote:
| In the last couple of months, two readings stay with me on
| challenging the notion that math/science are things that only
| "certain kinds of men" do (more a gendered stance in the u.s.
| than eastern europe / asia).
|
| The first is The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber. I'm left
| with the notion that what we now call science and mathematics
| emerged from tinkering, persistent experimentation done mostly by
| women, and that what we have now disciplined into mathematics
| emerges from the systematic study and production of pattern
| (basket making, the organization of communal structures), and
| Graeber seems to argue against the hierarchical gender divides
| when viewed across the broad stretch of human history.
|
| Rachel Thomas https://www.fast.ai/2022/03/15/math-person/ also
| makes a case that math is something that all people do.
|
| I think that the larger point both are making is that disciplines
| don't have to be the way they are constructed now.
|
| My only "political"'statement would be the hope that states
| (particularly the u.s.) would invest as deeply in mathematics
| education at the primary and secondary level, for all of its
| communities, at the level of investment in big science and big
| military projects.
| voz_ wrote:
| Wokeness is destroying California. I left after living there for
| 20 years. It was a great choice.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| phillipcarter wrote:
| This is a real _laptop class_ kind of statement, to borrow
| terminology from one of the more prominent anti- "woke"
| investors.
|
| Living in California is expensive as hell, especially for
| younger folks with no inheritance, and the state operates at
| varying levels of dysfunction because it's got 40 million
| people in it.
| [deleted]
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| What is wokeness in this instance?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Math perpetuates an -ism so we must change math.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Was some of the false statements said about Common Core
| match "woke" according to that definition?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Economic disparity is a more obvious answer with the benefit of
| being backed by actual data. No need for personal boogeymen
| based on social mores.
| kurthr wrote:
| From the original letter: While well-intentioned,
| we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are
| deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced
| students. Adopting them would result in a student population that
| is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative
| degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents,
| and teachers encourage acceleration beginning in grade eight (or
| sooner) because of mistaken beliefs that Calculus is an important
| high school goal.'
|
| The updated CMF looks better, but I just don't see how an
| educator who knows math or how to teach math could come to such a
| conclusion (that Calculus should not be a goal). If it is well-
| intentioned, what was the intention... to dumb down math in high
| school? Perhaps we need to educate those who are coming up with
| the math frameworks in math and science, or to get people who
| care on the California Department of Education?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd rather linear algebra and discrete math be the goal.
| Calculus is greatly overrated. I mean, sure you should take it,
| but IMO linear algebra is considerably more useful in the real
| world and most people never take it. Knowing how to integrate
| and differentiate in continuous space isn't nearly as useful as
| learning how to count in discrete space. Most people operate in
| a discrete world.
| rayiner wrote:
| > If it is well-intentioned, what was the intention... to dumb
| down math in high school?
|
| Bingo. It's well intentioned, but the intentions aren't to
| ensure that America can keep up with a rising China.
|
| It's shocking to me that people in California aren't more
| worried about this. About 15 years ago, I was talking to an
| engineer at Juniper/Cisco. We were joking about how Huawei had
| copied one of their router designs down to the silk screened
| assembly instructions (in English!) on the PCBs. Fast forward
| to today, Huawei is making fully custom equipment down to state
| of the art switch and router chips, and Chinese companies are
| white boxing lower end products made by American brands.
|
| There's a big bet out there that the U.S. can survive on
| software and social media alone. I would think the success of
| Tik Tok would have blown even that rationalization out of the
| water.
|
| On the general point of U.S. math education: my cousin who
| lives in a nice California suburb was complaining that the math
| education her early high school student is receiving is several
| grade levels behind what she got--in Bangladesh. My mom, who
| also went to school in Bangladesh (in the 1960s!) was deeply
| unhappy about the math education in our affluent Virginia
| suburb, until I got into a top STEM magnet high school. My own
| kids go to an expensive private school, but are still getting
| math tutoring on the side. Math is just a shockingly low
| priority for Americans.
| klodolph wrote:
| In the 1960s, it was the USSR. In the 1980s it was Japan. Now
| it's China.
|
| I'm not trying to suggest that the US is fine and we
| shouldn't fix anything, but if you look at the world by
| comparing test scores and grade levels in mathematics, you're
| going to come to some very warped perceptions about what is
| important. I'm speaking as someone passionate about STEM
| education, who got a B.S. in mathematics.
|
| The whole situation is warped. The USA accounts for 4% of the
| world population, and 40% of the top 100 universities in the
| world. That's fucking _weird._ I don 't have an explanation
| for it. I'm just saying that the different signals we use for
| evaluating how good our education system is functioning are
| giving us radically different pieces of feedback, and our
| understanding needs to be correspondingly sophisticated.
|
| There are all these narratives about how China is going to
| eat our lunch (like Japan in the 1980s, or the USSR in the
| 1960s) and while I don't feel comfortable betting on long-
| term US hegemony, and while I do think we should put more
| work into our mathematics education, I do think that looking
| at the world through high-school mathematics test scores is
| going to give you anxiety more than it's going to give you an
| accurate picture of what are problems really are.
|
| To take another statistic into account, there are actually
| many STEM graduates in the US. What do we do with this
| information? How do we change our policies? It's unclear.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| > The USA accounts for 4% of the world population, and 40%
| of the top 100 universities in the world
|
| that is just inertia, carried over from the time when the
| US was the only superpower. More and more Chinese
| universities enter this list every year.
| nosefrog wrote:
| > affluent Virginia suburb, until I got into a top STEM
| magnet high school
|
| TJ? :P
| majormajor wrote:
| If we look at countries beyond the US and China... what are
| they surviving on?
|
| Should math be a higher priority in the US? Should working
| hours in the US be the same as in China? Should the academic
| pressure on kids be as high in the US as in China?
|
| The US is much smaller population-wise, would we actually
| need to try five times _harder_ than China?
|
| Is it not enough to compare today's high school overachievers
| with those of 20 years ago, all still fighting for the same
| universities but with all similarly-inflated resumes? Do we
| actually need to push them even further?
|
| Do we instead want to be more like the European countries
| that currently put themselves under _less_ pressure than the
| US?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may
| have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical
| literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my
| adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't
| remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I
| need.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Stats _requires_ calculus; you can 't even define a
| probability distribution without some pretty advanced notions
| of real analysis. Discrete math, linear algebra etc. are
| viable alternatives.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I took AP Stats in high school. I took a calculus based
| probability course at MIT. The former was extremely
| important to me and I learned a ton. The latter was
| interesting, but mostly unnecessary. A z-score lookup table
| is more than enough to teach the concept of a normal cdf
| without actually being able to derive it yourself.
|
| As a professional data scientist I've never needed to use
| calculus unless you consider graphical reasoning on
| distribution diagrams to be calculus.
| khazhoux wrote:
| No. Learning high-school or early-ungrad statistics does
| not require knowing calculus. The material will not require
| integration or differentiation.
| BeetleB wrote:
| What you say is true. However:
|
| Most people who deal with data/statistics in their working
| lives do not need to know real analysis, do not utilize
| calculus to draw (correct) conclusions, and do not use
| linear algebra either. They learned all these things once
| and forgot them a long time ago, _because they did not need
| them_. They utilize statistics an order of a magnitude more
| often than they do calculus.
|
| They are not statisticians, but people who need to deal
| with data as part of their job.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| But statistical literacy doesn't.
|
| Sure, they may not be able to tell you what is a measurable
| function, but they can explain the way you should feel
| about a p-value.
| teawrecks wrote:
| As someone who took both a stats and newtonian physics
| course before taking a calc course, I wish I hadn't. It
| was a waste of time. They can't explain why you use the
| formulas they do, they have to just say "trust us, and be
| able to regurgitate it on the exam". For me, learning
| means developing an intuition, which means
| resolving/building new facts from other facts I have
| already accepted. Being handed seemingly random formulas
| to memorize goes directly against this. Yeah, I can use
| my car without knowing how every piece inside works, but
| the moment something goes wrong, I don't know what to do.
| I would never say I am car-literate, and someone who
| hasn't taken calc cannot be stats-literate.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| You can develop an intuition divorced from meaningless
| formulas.
|
| It goes without saying this proposed class wouldn't be
| based around memorizing unmotivated formulas.
| teawrecks wrote:
| But how would you "motivate" the formulas without knowing
| where they came from? Why is this the formula we use and
| not something else?
|
| To go back to the car analogy, I know why I need an
| engine, you might even say I know how to use the engine,
| but if the engine dies or I want to use the engine for
| some other purpose, I'm not equipped to do anything.
|
| I don't have "literacy" with engines, I have rote
| memorization of a series of steps. I don't have enough
| information to know why the steps are what they are, nor
| could I know under what conditions the steps should
| change or what they should change to.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| Just don't include formulas you can't motivate simply.
|
| Will it result in students not knowing as many formulas?
| Of course, but who cares?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Not at a high school level. AP Stats I believe does not
| require calculus as a prerequisite.
|
| Discrete distributions can be defined, even infinite
| discrete distributions (as sequences and series are taught
| in pre-calc). Continuous distributions can't be formally
| defined, but a lot of intuition can be given with hand-
| waving e.g. the area under this curve. Probably most of the
| class is spent with counting and probability-type problems,
| but plenty of actual statistics can be done without
| calculus - we can learn about distributions, what a
| statistic is, expectation, sampling, counting,
| probability... the list goes on.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| There's a diminishing return here. Single variable
| differential and integral calc is a sweet spot. Without
| that, there's a ton of memorizing seemingly unrelated
| facts, but with it, you can learn a few principles that
| lead to a huge amount of practical stuff.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Is this really true, in practice? For example, given its
| importance in every day life, I think _everyone_ should
| understand test sensitivity and specificity, and how these
| relate to but are quite different from predictive value
| positive and predictive value negative. All of those topics
| can be understood with basic algebra. Similarly, I recall
| my introduction to biostatistics class I took at an Ivy
| League institution, and I don 't really recall using
| calculus much in any of it.
| fartcannon wrote:
| At some point, someone was saying precisely this about
| literacy. And it was as true then as your comment is now.
| You only need some range of function around the baseline
| education to operate in society. But if you want society
| to progress, then everyone needs to learn to read and
| write.
| magicalist wrote:
| At some point someone was saying the same thing about
| Greek and cursive, too, though, so being merely more than
| the baseline isn't sufficient evidence that it should be
| included in everyone's education.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Bad analogy. Being able to understand statistics at an
| everyday usage level _is_ the equivalent of being able to
| read and write. Understanding calculus needed for
| statistics is the equivalent of needing to understand
| Latin or comparative linguistics. Noble and useful
| pursuits for sure, but you can get far with an educated
| society that just knows how to read and write even if
| they 're iffy on the Latin roots of it all.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Colleges have varying levels of stats classes for different
| majors, and not all of them require rigorous understandings
| of calculus. The ideas and principles presented in those
| classes are still important for people to learn, even if
| they are unfamiliar with, or haven't mastered, calculus.
| It's possible to teach those principles in high school, as
| well.
| falcor84 wrote:
| You can't even define arithmetic on natural numbers without
| some pretty advanced notions of logic and set theory. But
| you can definitely get a lot of value from arithmetic
| without those definitions.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Stats requires calculus; you can 't even define a
| probability distribution without some pretty advanced
| notions of real analysis._
|
| Only in the same sense in which operating a car requires
| advanced knowledge of mechanical engineering, electrical
| engineering, aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics,
| etc. IOW, in no sense related to the everyday, ordinary
| practice of operating a car.
|
| Sure, statistics requires calculus... and real analysis,
| and probability, and measure theory, and FSM knows what
| else - IF you're doing statistics research or trying to
| break new ground, or do really advanced things. But all of
| this is light years away from the level of statistics
| knowledge needed by Joe Q. Public to better understand (and
| not be misled by) the "statistics" frequently thrown out in
| news articles, government reports, etc.
|
| Please, for the love of FSM, can we stop this HN "thing" of
| assuming that every mention of any mathematical topic
| implies that the goal of the user/learner is to do original
| research in the field?
| the_only_law wrote:
| Then I have no idea what my school was doing then because
| as a senior you either took Calc or Stats.
| hnrj95 wrote:
| i'd argue that you can't properly define probability
| without notions in measure theory, which is obviously far
| too advanced for a high school student. i'm not an
| educator, but some middle ground needs to be struck. i
| think it's clear to many that the quality of education in
| american colleges far exceeds the quality of education in
| the average middle or high school. that's the issue, imo
| afiori wrote:
| You can do quite a lot of useful stuff with just https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_distribution_functi...
|
| You only need measure theory when working with something
| that is not easily replaceable by R^n, Z^n, or finite
| sets to meaningfully define integration, otherwise
| (in)finite sums and Riemann integration get you very far.
|
| I am a bit rusty on my advanced probability theory, but
| IIRC the only thing that required* measures was defining
| conditional probabilities and expected values on zero-
| probability events.
|
| Of course redoing that class without Lebesgue integration
| sounds excruciatingly painful.
|
| * Not just to make proofs nicer and theorems more
| powerful
| jhbadger wrote:
| But that's like saying everybody who learns to program
| needs to know electrical engineering so they understand how
| CPUs work. Just as most programmers don't need that to be
| good programmers, knowing useful statistics doesn't mean
| deriving things from first principles but rather knowing
| what statistical test to apply to analyze data and how to
| interpret the results. This doesn't need calculus.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| I had calculus before college, got a 5 on the AP calculus
| exam, and it did not seem to have prepared me in any way for
| college-level calculus. I always thought that had been a
| total waste of one of my senior year class periods.
| pishpash wrote:
| That's a totally different argument. I mean, did arithmetic
| "algebra" prepare you for abstract algebra or even linear
| algebra in college?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Actually, yes. The rules for manipulating 'expressions'
| with 'variables' in school algebra describe what are
| called "free objects" over some set of "generators". The
| whole setting generalizes pretty well.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I took calculus in High School, it was a dual credit course
| with a state university. I got credit at the university for
| the first semester of calculus (which was taught over the
| entire year in High School, so at a slower pace, but also
| allowed the High School class to spend more time on review
| in the first month or so, compared to college courses which
| basically dive right in). We took the same exams as the
| university course.
|
| I felt I was prepared for 2nd semester calculus when I took
| that as my first math course in college.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's true that to someone familiar with collegiate
| mathematics, it doesn't feel too important to make that the
| goal - sure, why not statistics (except perhaps that a
| thorough understanding of statistics requires some calculus),
| or why not discrete mathematics, or number theory, or linear
| algebra, or set theory...there are lots of topics!
| Mathematics really is a tree with many branches, and you're
| correct that the high school track towards calculus just
| develops one trunk with a couple stunted growths, which is
| definitely unfortunate.
|
| Unfortunately, I think it comes down to resource constraints:
| When I attended a relatively wealthy and large suburban
| school district that offered more courses than most other
| school system in the state, there were only 18 other students
| who took AP Calculus BC our senior years (and one anomaly who
| took it his junior year). There were a couple classes for
| Calc AB, mostly seniors and a few juniors. That special
| 18-student course was already pushing the limit on the
| minimum class size, a couple years prior they hadn't had
| enough students and didn't offer it at all.
|
| If you'd split the curriculum into discrete math and
| statistics as well, there wouldn't be enough resources to
| support those branches. To take a chainsaw to the analogy,
| you wouldn't have the straight but sturdy tree trunk we have
| now, you'd have a stump or maybe a shrub.
| dymk wrote:
| The abstract concepts of calculus are useful and will shape
| the way you think about and go about solving problems, even
| if you don't explicitly employ an integral or derivative.
| Rates, sums, areas, volumes, etc.
|
| Learn the nuts and bolts in highschool, use the intuition for
| the rest of your life.
| mrob wrote:
| The abstract concepts are useful, but in practice most
| effort is spent on applying rote symbol manipulation rules
| to questions specifically designed such that applying the
| most obvious rule at each step will reach the solution. The
| idea of a tree search in symbol manipulation is never
| taught, so if you try solving non-trivial real-world
| problems you will likely manipulate yourself into a dead
| end.
|
| Highschool calculus should be taught with computer algebra
| software. That's what you'll use in real life as soon as
| you find an even slightly difficult calculus problem.
| There's not enough time to teach both the symbol
| manipulation rules and the intuition.
| arcbyte wrote:
| Seriously this. The average American doesn't grasp how
| basic graphs work. This simple idea of trends and how
| different functions imply graph differences is a powerful
| basic thought model. "Is this a linear or exponential curve
| curve problem?"
| scarmig wrote:
| The point isn't that every single student should take
| calculus. The goal is to make it so different students can
| choose the path that's best for them. California's proposed
| changes make it much tougher for students to take calculus in
| 12th grade, let alone earlier.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm certainly very happy that I learned calculus in high
| school. I then got a 5 on the AP calculus test and tested in
| to third quarter calculus in college. It was important as an
| engineer to understand those concepts. I don't use them too
| often and I forgot a lot of it, but I really enjoyed it and I
| think it would be unfortunate if other students did not have
| that opportunity. I agree stats would be great too!
| canadaduane wrote:
| As a software engineer, I wish I had learned stats instead
| of calculus. Some exposure would have been great, but the
| high school & university requirements were way off target
| wrt its usefulness in computer science. It was a painful
| process of learning, failing, and re-taking calculus,
| squeaking by, only to never use it again. I was a
| straight-A student otherwise.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I get that. As a robotics engineer, some cursory
| understanding of integrals and derivatives is useful.
|
| But what I really mean is that, as a person, I just
| really enjoyed calculus. I found I was very good at it,
| and that experience helped me understand why some people
| choose to focus their career on pure mathematics. I am
| happy I took calculus not as a means of training for the
| workforce, but because I found it enriching on its own.
| And I never would have taken all that time if it wasn't
| offered to me as a class in public school that counted as
| credits towards graduation.
| shmde wrote:
| Lets say you need to find the probability of something
| happening 10% of the time to 40% of the time, you need to
| perform definite integration of the curve ( lets say normal
| curve ) from 0.1 to 0.4 on the x axis multiplied by the
| normal curve function. This is one of the easiest examples I
| could remember from my undergrad. We could solve these
| problems with ease at undergraduate level because we grinded
| hard during our high school. And also these type of problems
| were just a subset of the huge variety of problems presented
| during our undergraduate. But lets say they started teaching
| calculus only during Undergrad it would have become a
| tremendous task just to first learn about calculus then start
| with applying it on other subjects. I am all in for teaching
| calculus during high school.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Lets say you need to find the probability of something
| happening 10% of the time to 40% of the time, you need to
| perform definite integration of the curve ( lets say normal
| curve ) from 0.1 to 0.4 on the x axis multiplied by the
| normal curve function.
|
| No one does this in the real world. Not even professional
| statisticians who know calculus. In the old days they used
| table lookups. Today they use software.
|
| You need to understand the concept of areas under curves.
| Calculus is just a means to compute the area.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I think if the policy was "calculus isn't an important goal,
| we should actually teach stats" the reaction would be
| different.
|
| I give the edge to calculus because it allows students to go
| right into physics and be able to graduate college with an
| engineering degree in four years (saving them time and
| money), but any challenging quantitative material would be
| good for their development.
|
| The big picture goal is to show them there is this big world
| of problems that can be approached with specialized knowledge
| and get them familiar with what it takes to gain that
| knowledge.
| troupe wrote:
| > any challenging quantitative material would be good for
| their development.
|
| I think this is key. What exactly they study may not be
| quite as important as whether or not they are actually
| getting an opportunity to do some form of challenging
| mathematics.
| fn-mote wrote:
| The quality of mathematical arguments presented in AP
| Calculus are significantly higher than other "standard" high
| school courses. So to the extent that it is a nationwide
| program that promotes some careful learning, it is a big
| plus.
|
| I think statistical literacy is also important, but more than
| anything I think students benefit from learning how to think
| about hard(er) problems. If they learn that in statistics,
| great.
|
| Generally I would say easy courses is the real problem, not
| content.
|
| However, many many students enter college engineering
| programs with 1-2 semesters of calculus, so not having it
| could be a competitive disadvantage - presumably to your
| understanding of those first year classes.
| majormajor wrote:
| I would've done better in college - and probably have a
| better understanding of calculus today - if I hadn't tested
| out of University-level Calc I due to AP credit. I didn't
| _really_ know what I was doing in the high-school course.
|
| But I was a slacker and that experience doesn't necessarily
| transfer.
|
| And yes, I'd generally favor stats over calculus as an
| additional HS class; however, I am hesitant about
| _discouraging_ the opportunity to take either.
| taeric wrote:
| I'll bite. Why is calculus a goal?
| kurthr wrote:
| Because, without it you will be at a great disadvantage in
| entering any STEM undergraduate program in the US.
| taeric wrote:
| I'll agree that any stem targeted students should get
| exposure. Not clear that it helps most students.
| bawolff wrote:
| Maybe for most of them, however i found calculus totally
| useless for my CS degree (the only time i recall it
| mentioned was defining big-oh notation). Otoh i liked
| calculus so still time well spent.
|
| Of course, that's not counting "mathamatical maturity"
| which is super important or if you're doing some specific
| thing that needs calculus (hello machine learning.)
| pishpash wrote:
| It's pretty simple:
|
| - calculus if you want to do engineering
|
| - discrete mathematics if you want to do CS
|
| You can teach these in university, it's not a problem.
| Calculus doesn't need to be taught in high school to
| everyone but it should be available and it should be the
| goal state in terms of curriculum pace for everyone so
| that you should have no problem taking it by the time you
| are 17 or 18 (which is what we're talking about).
|
| Anything else propagates back to a regressive dumbing
| down in an earlier year, from an already dumbed down
| curriculum by international standards.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > - calculus if you want to do engineering
|
| > - discrete mathematics if you want to do CS
|
| I'd guess the vast majority of software development jobs
| are like "gluing one API layer to another" and "writing
| simple-to-complex CRUD apps". Neither calculus or
| discrete mathematics really helps if your goal is to
| simply make a computer read data from database X and
| display it in webform Y.
|
| I found all of the math required by my undergrad degree
| to be totally useless in real life programming. Whether
| you need _any_ math at all will highly depend on the
| application domain you get in to. The most complex math I
| needed as a code monkey was vector arithmetic (3D
| graphics) and trigonometry (ocean and aero mapping
| navigation).
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| The majority of MDs are reading charts or diagnosing the
| flu or allergies or stitching up a wound, why should they
| understand biochemistry?
| taeric wrote:
| This begs the question that they do. Probably safe to
| assume that most don't.
|
| Just like it is safe to assume that most programmers
| aren't good at calculus. Or discrete math. Or proofs.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| I found it incredibly useful for learning all sorts of
| probability theory despite hating calculus. And I really
| think to be a well rounded CS graduate you need some
| background in stats/ML nowadays. So many of our systems
| have some element of ML-based recommendation and it's
| important that a new grad can meaningfully engage with
| those systems in research and in industry.
| TimPC wrote:
| The intention was to dumb down mathematics. If you lower the
| bar sufficiently you can get everyone over it. Then we'll all
| be equal, which is the goal of this curriculum.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The vision is equality. One way to achieve equality is to get
| better at doing something and improve the outcomes of what you
| are doing.
|
| Another way is to lower the standard to make the outcome easier
| to attain. It's gross and racist.
| H8crilA wrote:
| What does "calculus" here mean? I'm not American, no idea
| what's included in that word and what's outside, in this
| context. Does it mean limits, derivatives, integration
| (Newton), maybe even some high level talk about ODEs for the
| "very best" schools? Anything more, anything less?
|
| Also, in case anyone is also wondering, 8th grade means 13-14
| years old.
| pishpash wrote:
| Calculus without analysis, so the mechanical rules and
| recipes of real analysis of well behaved scalar functions
| that an engineering course might use (and that were used by
| the developers of Newtonian mechanics in the pre-modern era),
| limits on intervals, Riemann integration, etc.
| SOTGO wrote:
| Limits, derivatives, and integrals mostly, plus many
| applications. There is also a heavy emphasis on computation
| and very little emphasis on proof.
| Jensson wrote:
| Yes, they talk about the normal things average high school
| students learn about derivatives and integrals all over the
| world.
| zdragnar wrote:
| At my US school around the year 2000, precalc was one option
| for seniors, which primarily focused on limits and
| derivatives. The more advanced pace AP calc course also went
| into integrals. Beyond that I don't really recall, but by
| that point you also had gone through courses focusing on
| basic geometry, basic algebra (using variables, factoring),
| and a course dedicated to trigonometry (mostly memorizing the
| rules around figuring out angles).
|
| There were some other courses that had math involvement, but
| were more business oriented (finance / accounting type stuff)
| and I don't recall if they counted towards core math credit
| requirements.
| cowboysauce wrote:
| It varies throughout the country. But for me it was:
|
| * Calculus I: limits, derivatives, integrals
|
| * Calculus II: More integration techniques (substitution, by
| parts, table), infinite series and convergence, basic
| numerical methods
|
| * Calculus III: multi-variable calculus (partial derivatives,
| multiple integrals), vector calculus (gradient, divergence,
| curl, surface and line integrals)
|
| ODEs were a class you could take after Calc II.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Wait, is this high school or college? That looks like 3
| different courses you're listing there - I've never heard
| of a high school offering more than a single year of
| calculus.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Some schools which allow students to take calculus 1 and
| 2 before senior year also offer multivariate calculus
| (3), differential equations, and linear algebra courses
| to round out the fourth year of math. This is especially
| prevalent when students can take geometry in 8th grade
| which leads to Algebra II, Pre-Cal, Calculus, Advanced
| Math Electives as the four year progression.
| majormajor wrote:
| My public high school in TX had that track.
|
| Is this uncommon in California schools?
|
| (I think the idea that it's in any means required to be
| able to do STEM in college is ludicrous, but having the
| option is great.)
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > limits, derivatives, integration (Newton), maybe even some
| high level talk about ODEs
|
| My son is taking high school BC Calculus (one step above "AP"
| calculus) this year. It includes limits, derivatives,
| integration (including integration by parts and partial
| fraction decomposition), ordinary differential equations,
| infinite series and taylor/mcluarin series.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Goodharts law is in effect. They have a target they are trying
| to hit and are aiming a different way towards it.
|
| They are optimizing towards "High School Graduates" and
| "College Graduates". And if they need to destroy the value of
| being any kind of graduate to get there. So be it.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| My guess is the intention is to be able to say that the
| framework benefits disadvantaged people. But like almost any
| policy like this all it does at best is pull down people at the
| top, at worst pulls down everyone making the situation worse
| for everyone.
|
| You can have separation of education by ability, and progress,
| or you can have equality, and everyone being pulled down to the
| same low level. And suffering for everyone. You can't have
| both. Take it from someone who has direct experience with
| communism, which is the same mentality that drives this.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > You can have separation of education by ability, and
| progress, or you can have equality, and everyone being pulled
| down to the same low level.
|
| This seems a little off. What we're talking about (and what
| it seems like you're defending) is directing _more_ resources
| towards the most gifted. It 's fine to believe that, but it's
| an argument to give the most to those who have the most.
| Nobody is pulling anyone down, and communists are as happy to
| grant power and resources to those with aptitude and
| connections as capitalists are.
|
| edit: with the constant attacks on teachers, it might be more
| realistic to stop aiming for calculus in high school. Any kid
| who manages it within a gutted public system would have
| gotten there anyway, no matter what situation they found
| themselves in. They can download calculus books and calculus
| lectures now; with the internet a feral education is within
| everyone's reach.
| ralph84 wrote:
| How is it directing more resources to allow students to
| take courses at their level? It's not like you have to pay
| high school math teachers a higher salary to teach
| calculus. Your typical public high school in California has
| 1,000+ students. With that many students it's not going to
| be hard to find 20-30 students to register for a calculus
| class. It's not like you're running a special private class
| just for a few gifted students.
| hellisothers wrote:
| As the parent of a child who is gifted at math this is
| wrong on so many levels, I'll just state one. My kid only
| has so much time he can genuinely focus on "school work" in
| a day, why should he be forced to spend "school" time on
| things wildly beneath his level and then come home and
| spend his own time on additional "school" type work?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't think calculus should be a goal to be honest. Or at
| least not as taught. Calculus could be greatly condensed to a
| shorter theoretical view. The ideas of understanding
| differentiation and integration are great. Memorizing the rules
| of doing it is pretty painful and likely won't stick. But
| that's the bulk of classroom time, homework, and testing.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| I don't doubt that the people crafting these proposals care. I
| think they truly believe they are doing the right thing. I
| personally think it's just increasingly popular, mistaken moral
| beliefs that inform these types of proposals. Some of the
| underlying beliefs:
|
| 1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability
|
| 2. Any observable differences between humans are merely the
| result of social factors
|
| 3. Any observable differences in outcomes between groups of
| humans are the result of oppression from the majority group
|
| 4. If you observe differences at your org/institution, it's
| your moral duty to create policies which disfavor groups of
| humans performing better and to favor groups of humans
| performing worse, as those performance differences are due to
| oppression.
|
| If these beliefs undergird your worldview, and your social
| groups/information environment reinforce and reward these
| beliefs, it is of no surprise that we'll see a lot of people
| soberly propose the types of policies we see here. I can
| empathize that they really do think they are fighting the good
| fight, and are doing the right thing for society.
| temp8964 wrote:
| I don't think it has to be related to any point you put in
| here. I think when STEM people comment on math education,
| they easily forget K-12 math education is for all students,
| not future college STEM students.
|
| Lots of controversies in math education between STEM
| professors (especially mathematicians) and K-12 math
| educators/researchers are rooted in this. In the community of
| math and science education, we educators/researchers always
| focus on average students who will grow into future citizens,
| not STEM workers. This is really a different mindset to STEM
| professors.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| That logic isn't used in any other discipline:
|
| "We only cover bad art -- we don't focus on students who go
| on to be professional artists."
|
| "We only focus on bad English -- we don't focus on students
| who go on to be professional writers."
|
| "We only focus on bad history - we don't focus on students
| who go on to study history or social science."
|
| Each of those has an AP and IB track, competitions to find
| elites, etc -- just as mathematics should for high
| performers.
|
| If as an educator, you only teach to the lowest common
| denominator, then you're failing the children you're
| supposed to educate.
|
| To me, your post reads as if you're bragging about failing
| at your job.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Students do learn art in K-12, but they could be
| considered as "bad art" by professional artists...
| zmgsabst wrote:
| No -- you should fact check that.
|
| Middle and high schools start auditioning and training
| students into "advanced" art, preparing them to go onto
| competitions and onto serious careers in programs
| differentiated from the casual art classes.
|
| Learning calculus won't be enough as a professional in
| STEM either -- but AP Calculus is the equivalent of
| audition-only advanced art classes. (Which exist all
| over.)
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Do most public schools really have the capacity to train
| students for serious art careers? At least in dance and
| music, at the highest levels everything is purely student
| driven (school dance and music is typically not super
| competitive for the serious artist) and presumably visual
| art is as well. Unless you go to an arts high school, but
| there aren't that many of those
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I went to two high schools, one very poor and one
| moderately wealthy.
|
| Both had audition programs in art for "advanced" classes
| (both music and drawing), where students were matched
| with more serious training and where their bands went to
| competitions and drawings were entered in regional shows.
|
| I think you're confusing "good, on track for
| professional" with "absolute top tier" -- many students
| from regular schools go on to, eg, be animators at a
| studio or choir directors.
|
| The same split exists in math:
|
| - advanced classes you have to place into exist at most
| schools, eg AP calculus
|
| - but to be the "absolute top tier", you're talking about
| STEM schools and private mentoring programs
|
| You need the first for engineers, scientists, etc -- even
| if they're not going to be Terry Tao.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| So then let's have a few separate paths instead of only one
| curriculum. I believe that there is a lot of value to a
| basic algebra + personal finance + probability math track
| that helps a future plumber understand everything they need
| for their career.
|
| Depriving college-bound students of calculus, though, is a
| bad move. A lot of philosophy also involves calculus-
| related arguments (ie if we cut up space in really small
| pieces, what do we get?), so it has applications outside
| the STEM fields.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| That's fine, but it's the reason we have tracks. Future
| STEM workers can go into the advanced track and everyone
| else can go into their own track.
|
| Germany separates people into vocational school and
| something closer to what we'd consider high school in the
| US by 9-10th grade. If you embrace the idea that some
| people are simply less suited for intensive math - whether
| it be because of work ethic, inherited IQ, lack of
| interest, etc. - and give them a path towards jobs that
| better fit their skillset, I think you'd see a lot less
| people drowning in college debt because they got a degree
| in sociology when they got weeded out of Calculus 101.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Totally agree. That's why there is a CTE (career and
| technical education) movement in the US now. Perkins V is
| the strong push in this regard.
| https://cte.ed.gov/legislation/perkins-v
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| It feels so good seeing this utterly ridiculously ideology so
| thoroughly debunked, and rightfully attributed for the
| destructive attacks on education.
|
| I've run into it so often by a vocal minority who slander
| anyone who objects. Fortunately, the popularity is waning.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's hard for me to square your claim that there's a dominant
| belief that all humans are blank slates of equal ability with
| the sheer volume of messaging I see in both government-
| sponsored and private media about embracing differences,
| follow your own goals, find your talent, etc.
|
| I see a lot more stuff that would lead a kid to believe "it's
| ok that I'm not good in math" rather than "I could be good in
| math if I wanted to be."
|
| Frankly, I think this is actually worse educationally than
| what you suggest.
|
| We need to find more ways to reward effort instead of pre-
| existing ability (regardless of how that pre-existing ability
| is gained... the kid whose parents got him ahead of the curve
| through high school math and then bombs out after taking
| university-level Calculus is similarly harmed by the current
| system as the one who's shunted away from ever being
| challenged).
| hintymad wrote:
| I don't understand how these people could consistently ignore
| facts. Case in point, I could earn way more than Scott
| Aaronson or had way more social privilege than him, but you'd
| think I'm crazy if I claim that I can be as good at maths or
| quantum computing as Aaronson.
| aaplok wrote:
| That kind of arguments goes in favour of the CMS. If you
| assume that only a handful of geniuses can do maths then as
| a society it makes little sense to allocate resources
| toward something completely inaccessible to the masses.
| Designing the education system for Scott Aaronson to the
| detriment of everybody else would be a mistake socially and
| economically. _That_ is how these people think, not some
| nonsense blank slate theory.
|
| In reality it's not quantum computing that we're talking
| about, it's high school calculus and algebra. You don't
| have to be a hardcore blank slate proponent to believe that
| most people _can_ learn it. And that is what these people
| don 't believe.
|
| It's important to consider the goals of this committee.
| They propose this reform _because_ they oppose the blank
| slate theory. The current structure really isn 't
| appropriate to most people. Because it relies on a wrong
| form of the blank slate theory. They offer the wrong
| solution in my opinion, because they end up going too far
| the other way.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| They're working with a bizarro Blank Slate theory
| according to which every student should simply be
| learning their math by themselves, and if they fail it's
| their own darn fault, or perhaps society's fault, or
| anyone else's fault, but certainly not the _teacher_ 's
| fault. Because the teachers all have Education degrees,
| and that's what they were told in Ed School. So don't
| anyone dare "demean" their job by suggesting that they
| have actual _work_ to do in properly educating their
| students.
| mirceal wrote:
| it's not about being better than him. it's about the
| theoretical possibility of being better + the virtue
| signaling that comes with the theoretical possibility
| majormajor wrote:
| Do you disagree with the following re-formulations:
|
| _Some_ observable differences are due to social factors.
|
| _Some_ observable differences by certain groups are the
| result of past actions by other groups.
|
| You _should_ favor policies to correct for the result of past
| harms.
|
| One cannot reasonably claim that no groups in the US are
| still disadvantaged today due to actions taken on a
| centuries-long timescale. It seems willfully unfair to stick
| your fingers in your ears and just say "I'm not actively
| discriminatory, so there's no need to try to mitigate things,
| everything is peachy."
| paulcole wrote:
| > Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability
|
| This is generally true.
|
| People can find extreme examples that "disprove" this but
| they're generally wrong. Most things people do aren't that
| hard and people have the ability to learn to do them -- they
| either choose a different path, have fewer choices, or just
| don't care.
|
| And yes, before you ask, this includes computer programming.
| mikebenfield wrote:
| This is so obviously false that I'm always amazed there are
| people who actually believe this.
|
| In _every_ activity I've ever participated in where I can
| observe many people's performance and progression -
| including powerlifting, bodybuilding, various ball sports,
| mathematics, chess, theoretical CS, software engineering,
| etc - it is transparently obvious that people's natural
| abilities vary dramatically.
|
| Although it's not the most common scenario (training and
| experience do matter), I have seen many situations where
| someone with, say, 6 months' haphazard and lazy experience
| will absolutely _crush_ the performance of someone with 3
| years of serious and dedicated training.
|
| Talent is real.
| paulcole wrote:
| Thank you. I am quite stupid.
|
| Talent is real, but generally speaking, ascribing failure
| or lack of progress to lack of talent is a mistake.
| hintymad wrote:
| I'm not sure what "generally" means here. In professional
| sports, my failure of not getting into any major league
| will be due to your lack of talent. In higher-level math,
| my failure of passing any exam will be due to your lack
| of talent. In chemistry, my failure of not being able to
| consistently reach precision of under 0.1% is due to my
| lack of talent (and trust me, I really tried and followed
| all kinds of instructions in greatest detail, or so I
| thought). In mechanical engineering, my failure of not
| bing able to piece out a 3D model from a 2D schematics is
| due to my lack of talent. In medicine, my failure of not
| be able to memorize thousands of latin terms for all the
| bones and organs is due to my lack of talent. In
| biochemistry, my failure of not being able to internalize
| the energy cycle in human body is due to my lack of
| talent. But on the other hand, you didn't even use a
| computer until switching your major to CS when you were
| 20 yet you became the best student in every single class
| in a prestigious university. That's your talent. You
| studied world history until you were 30 years old, yet
| you switched to physics and somehow got Fields medal,
| that's your talent.
|
| Not all failures are due to lack of talent, for sure. A
| blank statement like " ascribing failure or lack of
| progress to lack of talent is a mistake " in the context
| of our discussion is nonetheless a mistake as well.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| > Most things people do aren't that hard and people have
| the ability to learn to do them
|
| Have you considered that maybe you're just unusually
| talented? I know most things people do are very hard for
| me, and the few things I do are very easy. Learning history
| is an uphill slog even though I love it, but math doesn't
| warrant effort. For a while I just figured people that
| failed math were lazy and people that passed history were
| geniuses, but it turns out people have different amounts of
| natural talent. It's not the start, it's the slope
| paulcole wrote:
| As narcissistic as I am, I don't think I'm "talented."
| I'm just like everybody else -- can get pretty decent at
| a lot of things. But also just like everybody else I like
| to pretend I'm talented at the things I put work into.
| And I like to pretend that people who are good at things
| I haven't put work into are talented in a way that I'm
| not.
| orangecat wrote:
| _As narcissistic as I am, I don't think I'm "talented."_
|
| Huh. To me it seems more narcissistic for someone to say
| that they have no special talent and that their success
| is entirely due to their superior work ethic and years of
| study and sacrifice.
|
| _I'm just like everybody else -- can get pretty decent
| at a lot of things._
|
| That's a very different claim than "innate talent doesn't
| exist".
| paulcole wrote:
| > That's a very different claim than "innate talent
| doesn't exist".
|
| Yes! This is why I never said innate talent doesn't
| exist.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I mean, by hours at this point I've definitely put more
| time in to math than any other subject, but it was easy
| from the start! Maybe I'm enough of a fuckup that it
| intensifies differences in ability which would otherwise
| be too small to notice - like math took close to 0 effort
| to do and want to do, so anything else is unbearable.
| Doesn't square with just how much effort I put into
| history though.
| mirceal wrote:
| yes and no. the old nature vs nurture + not all people are
| genetically gifted and a small generic advantage can mean a
| huge difference in capabilities.
| Aunche wrote:
| >Most things people do aren't that hard and people have the
| ability to learn to do them
|
| That's true, but it's the small minority of tasks that
| require real intelligence that often matter the most. A
| regular person can probably be trained to 95% the skill of
| an anesthesiologist just by following instructions, but
| then they would kill the patient during edge cases.
|
| The same thing applies to programming too. I had an
| internship at a regular company, and now work at a FAANG.
| The developers at the regular company are likely better at
| programming than me, especially when it came to regular
| tasks, but some of their technical decisions just didn't
| seem to make any sense.
| paulcole wrote:
| > A regular person can probably be trained to 95% the
| skill of an anesthesiologist just by following
| instructions, but then they would kill the patient during
| edge cases.
|
| You're making the mistake of assuming anesthesiologists
| are something other than regular people with training.
| hintymad wrote:
| I don't know. Have you observed multiple kids in the same
| family? Same parents. Same "privilege". Same pressure. Same
| education down to the same teachers, tutors, books, and
| parent temperament. And you know what, some of the kids
| simply beat their siblings who can be years older, in STEM
| or writing or reading or leadership without even trying.
| Have you observed your classmates? Some are driven,
| ambitious, self-disciplined, had access to all the
| education they needed, and got perfect grades before grade
| 8 or whatever. Then just one day, he simply couldn't
| understand maths or physics or chemistry or computer
| science, and they simply got left behind and couldn't even
| study STEM in college because they couldn't pass the
| placement test. In the meantime, their classmates, less
| privileged, didn't really understand everything taught in
| elementary school, didn't have nor need tutoring or even
| challenging text books, simply became the best students at
| anything STEM in high school and in college, and again,
| without much trying.
|
| Or, do you really think every 2-year old kid can teach
| their neighbor kids maths and then explained what groups
| are when he was 7-year old like Terence Tao did? I tried my
| own kids. Needless to say, I failed, miserably.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Me & my sister grew up, like you say, in the same family,
| same parents, same pressure. We largely went to the same
| schools, even. She probably acceled further,
| academically, than I did. (She probably went to the more
| prestigious college, her GPA/SAT/etc. were better, she
| earned a doctorate, while I got a BS...)
|
| Without pointing to a vague notion of "we're different
| people", I think there's a few key things that _were_
| different, despite everything that was the same:
|
| * She's the second child, I'm the first: there were some
| things in my education that my mother literally said "we
| are fixing that for her". (And I should note that I don't
| resent this: my mother was clearly doing the best she
| could with the information she had -- and because she
| loved us. But she had more information during Round 2.)
|
| * Education is a finite resource: in my home state,
| whether I got into a decent school (i.e., a magnet
| school) was dependent on the literal roll of a dice.
| (Literally literally. I.e., list of names goes in, gets
| shuffled, top _n_ go to good school & gets educated,
| bottom _m_ talent gets wasted.) In the worst case I was
| 5th? 6th? from the bottom of a several hundred person
| long wait list. She got in. She got a year in the magnet
| system that I didn 't (I got entry a little over a year
| later). That missing year was an _enormous_ detriment to
| my education and growth; it was such a clear detriment my
| parents were contemplating whether they could afford a
| Catholic private school (we 're not Catholic) or simple
| home-schooling. Had they had the gift of clairvoyance, I
| think they _would have_ the moment I was denied.
|
| * Almost certainly the gift of a computer got me
| interested in CS. She didn't get one, and her interests
| are different. (She's still STEM, likely due to our
| parents.)
| hintymad wrote:
| To digress a bit: good education will be a finite
| resource as we have finite number of good educators and
| good schools. I don't think it's possible for everyone to
| access good education, especially given that we have
| different definition for "good education". Saying
| everyone should go to MIT (or any scarce education
| resource) is like saying living in beach property is
| human right. Maybe so, but it'll be a different topic.
| troupe wrote:
| Books are a finite resource, but not really limited for
| any practical purposes at least in the US. Used books are
| inexpensive, libraries are readily available, most things
| out of copyright are available online, etc.
|
| Education is following as similar course. Things like
| MITs open courseware, edX, etc. are making it
| increasingly easy to get the educational content from top
| teachers regardless of how limited these teachers are.
|
| (Having access to an education is not the same as
| actually getting a degree, and getting a degree isn't
| always the same as getting an education.)
|
| But there has probably never been a time in history where
| more people had free or inexpensive access to the top
| educational content in the world.
| hintymad wrote:
| Education content is definitely ample now, including text
| books and references. we even have great communities to
| get answers to our questions. Unfortunately the
| bottleneck of education just switched to access to good
| teachers. A good teacher inspires students, identifies
| exactly why each student has difficulty understanding
| something, explains intuitions behind the most difficult
| concepts, designs highly tailored homework, leads
| engaging seminars, and keeps students in their discomfort
| zone. As in STEM field in general, lab staff, equipments,
| chemical agents, lab materials are generally scarce
| resources too.
| troupe wrote:
| I understand what you are saying, but I would argue that
| lack of access to teacher is less of a bottleneck than
| drive, desire, and motivation. A motivated individual is
| going to have no trouble finding what they need to learn
| and places to ask questions for things they don't
| understand.
|
| I see where you are coming from on access to labs,
| chemicals, and equipment. But someone who has fully
| availed themselves of everything they can learn from
| free/inexpensive online classes, books, forums, emailing
| people, etc. is headed on a path where they have a high
| probability of getting access to those types of things
| once that is the only thing blocking their continued
| education.
| hintymad wrote:
| I don't disagree with you. I just think "drive, desire,
| and motivation" is part of one's talent. The progressive
| policies will not hurt the best students because they
| students will find their resources anyway. It is the
| middle, the vast majority like me, who would get hurt.
| They would think that they got good education, and then
| realize that their understanding of maths is so shitty
| that they can't even pass city college's dead simple
| placement test. Oh, I didn't make this up, either. NYT
| reported this miserable experience of a straight A
| student, and I was shocked to read it.
| causi wrote:
| Problem being an extremely significant portion of that
| blank slate is written before the child even enters school,
| let alone makes it to middle and high school, and even
| during those times it is impossible for a school to make up
| for a horrible home life. We single out and spread stories
| about people who raised themselves up because it's not the
| norm. The vast majority of people whose parents don't talk
| to them as infants, don't read to them as toddlers, don't
| listen to them as children, and don't keep from hitting
| them as teenagers _will_ radically underperform both as
| students and as adults. Mucking about with the education of
| students who _haven 't_ been sabotaged by their parents is
| governmental thumb-twiddling.
| innagadadavida wrote:
| You are leaving out who is involved and what commercial
| interest will be benefitted from these policies. It is likely
| those commercial interests are the ones sponsoring and
| pushing these by finding sympathetic folks.
|
| The important thing to note here is- if you reduce the bar in
| high schools, a lot more students will end up in college -
| more money will spent, more loans will be written out etc.
| [deleted]
| wonnage wrote:
| 1. This is kind of a founding principle of the country, so...
|
| 2. This follows from #1, if we rule out nature then it must
| be nurture. Also, you must not be a parent if you'll accept
| "some kids are just dumb" as an excuse
|
| 3,4. Replace "oppression" with "competition". I think it
| might sound better to you. But the conclusion is the same.
|
| You want to prevent winners from accumulating an advantage,
| eliminating all others (which sounds vaguely genocidal in
| this context), then you have to handicap winners and support
| the others. And the fact that the wealth distribution in
| America is so uneven certainly suggests that the initial
| premise is true (i.e, winning allows you to accumulate and
| compound advantages with repeated victories).
| sacrosancty wrote:
| 1. So the country is founded on a lie or you misread that
| founding principle.
|
| Those compound advantages you're talking about are good
| things that we want people to have because they help them
| do more good for society. You seem to want to handicap them
| in the name of fairness. Where does that thinking end when
| you realize that the founding assumption (1. above) is
| false? Disfiguring beautiful people to prevent them
| accumulating the compounding advantages that come with
| beauty? Brain damaging intelligent people?
| hintymad wrote:
| I thought the OP was being sarcastic.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| a founding principle is not everyone is of equal ability.
| The founding principle equality of opportunity. The
| government won't hold you back because you are a
| (peasant|lower caste|other arbitrary decision). i.e.
| Everyone gets to go to school, but not everyone learns the
| same (qualitatively or quantitatively).
| wonnage wrote:
| Don't you think the government deciding you're not fit
| for going to college would fall into this problem?
| rhexs wrote:
| The government wouldn't prevent you from going to
| college, it just wouldn't voluntarily pay for you to go
| if you didn't test well. You could pay your own way, seek
| external scholarships, etc.
|
| As of now we effectively underwrite anyone who wants to
| go, often at the expense of the student racking up debt
| for a useless degree and later the taxpayer who will
| inevitably have to subsidize them.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| When I went to public school in a privileged
| neighborhood, the "honors" track was opt-in for the
| parents and students. I don't think you have to go
| straight from "the government shouldn't decide whether
| you are fit for college" (which I agree with) to "there
| should only be one curriculum for everyone."
| jollybean wrote:
| 'Equal opportunity' is not a 'founding principle'.
|
| Just that they are 'equal' i.e. before God, or before the
| Law.
|
| That one man is not from some superior lineage, that
| makes him a superior being.
|
| I would be the founding fathers would have no problem if
| one man decided to 'discriminate' among others for some
| arbitrary reason - even if they were landholding men of
| high status etc..
| tonguez wrote:
| " 1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability"
|
| " 1. This is kind of a founding principle of the country,
| so..."
|
| yes those slave owning people really thought their slaves
| were the same as them, totally dude
| wonnage wrote:
| Yeah I heard we tried to end the slavery part somewhere
| along the way and have been somewhat successful, but we
| definitely kept the first one.
| [deleted]
| adamrezich wrote:
| > 1. [All humans are of equal ability] is a founding
| principle of the country, so...
|
| curious to learn how you arrived at this conclusion?
| mindcrime wrote:
| _1. This is kind of a founding principle of the country,
| so..._
|
| Is it? Saying "all mean are created equal" has a lot of
| interpretations, of which many valid ones do not include
| "all men are born of equal ability in every regard." Given
| that some people are born to grow up to be 5'4 and weigh
| 100lbs and others are born to grow up to 6'7 and 320lbs, it
| should be clear that not everyone is "equal" at least in
| terms of their physical abilities. I'm pretty sure the
| Founders were aware of this, making it highly unlikely that
| their version of "created equal" meant "exactly equal in
| all terms of ability."
| wonnage wrote:
| Hey, thanks for correcting me, I totally thought that
| this line meant that the founders had somehow invented
| cloning and made everyone physically identical
|
| Regardless of interpretation, I'm pretty sure deciding
| whether a kid is fit for the elite/intellectual track or
| the physical labor track at the tender age of 10 based on
| whether they can do some tests is not in the spirit of
| "all men are created equal"
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Regardless of interpretation, I 'm pretty sure deciding
| whether a kid is fit for the elite/intellectual track or
| the physical labor track at the tender age of 10 based on
| whether they can do some tests is not in the spirit of
| "all men are created equal"_
|
| And I would agree. But your earlier comment seemed to
| imply a much more absolute stance. That's what I would
| disagree with.
| klodolph wrote:
| I don't think that those beliefs are a workable explanation
| here.
|
| These proposals come from committees and groups of people,
| and it's just not realistic to write off the entire group of
| people behind these proposals as having some uniform set of
| beliefs like that, especially when they give other rationales
| for the proposals!
|
| The current school system makes decisions in middle school
| (8th grade and earlier) which determine whether or not each
| particular student will be able to take calculus in high
| school. This is, simply put, _insane._
|
| Because it's obviously insane, when you introduce questions
| of race and class into the mix, then it's easy to apply
| pressure to the department of education to come up with a
| proposal that changes things. And then you end up with bad
| proposals... why? Because these proposals are produced by
| poorly-shepherded committees full of government employees
| under political pressure, and it's much easier to come up
| with a bad proposal that responds to political pressure than
| it is to come up with a good proposal.
|
| There's just no need to try and explain that this proposal is
| bad _because the people who made it have bad beliefs._ I 'd
| characterize this as fundamental attribution error here...
| "the committees made a bad proposal because of wrong beliefs"
| versus "the committees made bad proposals because it's easier
| to respond to political pressure than to write a good
| proposal".
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I feel like in this case fundamental attribution error
| would go the other way, no? The explanation you offer is
| that there aren't circumstantial factors dominating the
| decision (the beliefs on this particular issue), but a
| fundamental flaw in how committees work. To be clear, I
| agree that this is an inevitable result of the decision-
| making structure, I've just only ever seen fundamental
| attribution error referring to mistakes in the other
| direction.
| klodolph wrote:
| That's an interesting way of looking at it.
|
| I would never describe someone's beliefs as
| "circumstantial", and I would also never think of being
| on a committee as something "intrinsic".
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Ah, now I get it! I was thinking of the _committee_ as
| the entity, not the people on it. Then the question is
| "why did the committee make a bad call?" where "the topic
| in question coincidentally misaligned with the views of
| the members" is the specific cause and "committees always
| make bad calls" is the general cause. But looking at it
| from the perspective of the people makes it clear what
| you were going for
| smugma wrote:
| While I agree that the proposals are bad, I don't blame
| "committees full of government employees". One of the lead
| proponents/authors is distinguished Stanford Professor Jo
| Boaler. It's interesting that a lot of the arguments made
| in favor of the changes are done in the name of equity, but
| Boaler herself has been put on the wrong side of racial
| equity, threatening to call the cops on a Black Berkeley CS
| professor. This article [0] is gossipy, but it's both
| interesting and relevant how "Nice White People" can hurt
| the minority groups they are supposedly trying to help.
| Hurt by taking away opportunities to take calculus, and
| hurt by threatening legal action against one of the few
| minority CS professors at a leading research institution.
|
| [0]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stanford-
| professor-Ka...
| fn-mote wrote:
| > One of the lead proponents/authors is distinguished
| Stanford Professor Jo Boaler..
|
| I have an issue with the parent's gossipy put-down of
| Professor Boaler.
|
| I think it's important to emphasize that genuine
| intellectuals who have put serious thought into this
| proposal support it. I would prefer more serious
| engagement with it, even if on HN the majority disagree.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > The current school system makes decisions in middle
| school (8th grade and earlier) which determine whether or
| not each particular student will be able to take calculus
| in high school. This is, simply put, insane.
|
| It's not clear that this is the case. The "current
| approach" is to offer Algebra I in middle school, which
| ought to leave plenty of time for students who want to
| shape up in math and be prepared for HS calculus to do so.
| Push advanced math later in the curriculum, and you just
| expose the students to even higher-stakes dilemmas.
| Lowering standards is no solution, since you'll just end up
| with lower education quality for all students, that will
| make it even harder for them to catch up to reasonable
| levels. This is the broad background of OP's letter.
| 7speter wrote:
| I don't necessarily agree with the proposal in california,
| but do all students need to take calculus in high school?
| What about solid coverage of algebra 2 and pre calc before
| higher education. Community college is a great place to
| take a calc class (or even a pre calc class) affordably.
| Source: took pre calc, calc and stat in community college
| after being signalled to that I was terrible at math
| throughout high school.
| andrewprock wrote:
| No one is suggesting that all students take calculus in
| high school.
|
| What is being recommend is that no one take calculus in
| high school.
|
| Both of these ideas are bad, but only one of them informs
| the California Math Framework.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > No one is suggesting that all students take calculus in
| high school.
|
| It's very commonly taught in 10th grade in France,
| Germany, Singapore and Taiwan (where I used to teach).
| It's not universal by any means but as far as I can tell,
| the idea that calculus should be delayed until university
| is a nearly uniquely American idea.
|
| https://www.mathvalues.org/masterblog/calculus-around-
| the-wo...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Very commonly" in STEM-focused prep schools (i.e. the
| "academic" part of the tracked education system that's
| common outside the US). Which leaves you with very
| roughly the same percentages as the U.S. approach where
| Calculus is an elective course.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I like your argument. It's basically Hanlon's razor.
| CivBase wrote:
| > These proposals come from committees and groups of
| people, and it's just not realistic to write off the entire
| group of people behind these proposals as having some
| uniform set of beliefs like that, especially when they give
| other rationales for the proposals!
|
| You don't have to write off entire groups of people - just
| the few at the top. They got there by sucking up to those
| who were already at the top. Everyone else just has to keep
| quiet if they want to keep their job. Worse, they're
| expected to express visible support for their "superiors"
| and their ideas if they want to keep their jobs.
| jollybean wrote:
| There are no two people in the world with the same beliefs
| - nobody is suggesting that.
|
| There is however a very broad movement of people who
| believe that unequal outcomes are a manifestation of racism
| and so they act accordingly in their roles in government
| etc..
|
| Many of these people are in the civil service and so this
| will influence their view.
|
| It would be 'insane' to ignore this movement, it's one of
| the most powerful social forces in the US right now.
| klodolph wrote:
| You're saying it's one of the "most powerful social
| forces in the US right now"... is there any particular
| reasoning here? To be honest, it sounds like an extremist
| take on the nature vs nurture argument which has been
| playing out for millennia and I don't see a reason to
| believe that somehow the extreme version nurture side of
| the argument has become dominant here. If anything, it's
| easy to remember the pendulum swinging back and forth in
| the past decades, and the pendulum doesn't seem to swing
| that far in either direction.
|
| > Many of these people are in the civil service and so
| this will influence their view.
|
| It influences the political pressures placed on people in
| the civil service more than anything else. People in the
| civil service are in the civil service for a long time,
| typically. Often they are in the civil service for
| decades. On the other hand, elected officials and
| political appointees rotate in and out much more quickly.
|
| I know people in the civil service, they have a much more
| long-term and level-headed view of things, and my
| impression is that they "weather the storm" of changing
| political pressures. At least, the ones who survive in
| the job do. Political appointees and elected officials
| are much more mercurial. Appointees know that their
| position is (somewhat) an extension of their own
| political power to begin with.
| jollybean wrote:
| Yes, it's been going on for a while.
|
| Christians are fond if it: "You have an innate, direct
| relationship with God, in his eyes you are equal to the
| The King" etc..
|
| But we've only had 'governance' in the broad sense for
| 100 years.
|
| And we've never really tried to apply such principles
| into education until the 1960s.
|
| Now we have actually made incredible progress on social
| issues, we have our 'wars' in Social Media with Holy Anti
| Racism Fanatics trying to do their best - because 'racism
| is bad' - which of course it is - and 'systematic racism
| exists' - which of course it does - but the 'kernel of
| truth' of these issues drives people into ideological
| fervour as though it's some giant overwhelming issue,
| when really it's not. Racism is still pernicious, but
| it's not fundamental.
|
| And FYI don't think it's all rubbish.
|
| For example - 'Math' is heavily based on prerequisites.
| If you 'fall back' in Grade 4, you may never be able to
| 'catch up'. While that's true in general, it's not as
| acute as in math.
|
| Poor kids might be far more likely to 'fall of the
| bandwagon' and a lot of poverty might be due to
| systematic racism, and so the 'Hard Requirements' for
| certain things may not be ideal.
|
| You could have 'summer school' or 'after school' or
| 'accelerated catch up' programs.
|
| Those would be 'reasonable' solutions in my view - and
| FYI these are mostly issues of poverty, not race, they
| are couched as racial issues because that's what fires
| people up.
|
| Edit: and yes, I agree 'most people in the civil service'
| are level-headed. Most people actually are. But some
| groups have outsized voices, amplified by 'allies'
| elsewhere.
|
| The 'Anti Racism Agenda' is a 'fundamental pillar', like
| a religion, of 25% of the US population, and they are
| pretty active about it. And the actions of the most
| extreme 5% end up really upsetting other people. Much
| like a very powerful fool using made up constitutional
| manoeuvres to try to take over the government would upset
| a lot of people as well.
|
| Good intentions, surely, but that doesn't make them
| right.
| tonguez wrote:
| "I don't see a reason to believe that somehow the extreme
| version nurture side of the argument has become dominant
| here"
|
| watch "the news" or go on twitter
| klodolph wrote:
| Twitter's algorithm promotes whatever tweet will make
| people angry, because angry people spend more time on
| Twitter. I'm on Twitter, but I've been on Twitter for a
| while now, I've selected who I follow, and my feed just
| doesn't get that kind of noise in it at any significant
| level. Most of what I see on Twitter is people arguing
| about Elden Ring or showing off how they can access
| YouTube from a Mac SE or something.
|
| "The news" is dominated by organizations which are trying
| to maximize their social media engagement metrics so they
| can get more money from advertisers, so they're subject
| to the same forces that drive Twitter.
|
| Neither of these sources reliably give you a picture of
| national affairs. Right now the best I can do is get a
| picture of local affairs by talking with people that I
| happen to encounter because I live near them.
| drewwwwww wrote:
| jollybean wrote:
| Well Mr/Ms Drewwwww - you have very graciously made point
| for me.
|
| Since I have no such 'scientific racism' views and claims
| of 'proto-fascism' are ridiculous at face value ...
|
| ... that a common person would take some rather mundane
| comment somewhere to mean those things, implies that
| they've been radicalized in some way in the manner that
| I've described.
|
| "Racists is everywhere, under my bed, in the jingle for
| that product, in our schools! Math is racist! We Need
| Action Now!"
|
| 'Anti Racism' is a reasonable concept at face value, but
| the issue has obviously created groups of wayward
| ideologues in large swaths in the US, who are more likely
| than not to be involved in the civil service,
| particularly in education.
|
| Since 'improving education' is a perennial issue of
| contention anyhow - if we throw 'math is racist' into the
| fire, along with legions (at least a critical mass) of
| fervent supporters - and then finally allow the hollow
| politicians and media to misrepresent and aggrandize all
| of it in bad faith (votes, money, attention, power etc.)
| ... then we have yet another toxic cocktail of public
| malaise and dysfunction distracting us from dealing with
| the core issues.
| rayiner wrote:
| I know progressives love to portray things as a dichotomy
| between "fascism" and "equity" but that leaves out the
| position that the majority of people in minority groups
| actually support--color blindness:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-
| americ...
| rayiner wrote:
| It sounds like you and OP differ only in that he thinks the
| people on the committee have these beliefs, while you're
| implying that they're afraid of "political pressure" from
| people who hold these beliefs. Which I suspect is correct.
| klodolph wrote:
| I was thinking less that they are "afraid" of political
| pressure, and more that responding to political pressure
| is one of the things that these committees do, by design.
|
| Political pressure is a manifestation of the population's
| problems / beliefs / perceptions. It's wrong to bow
| completely to political pressure, but it's also wrong to
| ignore it.
| michaelt wrote:
| I agree with you somewhat, but I think there's an
| important distinction to be made.
|
| If a political decision-making process concludes "men
| account for more road traffic deaths than women, but
| we've decided that gender can't be taken into account
| when pricing car insurance" that's fine; the facts have
| remained the facts, and a political decision has been
| made by a political process.
|
| But if the same process concludes "men and women cause
| the same number of road traffic deaths" the process has
| gone off the rails _despite the fact the outcome is the
| same_ because in one situation the facts have been
| acknowledged and the decision to act contrary to them
| made knowingly; while in the second situation that isn 't
| the case.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| If you talk to these people though. They DO have bad
| beliefs. Let's not even talk about politics. Their goal is
| to get a kid a degree,(especially in groups that dont
| normally get degrees) and many of them believe just having
| the degree to get past the job resume hurdles is good and
| helping people.
|
| They ignore the fact that the degree is supposed to be a
| proof of "This person has X skillsets at minimum". It no
| longer is. There is basically no job in the United States
| that cares if you have a high school diploma or GED other
| than government jobs. They are repeating this process with
| College right now. The College Diploma is now the new High
| School Diploma, and pretty soon jobs are gonna want Masters
| or Doctorates for entry level.
|
| This is a bad belief, they don't (or won't) understand that
| they are ruining and devaluing a thing by their actions and
| beliefs.
| munk-a wrote:
| Given the situation on the ground you can comment that
| it'd be great to stop de-valuing college degrees but I
| think it's pretty clear that ship has sailed. A lot of
| jobs do unnecessarily demand college degrees, even going
| so far as to accept irrelevant degrees... anytime you see
| "Our ideal candidate has a BS from an accredited
| university" you can be confident that an arbitrary and
| discouraging requirement is being placed on the post.
| Now, in reality, a lot of employers don't actually care
| about those "requirements" but young people often don't
| realize that, and the ones that do can't be certain their
| uncertainty won't be invalidated by the time they secure
| a diploma.
|
| I don't have a specific comment on the policy under
| discussion, I'm not a californian and I'm not familiar
| with the specifics - but telling people "You'll be fine
| without a degree" isn't going to go over well and,
| honestly, is asking the recipient to accept a large risk
| regarding their future while you, an employed person,
| have already passed that hurdle. American colleges
| definitely have issues with over enrollment but even if
| wanting that state is a "bad belief", it's certainly an
| accurate belief.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You can't get a college degree without passing the
| College Algebra weedout course (let alone Calculus, which
| is required for the bulk of STEM courses), and you can
| only realistically pass College Algebra by getting a lot
| of rigorous math in K-12. Lowering the bar is doing
| _every_ student a disservice, and the most vulnerable
| students will be the hardest hit.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| You'd think that but there are work arounds.
|
| Yes pretty much every college requires "college algebra".
| But some schools have "college algebra for stem majors"
| vs "college algebra for non stem majors". Guess which one
| is easier, has lots of bonus credit and extra curricular
| stuff to earn extra credit. (You attended the college
| showing of "vagely related math movie?! Here's 10 points
| on your final!") And also grades on a curve. Also you
| only need 69.5 (and sometimes just a D!) to graduate.
|
| There's also other cheats/hacks. Like lots of state
| schools will let you transfer from a community college
| with credit for your "core courses", and some of those
| have questionable standards. There's also the fact that
| college algebra usually has some kind of test out or
| online option. There was a whole sub industry of "pay you
| to take the online test for me" at colleges for stuff
| like college algebra. Some of those courses did have some
| kind "you have to take 1 test in person so we know its
| you" rule. But they didnt check super heavily that you
| were actually that person other than a cursory
| examination of your drivers license name matched who was
| supposed to take the test. (and oh boy let me tell you
| about how covid and masks interacted with all of that)
|
| Dont get me started on the "Statistics for Sociology"
| that was different than actual "Statistics" (but
| fulfilled the Stats requirement for the degree)
|
| This is also ignoring that taking College Algebra to
| begin with IN COLLEGE. Was a major sign you were not a
| Stem Major. Stem Majors took that in high school and were
| taking at minimum precalculus. (and even that was viewed
| as the slow lane, you should be talking Calc 1 as a red
| blooded STEM freshman)
| WalterBright wrote:
| > pretty much every college requires "college algebra".
|
| Caltech didn't. In fact, they expect you to know calculus
| before entering. I didn't, and that nearly capsized my
| college career before it left the dock.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I do expect that such "workarounds" will always exist. I
| just don't think they're more _realistic_ than just
| getting some good-enough math fundamentals in K-12,
| without mucking about with "data science" silliness.
| (Data literacy is of course appropriate to Science class,
| and the letter even mentions that.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Statistics for Sociology
|
| An acquaintance asked me if she should take "Calculus for
| Artists" after I suggested she take a calculus course. I
| laughed, and said that such a course should be named
| "Pretend to Learn Calculus". She should take a real
| calculus course, which she did, and did well in it.
|
| If you're in college, stick to the real math classes, not
| the "math for losers who are forced to take a math
| class". You'll be with other students who want to learn
| math, and you'll have a prof that wants to teach math
| (the loser math course has a prof who doesn't want to be
| there, either). It'll be a much more pleasant experience.
|
| Hey, if I was running a college, I'd have the two track
| math system, too. That way the students who want to learn
| won't be bothered by the ones who don't.
| [deleted]
| devindotcom wrote:
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| No, even Ayn has never claimed to be a psychic, able to
| penetrate the deepest thoughts of school board members to
| distill their entire world view down to a bulleted list.
| pfisherman wrote:
| I never understood why people try to make "blank slate" into
| a binary thing.
|
| Can people not have varying degrees of physical and neural
| plasticity? Perhaps some people are more like blank slates
| and can adapt more readily than others? Maybe plasticity
| changes with age?
| dionidium wrote:
| There's almost no opponent of the blank slate theory who
| thinks societal factors never matter. There's only one side
| that takes a hard-line dogmatic view on this issue and it's
| the blank slatists.
| jollybean wrote:
| Of course they do. Even if someone actually believed in
| some 'hard' type of ideology, they might not act that way.
|
| It's just a 'general set of principles', intuitions, pop
| culture ideals that lead a large group of people to
| assumptive believe that 'unequal outcomes are driven mostly
| by systematic racism' and that's that.
|
| Ergo 'the world is deeply racist' and 'there is racism
| around every corner' including in your math textbooks and
| teaching.
|
| Ad nauseum.
|
| Some of it is actually correct.
|
| Some of it is reasonable from an intellectual perspective,
| but it's hard to take anything from it.
|
| Much of it just ends up being toxic.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability
|
| Not only does the earlier version of the framework explicitly
| reject this view, it cited specific empirical studies that
| the broad approach targeted (which I gather had not changed
| in the revisions which is why the complaints remain despite
| some revision to details) was better for people across the
| ability spectrum.
|
| Similar points apply to each of your bad-faith assumptions
| about the underlying beliefs.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| > Not only does the earlier version of the framework
| explicitly reject this view
|
| Can you share that explicit rejection of the idea that
| there are not innate differences in ability, in the CMF? I
| have not seen it myself, thank you ahead of time.
|
| To share what I've read, and colors my views a bit, is the
| following, from 'Chapter 1: Mathematics for All' of the
| Second Field Review [1]:
|
| > An aim of this framework is to respond to the structural
| barriers put in the place of mathematics success: equity
| influences all aspects of this document. Some overarching
| principles that guide work towards equity in mathematics
| include the following:
|
| > All students deserve powerful mathematics; high-level
| mathematics achievement is not dependent on rare natural
| gifts, but rather can be cultivated (Leslie et al., 2015;
| Boaler, 2019 a, b; Ellenberg, 2014). ...
|
| > All students, regardless of background, language of
| origin, differences, or foundational knowledge are capable
| and deserving of depth of understanding and engagement in
| rich mathematics tasks.
|
| > Hard work and persistence is more important for success
| in mathematics than natural ability. Actually, I would give
| this advice to anyone working in any field, but it's
| especially important in mathematics and physics where the
| traditional view was that natural ability was the primary
| factor in success. --Maria Klawe, Mathematician, Harvey
| Mudd President (in Williams, 2018)
|
| > Fixed notions about student ability have led to
| considerable inequities in mathematics education.
|
| Note that my pointing to this doesn't mean I inherently
| disagree that hard work/education can't help improve
| outcomes. I show the above citations to show that the CMF
| is not explicitly denying the Blank slate theory, which is
| what you are suggesting. If anything, they go out of the
| way to view ideas of innate ability negatively. I'm happy
| to also look at the references that you alluded to but did
| not cite.
|
| [1] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/ (it's in the bottom
| section, the format is .docx, so don't want to directly
| link to it as that format can sometimes be cause for
| concern on random links shared on the internet)
| mc32 wrote:
| It's almost a case of inmates running the asylum --but in this
| case, it's not even the inmates but their caregivers who in
| their maternalistic view seem to think they know what's best
| for the "inmates" and are guiding them to the path to "hell"
| --hell being a reduced education in an increasingly competitive
| labor market.
| duxup wrote:
| >to dumb down math in high school?
|
| There's a lot of competing / strange interests in school
| systems that can have well intended but BIZARRE outcomes.
|
| My wife works in early childhood education. At one point it was
| recognized that the early childhood department should be more
| involved in helping students with learning disabilities as soon
| as possible. There was lots of outreach to parents to get them
| into free classes and education, and most importantly screening
| so they could get free services if they qualified / needed
| them.
|
| However, it was noticed at some point by some very vocal
| parents that some students with specific backgrounds were
| refereed to these services more than others. These services
| were provided in and out of school, the kids weren't moved to
| another school or anything like that, but despite all their
| efforts... The result was deemed to be some sort of bias, or
| outright racism.
|
| Therefore it was made very clear that they could not
| disproportionately "single out" students of some backgrounds
| for these services, that are free, to help them learn.
| hintymad wrote:
| I have two theories:
|
| 1. Math is a differentiating subject for getting into those
| competitive colleges, departments, and professions. In the
| meantime, the progressives simply refuse to believe that some
| people are just better at studying math. The logical choice,
| then, is to dumb down math to "level the play ground". It's the
| same unspoken reason why so many people pushed the magnet
| schools to use lottery to pick students (I actually think
| lottery with threshold can be a good solution, but that's
| another subject).
|
| 2. Progressive math educators have been advocating self
| discovery and that everyone can learn math in their own pace
| for years. What educators need to do, per the progressive
| argument, is to protect the fragile passion and creativity of
| the kids. Jo Boaler even argued that kids should discover all
| maths by their own. Naturally, we have to dumb down math
| courses, otherwise we would inevitably hurt the confidence and
| passion of some kids. As progressives always said: no kid
| should be left behind and some people got better at math only
| because they were socially privileged. I disagree with the
| progressive view of math education based on my personal
| experience, as so many classmates of mine simply were not
| interested in STEM, and maths in particular. I'm not sure why
| we don't accept that most people will hit a wall sooner or
| later when learning maths. To some it is arithmetic, to some it
| is calculus, to some it is abstract algebra, etc and etc. To me
| I definitely lost my drive when taking courses like model
| logic, and I certainly do not have interest or talent to get
| good at things like functional analysis or topology or
| algebraic geometry, but I make peace with it. I really don't
| understand why the progressives are hell bent on insisting that
| everyone can learn maths equally.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The job that the
| administrator is hired for is "make Black and White test scores
| identical." With only the leverage of the school, and no
| broader socioeconomic levers, the only way to make this happen
| is to reduce all assessment to 1+1=? (Multiple choice)
| overview wrote:
| The perception of math by the public has led to a cognitive
| predisposition that math (especially calculus) is beyond the
| ordinary person. I wish pop culture would transform this.
| [deleted]
| dboreham wrote:
| I think I can translate this:
|
| It's saying that it is impossible to get the bulk of students
| (with the teachers we have) to complete the standard mathematics
| curriculum by the end of high school. This has always been true,
| in all countries, hence "streaming". But now they're saying let's
| do away with the advanced stream, therefore students can't
| complete the last part of the US mathematics curriculum (which is
| called "Calculus"). Rather than justify that move in terms of
| cost or fairness, we're going to say "because Calculus isn't
| important now".
|
| This is obviously completely bogus. If their assertion that
| Leibnitz-style calculus isn't important now, they could replace
| it with Linear Algebra, Number Theory, or some other "important
| now" subject.
|
| Add to that, the fact that in the US the names of high school
| mathematics classes are by convention. "Geometry" isn't all
| geometry, for example. And "Calculus" isn't all calculus. The
| classes are really : Math 1, Math 2, Math 3, Math 4, AP Math.
| [deleted]
| 0000011111 wrote:
| Why can we do both?
|
| 1. Make it possible for HS students who are interested in
| Calculus to take the course under the instruction from a college
| profess on the high school campus. That way it would be set up
| for students to get college credit for the class and they would
| not need to travel to a college campus or deal with the AP exam
| system.
|
| 2. Make it possible for HS students who are not interested (Yet)
| or at all to graduate with out taking the class. Lots of student
| are ready for Calculus until college anyway. No need to force
| them on a single path IMO.
| dfdz wrote:
| > 249,871 High School Mathematics Teachers in USA [1]
|
| > 5,972 Math Professors in USA [2]
|
| 1. There are simply not enough college math professors for this
| to work.
|
| [1] https://www.zippia.com/high-school-mathematics-teacher-
| jobs/...
|
| [2] https://www.zippia.com/math-professor-jobs/demographics/
| dymk wrote:
| Probably the optics that will ensue - Our public schools seem
| intent on making sure that to ensure everybody is as achieved
| as everyone else, but rather than improving education for the
| bottom percentile, they'll simply remove the advanced stuff for
| the top percentile.
| 0000011111 wrote:
| Fortuity there are free options for good online instruction
| available to everyone in the world with youtube access.
|
| https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus-ab
|
| When we focus narrowly on what brick and mortar Public HS
| should and should not be teaching in regards to math curium
| we sideline all the pathways for learning available outside
| of this bureaucratic model.
|
| Folks in most places in the United States a least can check
| out a Chromebook from a local library and use their free
| internet to access this information.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My high school did exactly that in the 2000s. The local
| Community College teacher drove to the high school and taught a
| class. You got high school credit and college credit if you
| payed the $50 community College enrollment. No ap test
| required.
|
| Students could also take additional ge's at college outside of
| school hours, and I entered University with about 80 credits
| timcavel wrote:
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Efforts like this are well meaning, but only treat symptoms. The
| major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational
| fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if
| expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. Schools are
| not prepared to hold back massive numbers of kids, drop out
| proclivity for students held back rises, and teachers will be
| poorly evaluated by virtue of their students' inability above and
| beyond reasonable expectations of what they can learn in a single
| year given prior failure to build a proper foundation.
|
| How we got to this point is perhaps a lot more complicated and
| politically fraught, but it has to be dealt with. Administrators
| and state education leadership are often simply responding to the
| incentives and avoiding dire outcomes suggested by the data. They
| have to craft palatable excuses for it, and it's ultimately a
| waste of time to engage those excuses on face.
| poisonarena wrote:
| What happened in California over the last 50 years to make math
| scores plummet ?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Declining math scores can be tied almost entirely tied to
| economic disparity (which unfortunately tracks with race
| pretty closely). Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far
| behind.
|
| Unfortunately I don't expect these changes to impact that. It
| will likely take more rich kids out of public schools and
| further widen the gap.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind_
|
| The achievement gap is growing. Part of this is explained
| by union dynamics [1]. Part by California's elites caring
| less about addressing the gap than talking about it.
|
| [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X21
| 10063...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yuup
|
| > Altogether, this study provides some evidence that
| contract changes are associated with the educational
| opportunities of school districts' diverse and
| economically disadvantaged students.
|
| Essentially, if you want to prioritize your child's
| education above all else, get them into the richest
| school district you can manage.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > How we got to this point is perhaps a lot more complicated
| and politically fraught, but it has to be dealt with.
|
| How many folks are really willing to do that? The problem is
| that actually discussing the perceived root causes of this
| issue will get you shunned out of polite society.
| solenoidalslide wrote:
| Are you referring to all of the recent laws banning
| discussion of these topics labeled CRT?
|
| Those are the only topics I am seeing being outright banned
| from being discussed or taught.
| umanwizard wrote:
| This is a natural consequence of the American myth/narrative
| that everyone is suited for academic high school and
| university. Other countries simply sort people into different
| schools much earlier, and spend the high school years teaching
| meaningful vocational skills to those not on the academic
| track, rather than wasting everyone's time.
| brightball wrote:
| The approach makes sense. How are claims of bias within the
| process handled? That's the only thing I can imagine from a
| similar system here.
| frostburg wrote:
| At least here you can just go to the school that you want.
| People that don't like math or the idea of studying dead
| languages do not pick the lyceums.
|
| Obviously indirect social stratification is still at work
| in the process.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| It's possible this is a good thing. Though it's also possible
| sorting too early determines someone's life path before they
| are mature to understand their talents and abilities. So I
| don't think early sorting is superior to the American model
| because at least the American model can uplift late bloomers.
| bigcat123 wrote:
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is
| Ugur Sahin.
|
| For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the
| German researchers who developed Pfizer's SARS-COV2 mRNA
| vaccine.
|
| Ugur moved from Turkey to Germany at age 4. At the end of
| primary school his teacher had assigned him to
| 'hauptschule'. It was only because of a neighbour's
| intervention that he was later put through 'Gymnasium' i.e.
| on track to study 'higher' studies.
|
| The rest is history, after med school he did a doctorate in
| Imunotherapy, he founded a 18billion revenue biotech
| company and saved countless lives with what we now call the
| Pfizer mRNA covid vaccine.
|
| Had that primary teacher's decision been held it really
| would have been a 'butterfly effect' of catastrophic
| proportions for Humanity.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many
| Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to
| sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they
| can begin serious studies?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Absolutely fair.
|
| This one example just stuck with me when I read it
| because of how serindipitous his mRNA research turned out
| to be during an all out worldwide pandemic.
| Czarcasm wrote:
| This is probably the best counterargument to raise in
| response to the "late-bloomer" anecdotes that many people
| raise.
|
| For every unit of societal productivity created by a late
| bloomer that is saved by a common-stream system, I would
| personally argue that there is an order of magnitude more
| societal productivity lost by holding back the more
| typical high performers.
|
| Late blooming intellectuals aren't the norm. Most highly
| intelligent people begin performing as such from a young
| age.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| How do they deal with the late bloomers?
|
| I didn't really find my academic ability, and programming
| until I was in my twenties.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That doesn't explain what has changed within American public
| education, if it's true what the parent commenter said:
| "large swaths of the student population will fail if expected
| to perform at the prior standards of rigor"
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Unfortunately, tracking is awful for the low-track students
| because guess what, no self-respecting teacher wants to be
| stuck teaching underperformers. So the students are trapped
| in that situation, being taught by terrible teachers who
| don't actually care for their educational achievement, and
| unable to improve. You see those outcomes across the board,
| including in the celebrated German system of academic vs.
| vocational school tracks. Yes, there are ways to cross
| through to the highest tracks, but very few students can
| avail themselves of those practically.
| alimov wrote:
| > "...no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching
| underperformers."
|
| If you look at people that are not academically inclined
| and call them under performers then maybe that's part of
| the issue. I think everyone has strengths and weaknesses,
| and if someone is more inclined to do vocational training
| rather than the standard track I think their strengths and
| interests should be developed / encouraged. An educator
| teaching someone that is actually interested in what they
| are being taught sounds like a more rewarding experience
| than lecturing a class where maybe 5 of 40 (not an actual
| stat) students are actually engaged.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's not whether people are more suited for vocational or
| "standard track." It's our aptitude for judging that in
| children.
| alimov wrote:
| That's a good point. I am not aware of a "good" way to
| make that kind of judgement, especially considering the
| lack of resources available to those that would be making
| such a judgement (k-12 educators at public schools)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > If you look at people that are not academically
| inclined and call them under performers then maybe that's
| part of the issue.
|
| It's not _me_ doing that, it 's education schools telling
| prospective teachers that their students will just be
| "learning their math by themselves", and the teachers can
| simply be facilitators. It must be a comfy job teaching
| math class to little Carl Friedrich Gauss and the like,
| but what about the remaining 99% of students - who will
| need _actual_ teaching?
| alimov wrote:
| Sorry, I should have worded that better.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I've talked to some high school students about going to
| college despite high costs, and there was a general fear
| (statistically backed) that they would make less over their
| lifetimes without a degree and that not going to college
| would put them in a worse position to do basic things like
| buy a house as costs continue to rise.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| The Netherlands been an example.
| Bostonian wrote:
| Yes, but if you do sort students by academic achievement, you
| will send a smaller fraction of blacks and Hispanics to
| academic high schools than whites, and a smaller fraction of
| whites than Asians, since there are differences in academic
| achievement by race. I say so be it, but currently many
| people assume that disparate outcomes prove racism.
| adamomada wrote:
| The irony of course is that focusing on who they are not
| what they do has to be more racist by a rational definition
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If it's based on ability, it should not matter what
| percentage of advanced students are white, black, asian,
| or other. All that matters is that if you're good enough,
| you get in.
| sefrost wrote:
| Which countries do that and which countries don't?
| brummm wrote:
| Germany splits students into different schools starting 5th
| grade and it's absolutely great.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Deciding the future of your life in 4th grade (when
| students are evaluated in Bavaria, at least) is maybe not
| great. Was living in Munich for five years and I'm glad
| we left before our son got sorted.
|
| There's also a strong racial/class component to who gets
| into Hauptschule/Realschule/Gymnasium, surprise surprise.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Here in M-V I had to go through "Orientierungsstufe"1
| which I _partly_ blame for my learning difficulties and
| anger issues later in school, since in those two years we
| later had to find out that we missed 1-1,5 years of
| material and /or learning methods depending on the
| subject.
|
| I mean... e.g. in Philosophy the teacher was absent for
| most of those two years resulting in us having to
| entertain ourselves for those "lessons". When we finally
| entered Gymnasium at 7th grade we received a culture
| shock when we had to learn the "Zauberlehrling" by Goethe
| in 1,5-2 weeks for recital in the first weeks.
|
| Realschule felt more like Kindergarten from the treatment
| by teachers like their attitude while teaching and them
| not being interested in bullying unless it turned
| _really_ physical, then protected the bullies when the
| bullied hit back. What I 'm saying is, as the slightly
| fat kid who also didn't get all the shiny new things from
| his parents I was bullied by a group of other students
| surrounding and harassing me almost every single day
| during breaks those incompetent "teachers" only had the
| "advice" to basically let the bullies tire themselves out
| from bullying but heaven forbid once trying to break out
| of the encirclement i tried to hit one of those bullying
| lowlives, the teachers descended like vultures isolating
| me in a room for the rest of the break questioning why I
| did that instead of "just ignoring the bullies". Those
| bullies never received any kind of discipline/punishment.
|
| Later in Gymnasium, I _once_ had a very heated verbal
| altercation with a classmate within earshot of a teacher,
| we were taken aside, our parents called in for an evening
| sitdown that same week, there we resolved our differences
| with some guidance from a teacher and remain friends even
| now.
|
| Both schools were only staffed by older teachers with the
| youngest being late-40s/early-50s and several teachers
| retiring during my stay at the Gymnasium, so probably
| little to no influence from education during newer eras
| of teaching.
|
| Honestly I wish I could smack that idiot Brodkorb for all
| the stupid shit he did as education minister.
|
| 1: no split after 4th grade, instead have everyone go
| through Realschule for 5th and 6th grade, only starting
| the split at grade 7.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I've heard pretty terrible things about Germany
| tolerating bullying, +1 for that count I guess.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Clarification (can't edit the above post anymore):
|
| > our parents called in
|
| should be
|
| our parents were called in
| watwut wrote:
| It is genuinly too soon.
| morelisp wrote:
| In Germany you can be sorted into a Hauptschule around age
| 10. At this point you will definitely not get a university
| education via any usual path. Increasingly even "the
| trades" are closed off to graduates and people expect a
| Realschule (HS/GED equivalent) degree for those.
|
| I don't think university is appropriate for everyone and I
| dearly wish skilled trades had a higher position in
| society, and generally don't believe in the idea of
| "unskilled labor". But the German system is ultimately as
| cruel as the American one.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I don't think either system is great right now. From an
| American perspective, I really wish that there were still
| trade-type classes in high school, and those were more
| accepted as a viable career path at that stage of life
| for those who want it.
|
| One path could be partnerships with local
| community/technical colleges. My high school participated
| in a program called "Middle College" where high school
| students took classes at a local community college (can't
| remember if it was all or just some) and that seemed to
| work well.
| pmyteh wrote:
| England mostly doesn't (though there's some local
| variation). Most secondary (11-16/18) schools are
| 'comprehensive', covering the full range of abilities. It
| is standard to set pupils by ability in most subjects, but
| uncommon to track/stream pupils by general ability across
| the whole curriculum.
|
| We previously ran a split system, with exams splitting
| pupils at 11 into academic ('grammar') and non-academic
| ('secondary modern') schools. Many grammar schools were
| good; most sec mods were awful. The exams also famously had
| pretty poor predictive power for underlying academic
| ability as an adult, so pathways had to be developed to
| allow bright pupils to go to higher education despite being
| mis-sorted in the original exam - which somewhat undermines
| the point of the system. Comprehensivisation has never been
| nationally mandated, but nearly all areas have now done
| away with academic selection at 11. The remaining holdouts
| are mostly suburban Conservative areas where political
| power is in the hands of the well-heeled upper middle
| classes who are strongly in favour of grammars (and expect
| their own children to go there). Interestingly, Margaret
| Thatcher (as Education Secretary under Heath) was
| responsible for more grammar school closures than Labour
| was.
|
| Vocational/academic choices are now being made at age 14
| and 16 either within the secondary schools or by moving to
| local further education colleges (similar to US community
| colleges and trade schools). Vocational classes are low
| status. Britain no longer has a strong industrial sector to
| use such skills, and although both parties advocate for
| better vocational education essentially everyone who
| matters would be most unhappy if their darling children
| were diverted from a university track in the direction of
| trades. That's something they want _other_ (poorer) people
| 's children to do, not their own. We've never developed
| good vocational training for offices/services jobs, and
| although such courses do exist they're not taken
| particularly seriously by employers, despite several rounds
| of national reforms.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I think Northern Ireland still does the 11+
| umanwizard wrote:
| France does.
| usrn wrote:
| Germany famously does. Children are given a test and
| depending on the score they go to Gymnasium (in
| perpetration for university) or one of two other options
| which trains them for either trades or labor.
| frostburg wrote:
| I'm not sure it's merely that. Most vocational track high
| schools types (except the hotel / restaurant ones that are
| well designed) here in Italy are honestly bad, not really
| helping students reach their full potential, but the content
| of the courses isn't on-its-face farcical like that "data
| science" course.
|
| There are clearly decision makers detached from reality
| involved here.
| frostburg wrote:
| They're avoiding dire outcomes for themselves while damaging
| society, however. A merely performative education is truly
| something awful.
| wonnage wrote:
| I think the cause/effect is reversed. Society is damaged
| because parents cannot raise kids properly for a variety of
| reasons. You have kids who don't come to school, entire
| classrooms where 80% of the time is spent managing behavior,
| kids who receive zero parental support at home because the
| single parent is working two jobs, etc.
|
| That problem is hard to fix, whereas the curriculum is soft
| and malleable. You also have an entire industry of education
| PHDs who have never taught class for any appreciable amount
| of time who have a neoliberal fetish for minor policy tweaks
| as the path to heaven.
|
| Teachers have the same problems as police, random societal
| functions have fallen to them by default because there's no
| alternative. They're surrogate parents, social workers,
| mental health counselors, etc. and there's barely any time to
| do any teaching afterwards.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >surrogate parents, social workers, mental health
| counselors, etc
|
| And they're paid dick all on top of it
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| This makes no sense even as a well meaning. "Some kids are
| going to fail so we need to prevent other kids from excelling."
| Obvious BS from California
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Okay but what if American children were subjected to the
| standards of Chinese schools? You'd see 70% failure rates
| overnight at every school in the nation. Surely, in that
| case, we'd see policies like these pushed even by white
| people.
|
| Likewise, the minority parents and schools simply see upper-
| class white schools in this country as we do the Chinese
| schools. I'm not saying that this is the best solution to the
| problem but I can at least understand where these parents are
| coming from.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| We're not talking about abruptly changing standards, we're
| talking about holding kids to existing standards for which
| our society is already calibrated. I don't think your
| analogy applies (also, are Chinese schools really so much
| more rigorous than American schools, or is this assumed
| based on performance of Chinese immigrants?).
| apetresc wrote:
| Yes, they really are. Look up example questions for the
| Zhongkao (national high school entrance exam) or Gaokao
| (national university entrance exam) and ask yourself how
| North American students at those respective stages would
| fare.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm not necessarily surprised, just curious. Thanks for
| clarifying.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| Rather than standing tall for universal high standards,
| education officials pass the buck to look good. The result will
| be an increasingly unproductive, stratified, and unequal
| society.
|
| You can pass and pass and pass people, but eventually an
| employer is going to need someone to do the job, and they will
| make sure they get that someone. So there will be a hard
| standard sooner or later. The only choice is whether we give
| all students a chance to meet that standard.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| When the utopian plans to elevate the masses fail, just bring
| down the elites instead. Equality achieved.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Is the curriculum being watered down? My reading on this the
| last time it came up on HN is that the sequencing of math
| topics is being changed, which results in classes not having
| the familiar names like Algebra 2, Geometry, AB Calculus, etc.
| That doesn't mean the concepts will not be covered by the end.
|
| I remember the huge blowups over "Common Core" years ago, which
| included new ways of teaching math concepts. I got to see some
| of it in action during COVID as I sat in on elementary Zoom
| school with my kid. I have to say I was impressed; they used
| techniques I did not recognize, but they seemed to work well.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| As someone with a math background I found the blow ups over
| common core to be ridiculous. Focusing on parents
| unfamiliarity in place of any actual discussion of
| effectiveness.
|
| If we are going to get anywhere with math education, it can't
| be based on pandering to parent's expectations.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| I think America is going to have to take a hard look at its
| math education if it's serious about re-industrializing. Where
| are all the extra engineers going to come from?
|
| I think you are touching on theory I have that Americans are
| becoming increasingly resentful that technical skills are
| becoming more necessary for middle class living. This is a huge
| driver of the pervading sense of precariousness. For some
| reason there's a huge math phobia in this country
| AlanYx wrote:
| These things go in cycles. A lot of people don't realize that
| Scopes actually lost the Scopes Monkey Trial, and that the
| tide didn't turn overwhelmingly to rationalism in public
| education until the 1958 National Defense Education Act
| (which was motivated by the idea that there was a risk of the
| nation falling behind scientifically). The tide will turn
| towards rationalism and rigor again, eventually.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Homer Hickman came to my mind reading your comment. His
| Sputnik moment catalyzing the journey from coal mining town
| to NASA is a metaphor for that ideal. However, I'd have a
| hard time imagining America in 2022 has anything in common
| with 1959's West Virginia.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Where are all the extra engineers going to come from?
|
| Unfortunately, maybe where they come from now? India, China,
| and other immigration.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| The unstated irony is that there's a large overlap in the
| anti-immigration and re-industrialization crowd.
|
| I think an interesting part of 20th century American
| industrial/scientific history is that many of the prominent
| figures were European immigrants (many Jewish) or children
| of immigrants.
|
| Maybe there is something exceptional about the environment
| itself. But the talented and privileged native citizens
| rarely aspire to be an innovator; they dream of being a
| leader or strategic thinker or mover of capital.
|
| That's why I think hard math is so marginalized even in
| elite circles ("I've never been good at math"). Technical
| work is essentially blue collar to the upper middle class.
| Many of my peers are in this group, and the only time they
| were ever interested in math or programming, was due to its
| possibility as a conduit to a more prestigious position.
|
| This attitude is directly ingrained in undergrad
| institutions. They focus on general knowledge to serve as a
| justification to skip over front line work to become a
| leader (military officer, factory manager, investment
| banker).
|
| There are excellent American technicians no doubt but most
| of them don't fit the typical WASP mold or are predisposed
| to obsessing over systemic topics (which describes myself,
| being ADHD, although I can only strive to be excellent).
|
| And the upper class? They have never aspired to much of
| anything really other than hedonism and protecting their
| position of status. At least in other countries, the upper
| class ideal is a renaissance man.
|
| Edit: some of these assertions are sweeping and maybe a
| little mean. But I do think the thesis is directionally
| correct. America will need to change the culture around
| education to succeed in the 21st century. Immigration has
| and will continue to be a boon; but we have to accept the
| possibility that America could become a less desirable
| immigration target
| shadowfox wrote:
| > At least in other countries, the upper class ideal is a
| renaissance man.
|
| Sadly, I don't think that is very true in many (most?)
| places.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Yeah I felt ridiculous saying that. Perhaps that false
| contrast betrays a romantic idea more than representing
| any material reality
| [deleted]
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Unfortunately?
|
| Well-trained people showing up by themselves is a huge
| advantage.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Yes unfortunately.
|
| The unfortunate part is we don't educate enough of our
| own citizens for these well paid jobs.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Right. "Unfortunately" doesn't mean we should not
| continue to rely on immigration for high tech. It means
| it's unfortunate we're not providing the a similar
| pipeline of people domestically.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I have to imagine these countries are going to begin
| limiting or restricting this type of emigration as a
| nation's people is its biggest asset. Brain draining the
| world without reciprocity is the greatest foreign policy
| we've had.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| I have strong suspicions that certain countries are
| Astro-turfing movements on western social media to lure
| talent back.
| danans wrote:
| > The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very
| rational fear that large swaths of the student population will
| fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor.
|
| I don't think the previous standards of rigor were ever so high
| for most students.
|
| When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in the suburban
| _working class_ Midwest, the vast majority of the students in
| my high school didn 't advance beyond algebra. This was in a
| well resourced school district.
|
| But that was a time when it was felt that most people didn't
| even need to know anything past basic math to be employable.
| Times have changed of course, but the vast majority of
| educational paths, even STEM paths, don't require calculus.
|
| However a great many do require basic data analysis abilities,
| so it's reasonable to emphasize those.
|
| This shouldn't be done at the cost of offering calculus as an
| option for students who are prepared for and motivated to do
| it, though. Of course in the end this is about cost. Assuming
| the same resources, to teach a broader set of students data
| science will require reducing the availability teaching
| resources for something else.
|
| I also recall that in the 1980s in some places there were
| programs that taught calculus at public community colleges for
| students who were on an accelerated academic path in high
| school. That is another option to consider.
| acchow wrote:
| > the very rational fear that large swaths of the student
| population will fail if expected to perform at the prior
| standards of rigor.
|
| Why is this a rational fear? It seems shocking to me that
| students can't perform at the same prior standards given their
| parents are more educated than the prior generation's parents.
| frostburg wrote:
| Are the teachers as good?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Hard to know. The public perception of public employment as
| a whole has gone considerably down since about the Reagan
| era. The pay is mostly not very good, and states and the
| feds have much more power over things that were
| traditionally local.
| falcolas wrote:
| Potential reason it's rational: The shoulders of those giants
| are higher than ever before. Climbing to those heights is
| correspondingly harder to do.
|
| Speaking for myself, I had to worry very little about
| computers until late in high school (Senior year,
| specifically). There were no spreadsheet or word processing
| classes, and the typing classes were only for the girls.
| There was Algebra (up through Calculus as an optional
| course), but many others that my niece has that I didn't.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Maybe I am missing something, but how would allowing some kids
| to take more advanced math cause other kids to fail? You could
| allow kids to graduate without taking the advanced math, but
| still let kids who want to/are ready take the more advanced
| classes.
| jake891 wrote:
| Californians would do well to compare themselves to Massachusetts
| https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/math/2017-06.pdf
| jl6 wrote:
| Which states are doing it right?
| 2sk21 wrote:
| In New Jersey and Massachusetts at least, there is absolutely
| no move to water down the math curriculum in any way. On the
| contrary, the schools here compete on how many AP courses are
| offered.
| idoh wrote:
| Here's a comparison between MA and CA standards: https://twit
| ter.com/BethKellySF/status/1518991575526699008?s...
| ecshafer wrote:
| New Jersey also has an _excellent_ practices of magnet
| schools at the county level. So that even if you are in a
| poorer school district you can go study and apply for a
| magnet school at the county that is better and more focused
| on high academic schools. These schools focus on basically
| college level education for their area in health care,
| biochem, technology, arts, etc. with many AP courses. The
| normal public schools are also good in NJ with a solid
| baseline, but the magnet schools open up access to what would
| otherwise be private specialized schools to all income
| levels.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Magnet schools benefit the individual student but they are
| a bit problematic for many schools because they pick off
| the highest performers and whoever is willing to do the
| work to get admitted / physically drive to the magnet.
|
| And then the home school quality goes down and that hurts
| everyone else who isn't among the small group at the
| magnet.
| nemo44x wrote:
| One thing I notice in NJ is that although there are plenty
| of private schools and academy's, you still see a lot of
| people in multi-million dollar homes paying 60k a year in
| property taxes sending their kids to the public high
| school. Even the most progressive mother wouldn't do that
| if the schools weren't at least up to snuff at offering the
| curriculum that can get their kids into "good" universites.
| pishpash wrote:
| A reflection of the electorate. There are enough dummies in
| California who feel the need to cry out through political
| power.
| whymauri wrote:
| When I moved to MA, it blew my mind when I learned that what
| Florida considers an 'advanced' or even 'specialized'
| education is literally the baseline education in Boston and
| the suburbs. The best schools in Miami Dade County would be
| median in Middlesex.
| [deleted]
| ckemere wrote:
| Text from the CMF:
|
| > "Since achieving a solid foundation in mathematics is more
| important for long-term success than rushing through courses with
| a superficial understanding, it would be desirable to consider
| how students who do not accelerate in eighth grade can reach
| higher level courses, potentially including Calculus, by twelfth
| grade. One possibility could involve reducing the repetition of
| content in high school, so that students do not need four courses
| before Calculus. Algebra 2 repeats a significant amount of the
| content of Algebra 1 and Pre-calculus repeats content from
| Algebra 2. While recognizing that some repetition of content has
| value, further analysis should be conducted to evaluate how high
| school course pathways may be redesigned to create a more
| streamlined three-year pathway to pre-calculus / calculus or
| statistics or data science, allowing students to take three years
| of middle school foundations and still reach advanced mathematics
| courses."
|
| At face value, that suggests that the root problem is that
| students reaching middle school Algebra 1 aren't ready and need
| more remedial math instruction. As an Electrical Engineering
| professor, I can definitely attest to the fact that students
| reaching higher level classes with a precarious foundation are
| rarely as successful as those whose foundation is more solid. I
| suspect Scott would also agree that barely passing calculus in
| high school is not an adequate preparation for a career in data
| science. As a parent of a kindergartner and a second grader, I
| can also see that there is opportunity to push more math further
| down, but even at that age there are kids who have a huge
| variability in how they view their math.
|
| With regard to resources, I thought this statement in the CMF was
| particularly insightful:
|
| > "While early tracking of students into low-level courses has
| been problematic, there is evidence that thoughtful grouping of
| students to ensure they receive high-quality instruction geared
| to their needs at a moment in time can be helpful. This includes
| students who need to fill in gaps in their prior learning and
| high-achieving students who are ready to be more intensely
| challenged. It is also true that teaching heterogeneous classes
| requires greater skill for differentiating supports than teaching
| in classes where the range of performance may be narrower, and
| should be accompanied by high-quality professional development to
| enable success."
| ckemere wrote:
| Update - having re-read the first post about this, it seems
| that the issue of resources is exactly the problem. I think
| that opponents of the CMF would prefer to see More Resources
| put into careful, thorough elementary/middle school math so
| that middle schoolers would thrive in 8th grade Algebra. And in
| their view, the CMF simply lowers the bar, masking the need for
| more resources.
|
| I agree with that!
| 300bps wrote:
| _masking the need for more resources._
|
| Want to know the one resource that schools can _never_ give
| students? Parental involvement. It also happens to be the #1
| variable in success for students.
|
| If parents aren't checking their children's grades on a daily
| basis, asking what they're studying, staying in frequent
| communication with teachers and the school, there is nothing
| that is going to replace that.
|
| My oldest son was on a robotics team during high school in
| which we were a minority. All the other parents, their kids
| were studying calculus by the end of high school. I asked
| every one of them how their kid was able to do that and each
| one of them shrugged and said, "nothing".
|
| To them, "nothing" was their child spending 2 hours per day
| at Kumon after school and a few hours on the weekend in
| addition to their constant checking of their work and
| insistence on academic excellence.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| You also have to be careful about "well performing" school
| districts for a similar reason. I live in one such district
| and most of the parents I know have a regular, dedicated
| tutor for each of their kids.
|
| The teachers expect a lot because of this. Good luck if you
| can't afford such help.
| danans wrote:
| The lack of resources for public education, coupled with the
| every increasing level of competency that students are
| required to internalize over time drives many of the fights
| in education.
|
| I can understand how an electrical engineering professor like
| yourself is rightly concerned about your incoming students
| having less calculus proficiency. On the other hand, there
| many (possibly far more numerous than EE) education and
| career paths that would benefit from better general numeracy
| but not necessary calculus.
|
| The terrible thing here is that these goals should be set
| against one another due to resource limitations. The blame
| for that lies with the broader societal inequities and their
| reflection on the educational funding system.
| rayiner wrote:
| What exactly do you think are the facts regarding the "lack
| of resources" in education and "the educational funding
| system?" Are you aware that the U.S. spends among the most
| on primary education (adjusted for purchasing power) of any
| developed country:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-
| ed...
|
| Or that 50% of total K-12 school funding comes from federal
| and state sources, which is directed mainly at lower-income
| districts? And that, when including those funds, only a few
| states (ironically blue ones) have more than a 5% gap
| between rich and poor districts: https://edtrust.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/02/Gaps-in-State.... Meanwhile about
| 20 states (including many red ones like Utah and Georgia)
| direct over 5% or more funding to poor school districts
| than rich ones?
| danans wrote:
| > Are you aware that the U.S. spends among the most on
| primary education
|
| Yes, and I'm also aware that in the US we expect the
| public school system to be a primary treatment center for
| the disadvantages and traumas associated with poverty and
| unequal opportunity.
|
| It's more expensive (and harder) to educate hungry,
| ignored, and traumatized children than it is to educate
| children who are well take care of. They need more
| support staff, more psychologists, more free lunch
| programs, after-school care that their parents can never
| afford. And it's hard to attract good teachers to teach
| academics in those circumstances.
|
| The major problems with primary education in the US are
| largely faced disadvantaged communities, not prosperous
| ones. If we decide to remove educational funding from
| disadvantaged communities, we have to be prepared to
| either put it into those communities in other ways,
| otherwise we'll face even greater problems in schools.
|
| None of that is to say that there doesn't need to be more
| accountability in school systems - there is a lot that
| needs to be done to re-examine how education is
| delivered. But just looking at the situation by comparing
| $ spent on primary education between countries is
| oversimplifying things.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Yes, and I'm also aware that in the US we expect the
| public school system to be a primary treatment center for
| the disadvantages and traumas associated with poverty and
| unequal opportunity.
|
| That's true in virtually every country, because the
| school system is always the government's primary point of
| contact with poor families.
|
| > It's more expensive (and harder) to educate hungry,
| ignored, and traumatized children than it is to educate
| children who are well take care of. They need more
| support staff, more psychologists, more free lunch
| programs, after-school care that their parents can never
| afford.
|
| Agreed on school lunch. Large school districts already
| offer after school and summer programs.
|
| Disagree on more staff and psychologists. That's the kind
| of waste that detracts from money for instruction.
| Countries like Japan and Singapore went from being
| desperately poor (at a level unimaginable even to an
| inner city American) to developed in a couple of
| generations in the 20th century. I'm pretty sure they
| didn't (and still don't) have a bunch of school
| psychologists on staff.
| danans wrote:
| > Countries like Japan and Singapore went from being
| desperately poor (at a level unimaginable even to an
| inner city American) to developed in a couple of
| generations in the 20th century
|
| Those countries did so by making absolutely massive
| infrastructure and human development investments in their
| poor populations during their industrializing phase, very
| similar to what the US did for its previously poor white
| population after the 2nd world war.
|
| The people who face the greatest educational obstacles in
| the US today are disproportionately people who were also
| largely excluded from the huge post-WW2 investments and
| ensuing economic miracle, and have since faced the
| economic brunt of de-industrialization.
|
| > I'm pretty sure they didn't (and still don't) have a
| bunch of school psychologists on staff.
|
| They have far less crime and trauma to deal with, are not
| awash with weapons, and had very strong communal support
| systems. They were/are also quite authoritarian. Those
| are very different societies with very different
| circumstances. You can't directly compare the situation
| in post war Japan and Singapore with inner city America.
| By dint of our own history, issues of education and
| equity actually quite a bit harder here.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Those countries did so by making absolutely massive
| infrastructure and human development investments in their
| poor populations during their industrializing phase, very
| similar to what the US did for its previously poor white
| population after the 2nd world war.
|
| Japan and Singapore aren't Nordic social welfare states.
| They invested heavily in development but not particularly
| targeted at the poor.
|
| > The people who face the greatest educational obstacles
| in the US today are disproportionately people who were
| also largely excluded from the huge post-WW2 investments
| and ensuing economic miracle, and have since faced the
| economic brunt of de-industrialization.
|
| Only if you pretend that white people in Appalachia are
| the same group as white people in Massachusetts.
|
| > They have far less crime and trauma to deal with, are
| not awash with weapons, and had very strong communal
| support systems. They were/are also quite authoritarian.
| Those are very different societies with very different
| circumstances.
|
| That indicates that America's problem is culture, not the
| availability of school psychologists.
| danans wrote:
| > Japan and Singapore aren't Nordic social welfare
| states. They invested heavily in development but not
| particularly targeted at the poor.
|
| Nor are they comparable to American inner cities.
|
| My own anecdote about Singapore is an old friend who grew
| up very poor in Singapore (themself a child of
| impoverished rural immigrants laborers from India), but
| whose family received subsidized housing, transportation,
| and most of all, stability and security. If their family
| had arrived in Singapore as slaves, their outcome might
| have differed.
|
| > Only if you pretend that white people in Appalachia are
| the same group as white people in Massachusetts.
|
| Who is pretending that? Not me. I agree that they also
| have born the brunt of disinvestment and de-
| industrialization, and we are seeing the effects of that
| in the opioid and methamphetamine epidemics in those
| areas. It's interesting that we don't usually call it a
| culture problem with them though, like we do with black
| inner city communities facing similar challenges.
|
| > That indicates that America's problem is culture, not
| the availability of school psychologists.
|
| It indicates a problem of economics and disinvestment.
| The psychologists are only there to manage the impacts of
| that disinvestment on society, not solve the original
| problem of lack of economic opportunity.
|
| I'm also happy to reduce the number of school
| psychologists when teachers no longer have to deal with
| traumatized children disrupting and endangering their
| classes. Until then someone has to manage those issues,
| and as you stated, that's what we expect public schools
| to do.
| keneda7 wrote:
| I'm a product of public schools and a state college. Due to
| my experiences I will never vote to give teachers one more
| dollar in funding until major changes occur.
|
| I had multiple high school teachers that were checked out.
| Would watch movies and do worksheets. We learned nothing in
| their class other than how bad they thought students were
| now days. Yet they were never fired. Some lasted another 10
| years before retiring.
|
| I also had multiple professors that would start terms by
| saying if you have conservative views and you express them
| in class I will fail you. Had another professor joke about
| how she found out a student was part of a club she didn't
| like so she failed him. Often times these were not GE
| classes but CS specific. Politics have nothing to do with a
| class on OOP or AI. That is not teaching IMO. I have a ton
| of friends that feel the same way. Until this issue is
| actually recognized and addressed I do not believe you see
| anything change.
| Dig1t wrote:
| It's kind of funny how both sides of the political aisle have
| extremists who find ways to argue that being dummer is better.
| They mirror each other in so many ways and sometimes the two
| extremes kind of wrap back around to the other side and have the
| same goals.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Horseshoe theory supremacy
| reducesuffering wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
|
| There were three factions in WW2 and the Cold War. It was about
| preventing the assault of extremists on both sides.
| threatofrain wrote:
| No, the two sides of this debate aren't mirroring their
| arguments.
|
| One side (Equitable Math) is engaged in a discussion of white
| supremacy in Californian math pedagogy. The other side (Moses
| Charikar, Scott Aaronson, et al) is arguing against a weakening
| of math standards.
| daveslash wrote:
| Sorry for being out of the loop and asking a (possibly) dumb
| question: What is the stated reason that the CMF suggested these
| changes?
|
| Is it about budgets? Is it because some people might think these
| classes " _aren 't that important?_". The open letter seems to
| suggest that it's about closing gaps between privileged and less
| privileged - is that it? Honest question - I'm not trying to stir
| the pot.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I believe the gist of the argument is that when you split
| students into 'normal' and 'advanced' classes at a young age,
| the students who are not put into the advanced classes will
| believe they are just naturally not good at math and will give
| up on trying to get better because they will think they just
| "don't have a math brain". Here is a short blurb about the
| idea:
|
| > The framework would not forbid districts from accelerating
| students in middle school. It does, however, recommend that
| middle-school students all take the same sequence of
| "integrated" math classes that blend concepts from arithmetic,
| algebra and other subjects with the goal of cultivating a
| foundation and comfort level with numbers.
|
| > On top of that, the framework recommends that schools
| postpone offering students Algebra 1 until 9th grade or later,
| when it says more students are likely to be able to master the
| material.
|
| > "When kids struggle, they immediately say 'I don't have a
| math brain,'" Boaler said. "That changes how the brain
| operates."
|
| https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/11/cali...
|
| I am sympathetic to the idea that we don't want to send the
| message that some kids are just bad at math, but it does seem
| to be a bit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater by
| holding back the other kids who are doing well. Even if you
| keep the advanced kids in the same class, the kids are are
| struggling are going to be well aware that some of the kids are
| getting it really quickly.
| npunt wrote:
| Yep, tracking students into systems like high/low early on
| makes it very hard to ever escape that track, as they're a
| sort of self-perpetuating system. That has downstream effects
| for one's entire life. It's a crude method of personalizing
| education within the context of factory education.
|
| Downsides are that kids develop at different times, have
| different educational needs, have home life issues that can
| temporarily derail progress, etc and if those happen around
| the time kids are getting tracked, they may not reach their
| full potential.
|
| A good education system would offer students a way to rise up
| whenever they're ready to rise up, let them learn at their
| pace, focus on mastery, build upon knowledge gained rather
| than schedule followed, etc. There's a lot of edtech out
| there that incorporate these concepts but school models
| struggle to integrate it into the (literally) old school way
| they operate. It's quite difficult to reorient school around
| these new concepts at scale, it has to be done school-by-
| school, leader-by-leader, school board by school board.
|
| Agree its complex, as it may be the 'best of the worst'
| option for certain contexts. Anything involving balancing
| equity/access/etc is like that.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| From what I've seen there are three major problems with
| edtech that gives a personalized education:
|
| 1) A lot of K-8 education is babysitting. If you let kids
| do their own thing they'll just watch YouTube and play
| Roblox instead. Most kids are not _that_ self motivated at
| this point in life. It's hard for teachers to manage a
| classroom if everyone is working on different things.
|
| 2) Staring at a computer screen is not a great learning
| experience. A classroom is an interactive, social
| experience with active feedback. It's hard to socialize
| when the kid next to you is not working on the same
| activity or problems you are.
|
| 3) Personalizing education diminishes the importance of
| teachers in the classroom, which teachers unions obviously
| oppose. Teachers can't teach if every kid is learning
| something different, and online education strongly promotes
| winner-take-all dynamics where the best teacher and content
| can scale up infinitely and dominate.
|
| Out of all these I think 2) and 3) are the hardest problems
| to solve and whoever solves them is going to meaningfully
| advance education. But I'm not very convinced by the
| startups I'm seeing in this space that anyone has solved it
| yet.
| npunt wrote:
| Yeah we're early on in really nailing the formula. Butts
| in seats staring at screens doing single player
| activities isn't a particularly compelling education
| environment nor one children are accustomed to
| biologically. We need more embodied, social,
| psychologically safe, and intrinsically motivating
| learning environments, and I don't think the enabling
| technologies and designs have yet emerged to fully
| satisfy these needs.
|
| That said some of these programs have solid learning
| science foundations and good outcomes. Teachers roles
| necessarily change to 'guide on the side' and motivator,
| there's a lot more there to go into but basically it'll
| take time.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| Another non-obvious problem is that you can get mis-tracked
| too low _even on the highest track_. It happened to me.
| There was an assessment test on entering middle school for
| how many classes up you got shifted, I went into the
| highest bucket with 4 other kids. Last year of middle
| school we had to get bussed into the local high school for
| math education and back for everything else.
|
| I was not seriously challenged and felt like math classes
| wasted my time.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > we don't want to send the message that some kids are just
| bad at math
|
| But some kids _are_ just bad at math. Some kids are bad at
| sports, music, dance, etc. Some kids are good at some things
| and kids are good at different things.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yes, some kids are bad at math... but they could be better
| than they are.
|
| Let's use your example of sports, for example. Yes, no
| matter how much I train and practice running, I will never
| be as fast as Usain Bolt... but I sure will be faster than
| if I didn't practice at all.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Yes, that's correct. So you (and I) should be taking
| remedial running and Usain should be taking AP running.
| acomjean wrote:
| I was in the "middle" tier math program in high school. But
| around sophomore year I wanted to get more into
| science/engineering but you can't switch tiers or catch up to
| those ahead of you, no matter if you're making extra effort
| and doing well. It was frustrating.
|
| In my case I got a letter about summer school at a local
| university. So I pre-calced over summer school to get moved
| into calculus in high school. It honestly changed my path. I
| get having tiers, but once placed into one its hard to move.
| If I wasn't self motivated, and had the opportunity to try I
| would be in a different place.
| digisign wrote:
| Nice work. However you say you couldn't switch tiers but in
| the next paragraph you did find a way. So, it sounds like
| you can.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| I read it as an unspoken "within the school system." It
| seems reasonable to expect schools to include a path for
| changing tiers if they put such a system in place, rather
| than leaving it up to students to find a workaround.
|
| My school supported me in taking trig as an independent
| study over the summer (with a textbook and slides from
| one of the teachers plus a few meetings as needed.) This
| let me take AP Calc senior year; otherwise I would have
| missed that opportunity due to being placed in the wrong
| math class freshman year.
| pishpash wrote:
| Many public schools take local college credits. There is
| always a path.
| zdragnar wrote:
| My school allowed changing tiers, and I am very grateful
| that it did. I had a bad year in my early teens with some
| mental health stuff, and spent my first year in high school
| with kids who needed much more time and practice to get a
| handle on concepts than I did. If I had been forced to stay
| in those tracks, my life would have taken a drastically
| different course, as I didn't really need to work to learn.
| Getting bumped into a higher tier challenged me, and that
| challenge is what prepared me for college.
|
| Had I gone into college without that work ethic, I almost
| certainly would have failed out early.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Why wouldn't you just let everyone take the same class and
| the same exams, but let the kids who have interest do extra
| work? Want to do calculus a year early? Here's the book,
| here's the exercises, why would I stop you?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| What you suggest is already the case. The book and
| exercises are "here" for you to do, nobody to stop you.
| It's called the internet. The calculus police doesn't come
| get you if you're reading a calc book in 10th grade. It's
| just that you don't have any way of getting instruction or
| school credit - so you are very unlikely to be successful,
| and not very likely to have your university credit you as
| having mastered the material without taking a college
| class.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Any high schooler can take the AP calculus test and earn
| credit, no?
| [deleted]
| nafix wrote:
| Sounds like more woke nonsense. Sounds nice and easy to a
| layman from a super high level but not practical or put
| through any kind of rigorous rational thought.
| vkou wrote:
| > Sounds like more woke nonsense
|
| You are right that this is a lot of nonsense. Specifically,
| 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' is the nonsense meme
| that gets hammered into student heads so frequently during
| school that most of them actually start to believe it.
|
| It's not some kind of novel woke nonsense, though, it's how
| math instruction on this continent has been happening over
| the past X decades.
|
| The wokies are pushing _back_ on this nonsense.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' may be nonsense,
| no doubt.
|
| 'you can be good at math/math is easy' may be an equal
| nonsense.
|
| This seems to be a symmetrical situation to me. You can
| absolutely underrate or overrate a person's abilities to
| do X. I don't see how one is preferable to the other.
| Both are pretty destructive when taken to their extreme
| logical conclusions. For example, from the relative
| underrepresentation of blacks in advanced math classes,
| you can draw a conclusion that _math as a science is
| inherently racist /white supremacist_. Such sentiments
| can be sometimes seen in discussions and I consider them
| dangerous, toxic nonsense.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I don't understand if you're saying that every kid is
| equally good at math. Or, similarly, that every kid that
| the same capacity for it or ability to pickup math
| concepts.
|
| Because it seems to me that if you have experience with
| any sampling of children where N>1, you'll see that's
| simply not true.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > I don't understand if you're saying that _every_ kid is
| equally good at math.
|
| I'm not, there are always extreme outliers and
| exceptions, but I do believe that the vast majority of
| children can meet the incredibly low bar for mathematics
| education that is considered normal in North American
| schools.
|
| I also believe that teaching them to be afraid of math,
| (and having their teachers be afraid of math) is a major
| contributing factor for why so many of them struggle so
| much to meet that bar.
| rayiner wrote:
| > (and having their teachers be afraid of math)
|
| This is a big one. I was in sixth grade when my science
| teacher told me that the boiling point of water was 132F,
| because she thought you added 32 to convert from Celsius
| to Fahrenheit.
|
| This problem runs all the way down, from teachers
| colleges to the kinds of people who apply to be K-12
| teachers. That fearing math is okay and normal is
| pervasive in the culture and it's not clear to me you can
| even do anything about it other than implement gating
| math credentials for teachers that would exclude a huge
| fraction of teaching school graduates.
| dorchadas wrote:
| > (and having their teachers be afraid of math)
|
| This is a huge part of the issue I feel. I know way too
| many elementary school teachers who are afraid of math
| themselves and struggle to understand it. Is it any
| wonder the kids they teach don't? It causes big problems
| when they get to me for mathematics in high school.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I would agree with this. The standards aren't super high
| -- from my POV as someone who always excelled in math.
| But it's clear (to me, at least) that even the
| "incredibly low bar" is actually quite challenging, at
| every grade level, for very many students.
|
| Speaking of teachers... my own grade-school math
| development, decades ago, was stunted by the fact that my
| teacher didn't know anything about linear algebra. I
| asked her for help deciphering my "Amiga 3-D Graphics
| Programming" book, and she concluded that the vector and
| matrix notation must be a bunch of typos. Arrgh!
| nafix wrote:
| Like I said, sounds good to a layman in general terms
| (just how you explained it). But the actual
| implementation is half-baked, short-sighted, and favors a
| weak/easy solution rather than something more well
| thought out and complex.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Ok, so what would your approach be to address the issue
| of huge groups of kids underperforming what they are
| actually capable of?
|
| I feel too often the people who play the 'woke nonsense'
| card think that we should just allow the current failings
| to continue, and any work to help struggling groups is
| wrong.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Wouldn't cutting out high level math courses make _even
| more_ kids underperform below what they are capable of?
|
| The cited issue was that higher level math courses were
| making other students feel like they weren't cut out for
| math. So it seems more like the issue is a mindset one.
| They shouldn't be looking at better performing kids and
| think "I can never do that". We should be instilling a
| better growth mindset to these kids, so they understand
| that they can overcome their inabilities.
|
| The "woke" solution of removing high level courses
| actually achieves the opposite. It reinforces the idea
| that such a level is inachievable for some people so it
| should be cut out for all people.
| twofornone wrote:
| >You are right that this is a lot of nonsense.
| Specifically, 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' is
| the nonsense meme that gets hammered into student heads
| so frequently during school that most of them actually
| start to believe it.
|
| No, the nonsense is the idea that we are all cut out for
| math. That's the fundamental underpinning behind the
| "wokies" push for equity, a silent conflation of equality
| of opportunity with equality of outcome based on the
| totally untrue premise that we are all equally capable
| given identical environments.
|
| The only possible resolution to this goal, given the
| obvious uneven distribution of innate human ability, is
| the handicapping of those who are capable, because there
| fundamentally is no way to boost those at the bottom to
| match the middle and top.
|
| And I don't think people understand how dangerously
| pervasive this mindset has become, as it is also the
| foundation for diversity and inclusion in the workplace,
| the equally misguided idea that given equal opportunity
| all demographics would see equal representation in a true
| meritocracy.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > No, the nonsense is the idea that we are all cut out
| for math.
|
| I think the nonsense is making a decision about who is
| and isn't cut-out for math at such a young age, and
| keeping them hemmed into that path for the duration of
| their education. That's not merely _recognizing_ the top,
| middle, and bottom - it 's creating it.
|
| I see that as a worthy thing to try to avoid. I also
| think we should strive to avoid falsely concluding that
| all persons are equally capable.
|
| But every decision is one that creates tradeoffs. I don't
| know what should be done. I'm an observer on this topic,
| and I think there's a lot of hubris in this thread from
| others oh so certain they know what's best.
| TimPC wrote:
| What's the longest we can go without streaming and still
| meet reasonable targets? The people designing this
| curriculum seem to say they can't get rid of streaming
| without dramatically lowering the bar.
|
| This means an informed discussion needs to be had about
| the costs of lowering the bar against the costs of early
| streaming. I think people are rather strongly against
| lowering the bar to the point of effectively removing
| calculus from high school based on the general reaction
| in this thread.
| vkou wrote:
| > The people designing this curriculum seem to say they
| can't get rid of streaming without dramatically lowering
| the bar.
|
| If over twelve years of math instruction you can't figure
| out how to teach the average child algebra, trigonometry,
| logarithms, and the very basics of calculus, I would
| advise the educators to look into why their peers in
| other countries are managing to accomplish these feats.
|
| But, of course, it's easier to just throw your hands up
| into the air, and just bifurcate people at Grade 7 into
| 'good math' and 'bad math' tracks.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > If over twelve years of math instruction you can't
| figure out how to teach the average child algebra,
| trigonometry, logarithms, and the very basics of
| calculus, I would advise the educators to look into why
| their peers in other countries are managing to accomplish
| these feats.
|
| You think they're doing it with "Common Core" and
| "ethnic" rainforest math, let alone this new "data
| science" insanity? You couldn't be more mistaken on that.
| Take a look at the popular Russian and Singapore Math.
| Not even the smallest trace of the failing "progressive
| education" thinking, just a lot of solid, high-quality,
| direct, rigorous, focused teaching.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Perhaps a simple solution is worth a try: publicly
| praise/acknowledge those who excel, while also teaching
| that it's okay to not be at that level [yet]. Encourage
| peer mentorship, so that the more advanced ones can help
| someone who struggles. For the outliers who are
| absolutely stuck in the "I don't care" mindset, apply
| additional resources to find alternate ways to make the
| material matter to that individual (practical examples,
| scenarios, hands-on application, etc.). Ask other
| students who _are_ interested what real world uses they
| can think of for the material /topic/equation/concept. If
| something works, consider implementing that method for
| the entire class earlier on for the next class.
|
| This is where the goalposts generally get shifted toward
| teacher resources and/or pay. That's fine to discuss as
| well, but likely not a significant factor for the above
| suggestions.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Can't we agree that both extremes are wrong? While I
| agree that it is wrong to assume there is no such thing
| as innate human ability, and it is wrong to assume
| everyone can achieve equally, you seem to be arguing the
| opposite; that there is nothing that can be done to
| improve achievement for those who are struggling.
|
| This simply isn't true. There are things that can be done
| to improve the outcome for students, and we should
| continue to work to try to improve the success of all
| students. This doesn't mean that you expect everyone to
| achieve equally, just that you can help people achieve
| more than they would have without the help.
|
| I also find this argument a bit paradoxical; if you truly
| believe that innate ability is the only determining
| factor for how well students do, then why do you worry
| about handicapping those who are capable? It shouldn't
| matter if we force them into classes they are too
| advanced for, since how we educate them doesn't matter
| and only natural talent matters.
|
| It seems that you believe schooling does affect
| achievement, since you want to make sure we aren't
| holding back the high achievers, yet you are saying at
| the same time we shouldn't worry about how we educate the
| low achievers because they are stuck where they are no
| matter what. You can't argue that it matters for high
| achievers but not for low achievers, that doesn't make
| any sense.
| [deleted]
| rajin444 wrote:
| > That changes how the brain operates.
|
| I didn't think our understanding of the brain was that
| advanced yet. AFAIK we run some experiments and observe
| results, but we can't explain why those results were
| observed.
|
| Which is useful and awesome from a learning perspective, but
| extremely worrying we use it to craft public policy.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > "When kids struggle, they immediately say 'I don't have a
| math brain,'" Boaler said. "That changes how the brain
| operates."
|
| This really jumped out at me.
|
| I didn't read any context, but students CAN and SHOULD learn
| to struggle. Productively. Without thinking they are failing.
|
| Imagine you thought everything should come easily? That's not
| my experience in the world.
|
| The fact that students (are reported to) shut down when faced
| with difficulty is a failing of the educational system and
| something that should be worked against.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I didn't read any context, but students CAN and SHOULD
| learn to struggle. Productively. Without thinking they are
| failing.
|
| Unproductive struggling with math is the natural
| consequence of substandard math education, such as is
| encouraged by the unscientific and arguably insane notion
| (which is however common throughout the Education field)
| that all students can simply be expected to "learn their
| math by themselves", and therefore have no need for actual,
| focused and direct teaching of that subject.
| Miner49er wrote:
| From my understanding, they revisit this framework every 8
| years. California is doing poorly in 8th grade math scores, so
| I think they want to make changes to improve that.
| adamomada wrote:
| Goodhart's law In action?
| prepend wrote:
| It seems like such a bonehead solution to the problem. Of
| course if you're doing poorly in math scores, you can make
| math easier in the hope to increase scores.
|
| It's sad that the state is proposing these changes. I
| remember in school there were kids who argued "algebra is
| stupid, who needs it, why waste time" and there were one or
| two sympathetic teachers who would respond "well, I rarely
| have to use algebra to balance my checkbook" or something
| silly. It seems like those kids have grown up, gained power,
| and are literally pushing the argument that this math isn't
| important.
| deanCommie wrote:
| The person quoted (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Boaler)
| is a "Nomellini-Olivier Professor of Mathematics Education
| at the Stanford Graduate School of Education" who "won the
| award for best PhD in education from the British
| Educational Research Association"
|
| I'm not saying I agree with the proposed California
| Framework. As a formerly gifted maths student, I hate it.
| But let's not dismiss the rigorous work of an academic who
| is attempting to improve education for a public education
| body for a state with 40 million people as "bonehead" (or
| "woke nonsense" as another commenter did).
|
| 90% of the reasons why kids say "<subject> is stupid, who
| needs it" it's because they are not enjoying it or
| struggling with it and using this as a defense mechanism.
| Noone who is doing WELL at a school subject dismisses it as
| useless.
|
| So maybe, just maybe, it's worth evaluating the education
| process to make it easier to teach kids to give them the
| foundations that then the more gifted ones can invest and
| build on top of, and everyone comes out with baseline math
| competency.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
| rayiner wrote:
| I believe this is a paper from her thesis work: http://ma
| th.coe.uga.edu/olive/EMAT6990Sp10/JRME1998-Jo_Boale...
|
| It's mainly a qualitative analysis that wouldn't pass for
| rigorous in any real scientific or engineering field.
| fn-mote wrote:
| I find this kind of shallow dismissal of a tenured
| Stanford professor's work based on their thesis
| unproductive.
|
| Engaging with their current, relevant work would be more
| appropriate.
|
| This is exactly what the GP is saying - many of us don't
| like the conclusions, but just blowing off a whole body
| of work in a sentence is pretty arrogant.
| rayiner wrote:
| There's tenured Stanford professors in many subjects,
| such as theology. I'm sure their work is impressive
| within the context of the field. But that doesn't mean
| it's rigorous or has real world application. PhD
| publications are supposed to be a serious contributions
| to the field. This particular work won a major award.
|
| Stop it with the accusations of "arrogance" and naked
| credentialism. Any of the millions of people with an
| undergraduate STEM degree (mine is in aerospace
| engineering) learns enough about the scientific method to
| distinguish "rigorous" work from non-rigorous work. It's
| actually kind of an important thing they try to teach.
|
| Scientists and engineers who don't call out non-rigorous
| work that claims the mantle of "expertise" are shirking
| their moral obligations and helping to erode the
| credibility of science as a larger discipline.
| TimPC wrote:
| A Professor of Mathematics Education is a role that fits
| into a woke section of academia and generally publishes
| woke forms of advocate research. Many people can study
| mathematics education without studying much mathematics
| at all.
|
| When the Mathematicians and Scientists are screaming that
| the policy is nonsense, I'm not convinced by an advocacy
| researcher saying it's rigorous work.
| deanCommie wrote:
| https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163
|
| Can you make specific arguments instead of devolving to
| shorthand dogwhistles that are completely up to the
| interpretation of the reader.
|
| The term 'woke' has no meaning, depending on the context
| it's anything between "We should shame all white people
| for the crimes of their ancestors" to "We should make a
| movie with a female lead".
|
| By using it, you leave it ambiguous as to where on the
| spectrum you fall.
| TimPC wrote:
| The specific argument is that the Mathematicians and
| Scientists are screaming that the policy is nonsense. The
| other specific argument is that a researcher in
| mathematics education doesn't need to take a lot of
| mathematics. The inference is that we should trust the
| former set of people more even on matters of mathematics
| education.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I think the argument (though not necessarily one I agree
| with) is a spin on what you said:
|
| The current system pushes 50% of the kids into calculus and
| 50% into 'I hate math.' Of the 50% that go into calculus,
| 50% go into STEM.
|
| That leads to (hyperbole) 25% A's / 25% B's / 50% F's.
|
| The intent of the new rule is to maybe be more like 25% A's
| / 10% B's / 50% C's / 15% F's.
|
| The key questions are 1) Is that actually better (I
| certainly think bringing up the floor is a good idea, but
| at what cost)? 2) Is this policy even going to get us
| there?
| leodr21 wrote:
| Are other states doing the same thing too?
| legalcorrection wrote:
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is actual argument that I saw presented as well, just in
| different words eg reduce racial disparity in outcome.
| burner556 wrote:
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| My (anecdotal but common) presumption is that the disparity
| often comes from a cultural / behavioral divide, which is
| increasingly blurry along racial lines but still distinct
| enough to recognize usually. By behavioral I mean things that
| are disruptive to standard teaching, like, during a lecture
| or presentation, students are spending time on phones or
| chatting with each other or listening to music or drawing or
| walking around. General "I don't care, I'm going to do my own
| thing" behavior. Sometimes the behavior is based in a
| cultural or subcultural expectation or standard. What methods
| or authorities do teachers have to enact behavioral change in
| such cases?
|
| In most cases, none at all. If any attempt isn't derided as
| racist (or other -ist/-phobic accusations) it's viewed as
| authoritarian/inhumane. Decades of legal precedent and risk
| aversion have caught up to education, perhaps rightly so. I
| don't think there's any chance in hell of going back to
| paddling and such, so we need to come up with newer ways to
| enact behavioral change. In order to do this, I think we have
| to stop being afraid of slights against culture. Unity of
| purpose, of many one. Diversity is not a strength if there is
| no unifying principle among the diversity.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| bawolff wrote:
| Everyone talking about calculus, but they also seem to want to
| cut logrithms?? That seems super fundamental to me.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > as is suggested on lines 1226-1239 of Chapter 5 of the
| California Math Framework
|
| It's a MS Word document. How am I supposed to find lines
| 1226-1239? They might want to actually quote it.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Here you go. Multiple methods listed but in short it's under
| Home / Find / Goto then select the line option.
|
| https://www.groovypost.com/howto/quickly-go-to-a-certain-pag...
| umvi wrote:
| Just my opinion but... is Calculus an important high school goal?
| I took AP Calc in high school, got a 4 on the exam. I did
| Electrical Engineering in college and took college level math
| through differential equations. And yet... a) I've never used
| calculus once in my STEM career, b) looking back I realize I
| never really understood calculus back when I was in high school
| and college.
|
| I came to that realization a decade after college when I was
| digesting 3Blue1Brown's series on Calculus for fun and had it
| finally _click_. Before then I was basically a Chinese Room that
| was able to solve calculus problems via pattern matching (i.e.
| "oh, this problem fits the shape of these rules, etc.") without
| really understanding how calculus works.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Ultimately the solution is better STEM foundation at the very
| very early ages. Universal pre school would probably be very
| useful. Empirically [edit: n = 1 or 2], it seems that drilling
| basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables early in pre K
| and earlier elementary will give students a better intuitive math
| foundation to do algebra very well. That would enable everyone to
| go into more advanced classes at the same time (earlier) rather
| than these policies which want everyone to go in at the same time
| (later).
| civilized wrote:
| More and more earlier and earlier doesn't comport well with
| child development and can backfire by making students feel
| incompetent. We need better teachers, probably by paying more
| so more talented people join the profession.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Other countries do a lot of "pre-algebra" in the later grades
| of primary education, when the kids are quite ready for it;
| "drill and kill" rote methods are generally focused on in
| very early grades, since they help build familiarity with the
| sort of rigorous, algorithmic thinking that's required for
| good math proficiency. This is what Russian Math, French
| Math, Singapore Math, etc. are built on, and the approach has
| stood the test of time indeed. The fuzzy "Common Core"
| approach pushes abstract content way too early, and ends up
| confusing kids as a result.
| civilized wrote:
| I wholeheartedly endorse Singapore Math, Russian Math,
| Canadian Math (this is a thing, check out John Mighton's
| fantastic JUMP program). ANYTHING but US math.
| FredPret wrote:
| I wish we did probability with equal gusto as kids. I very
| occasionally multiply 7 and 6 in my head, but have to reason
| with probabilities and statistics all day long.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Agree. I think getting really good at addition subtraction
| and multiplication and then division/fractions is the way to
| go though. Have really strong math fundamentals and then
| learn algebra and then everything else is far easier to pick
| up.
| FredPret wrote:
| Fair point. My first introduction to stats was at second
| year in uni though, far too late. By that time I had
| already done a lot of calculus, which while important,
| hasn't exactly been critical in my daily life.
| Jensson wrote:
| Arithmetics is absolutely the most important topic to learn,
| since it is the basis for all other quantitative reasoning.
|
| For example, it is really important to understand that 1 / 3
| chance is the same thing as 3 / 9 chance. It is obvious to
| you now since you have done so much arithmetic's, but to
| someone who never properly learned it they wouldn't be able
| to properly compare those two and could think that one is a
| very different number than the other. Without basic
| understanding about quantities all other quantitative skills
| become worthless.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| As a math PhD with dyscalcula, I'm very skeptical. I was nearly
| held back as a child because of poor arithmetic performance,
| and really only started to be above average when we started on
| algebra. Poor arithmetic isn't that uncommon among the
| mathematicians I know.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Poor arithmetic actually drove me to learn how to program
| calculators and caused me to be interested in being a
| software engineer
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Did that dyscalculia prevent you from learning and attaining
| familiarity with the standard algorithms? That's the sensible
| goal of "drill and kill" in early grades, not doing routine
| arithmetic with high amounts of significant digits.
| chadash wrote:
| I love this.
|
| On a similar note, I have a friend who majored in math at
| Harvard. He once told me that he came into Harvard being
| arrogant because in high school he was always at the top of
| his class in math. He enrolls in his first college level math
| course thinking he's got this, but he soon realizes that
| "higher math", which is largely proof-based, is a completely
| different subject than what he learned in high school. A
| month in he bombs the first exam. He went to the professor,
| who is originally from Italy, and explained his situation and
| how he was a star in high school. He responds in a thick
| Italian accent "that was not math, that was computation. In
| this course I teach math".
|
| The math you typically learn in high school is very
| important, but I wish that we did a better job of explaining
| to high school students that what they are learning is
| completely different from what "real mathematicians" study
| (although I do think that computation is quite important in
| engineering, for example).
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Interesting. I do not know much about dyscalcula. At an early
| age do word problems make it worse or better?
| usaar333 wrote:
| There is little evidence universal preschool would reduce
| academic variance later on. On cognitive measures (though not
| necessarily social/emotional), randomized trials of such
| programs tend to show fade-out (no difference between control
| and treatment groups) within several years.
| chadash wrote:
| Pre-K (4 year olds) seems a bit young for teaching
| multiplication tables.
| fortran77 wrote:
| If you can memorize the alphabet, you can memorize the
| multiplication table to 12x12.
|
| And you'll start seeing beauty in patters and sequences of
| numbers. The sooner the better.
| frostburg wrote:
| They do not require abstraction, I don't know if it is
| necessary but it is practical to teach them.
| chadash wrote:
| What's the point of teaching kids to memorize something
| that they can't apply? When I was a kid, schools taught
| multiplication tables in 2nd grade, when most kids are 7
| years old. The difference in cognition between a 4 year old
| and 7 year old is insane.
|
| I'd be surprised if there were any countries where
| multiplication was formally taught to pre-K students as
| part of the standard curriculum, but i'd love to be proven
| wrong.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| I don't know if there are countries. I believe that if
| there actually was a unified accelerated math framework
| that was really emphasized starting age 4/5 then kids
| would be absolutely fantastic at math.
|
| > What's the point ... ?
|
| Paraphrasing what I said a comment above, you drill
| addition and subtraction until everyone is good at it,
| then you drill multiplication, then you do basic
| division, then you start introducing basic one variable
| algebra with "move plus to the other side to get minus"
| etc. The application is using algebra for word problems;
| formalism can come later.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| In context I meant get really good at addition/subtraction
| starting pre K and then multiplication once +/- is mastered.
|
| Though empirically, I don't know about age 4 but kindergarten
| is definitely not too young for learning up to 12*12. And
| once you figure out multiplication and eventually mental
| division, it's not too big of a leap to have one variable
| algebra with "move a plus to the other side to become minus"
| etc. The formalism can come later but it's fantastic to have
| some exposure to moving numbers and symbols around from an
| early age.
| chadash wrote:
| Out of curiosity, is that a hunch or are you aware of any
| schools teaching multiplication tables even in
| Kindergarten? This used to be done in second grade when I
| was a kid.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| You're right, it's a hunch (n=1.5+-0.5).
| chadash wrote:
| When I was in kindergarten, I used to do math booklets at
| home with my mom for fun. I learned basic multiplication
| sometime around then. 13 years later I majored in
| engineering.
|
| So I'm not saying it can't be done by _any_ 5 year olds,
| but it seems young to teach this to the _majority_ of 5
| year olds.
| amanwithnoplan wrote:
| I'm not aware of any schools teaching multiplication
| tables in kindergarten, but I did memorize the 9x9 table
| when I was in kindergarten because my older siblings' Big
| Kids Notebooks all had the times table on the back and it
| formed a rhyme/ditty in the local language. After it was
| explained to me that multiplication was repeated
| addition, that made perfect sense.
|
| But don't ask me about division, my
| siblings/parents/whoever tried to explain it as "the
| opposite of multiplication", which was complete
| nonsensical gibberish and I didn't learn division until
| years later.
| ryneandal wrote:
| My sixth grader and first grader score in the 90+ %ile in
| mathematics and didn't come close to learning
| multiplication up to 12 in kindergarten. In fact, the topic
| isn't even covered until second grade at the earliest.
|
| I think establishing a foundation of addition and
| subtraction takes far longer for children to master than
| you're considering, especially since there is evidence that
| children of this age appear to intuitively view numbers
| logarithmically rather than linearly [0].
|
| I suppose you could take advantage of this by somehow
| prioritizing multiplication and division over addition and
| subtraction, but I think there's too much value in
| comprehension of linear numbers and addition/subtraction
| since that is the lion's share of interactions they will
| experience at that age.
|
| On the other hand, if you're merely talking about
| abstracting multiplication and division into patterns, then
| I wholeheartedly agree with you, and there is evidence
| supporting this [1]. Although pattern identification is
| already part of kindergarten/1st grade curriculum here.
|
| Ultimately, IMO the most important aspect of education in
| general is covered in the open letter linked to the OP:
|
| > There cannot be a "one size fits all" approach to K-12
| mathematical education.
|
| My children have thrived with their current math
| curriculum, and I know some of their classmates have
| struggled in contrast. One size does not fit all in
| education, nor in many aspects of life.
|
| 0: https://news.mit.edu/2012/thinking-logarithmically-1005
| 1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15248372.201
| 2.68...
| sethammons wrote:
| Anecdote: my then 5 year old and I would "practice counting
| by different numbers" on the walk to school. By the end of
| kindergarten, she could count by everything up to 12s. In 1st
| grade, we started reversing it and asking how many 4s in 48
| and the like, and by the start of second grade, we were
| firmly in adding and subtracting fractions with different
| denominators (though, on paper at this point, no longer
| mental math).
|
| She had (has?) a solid grasp on numeracy. I recall asking her
| why, around 7th grade, "0.999..." is equal to 1. I was
| prepared to show some fancy algebra and she one upped me when
| she said "well, 1/9 is 0.111... so 9/9 is one and 0.999...".
|
| She never liked math though. She spurned calculus.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables"
|
| I get the sense that such rote methods are no longer encouraged
| and a lot of the "new math" in Common Core is aimed at
| approximation and reckoning so that students won't rely on
| memorization.
| heymijo wrote:
| > _Empirically, it seems that drilling basic arithmetic and
| then multiplication tables early in pre K and earlier
| elementary will give students a better intuitive math
| foundation to do algebra very well._
|
| This aspect of the Common Core was about recognizing deficits
| in conceptual understanding resulting from rote methods of
| drilling arithmetic.
|
| The empirical evidence is the opposite of OP's assertion, but
| the end point of giving students a better intuitive
| foundation for higher level math is indeed the goal!
|
| Signed,
|
| An elementary school math teacher who has studied the 60
| years of math reform in America, internationally, and worked
| very hard to ensure all students have a foundation to succeed
| in higher level mathematics
| [deleted]
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Makes sense, the drilling that works for one student
| probably doesn't generalize all. Thanks for your
| perspective!
| frostburg wrote:
| If you want to teach people methods to solve equations,
| limits, integrals etc. speed with basic algebraic operations
| is necessary.
|
| Facility with those methods is then necessary to be able to
| adequately follow important proofs and gain understanding of
| more advanced concepts.
|
| I don't know how you would teach people important results in
| their fields (physics, computer science etc., I'm not talking
| about actual mathematicians) without those skills.
| RangerScience wrote:
| TL;DR: algebra != arithmetic AKA real math doesn't use
| numbers
|
| I'm only good at _arithmetic_ because of making Warhammer
| 40k armies (true story bro).
|
| I'm good at _algebra_ because I was taught well, on top of
| a knack.
|
| Speed with basic algebraic operations was very helpful in
| many places but speed with arithmetic operations has only
| been helpful in board games.
|
| I don't think anyone here would disagree with your point
| about algebra, but I think a lot of people such as myself
| would disagree that pre-K memorization of arithmetic helps
| with algebra later.
| frostburg wrote:
| Performing a bunch of calculations for tabletop wargaming
| is basically the same as learning multiplication tables
| and solving related problem sets. It should help every
| time that for example you have to simplify a polynomial
| involving fractions and similar operations.
|
| As I stated in another post, I don't know when it is
| neurologically ideal to learn arithmetics, it seems
| something that would be important to study carefully
| (personally I learnt before grade school, when I was 3-4
| years old, but I didn't learn to read until I was 6,
| something that is often taught earlier).
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Algebra does use numbers. I learned to move the numbers
| to one side and the variables to the other.
|
| 10x+7 = -2x+31
|
| Move 7 to the other side (picking up a minus sign)
|
| 10x = -2x + 31 - 7 = -2x + 24
|
| Move -2x to the other side (flipping sign)
|
| 12x = 24
|
| Recover 12*2 = 24 via memorization, quick division
| (though not long division), or whatever method
|
| Therefore, x = 2. Then I drew a square and was done.
| snvzz wrote:
| >Then I drew a square and was done.
|
| I don't get this part.
|
| You mean to highlight the end result? In that case, it
| would, most of the time, be a rectangle (or try to be).
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| I was joking, I meant the QED box.
| snvzz wrote:
| I know about QED, but I am not familiar with the concept
| of "QED box".
|
| A cursory web search yielded nothing.
| ludwigschubert wrote:
| It's a symbol that goes by many names: the tombstone,
| end-of-proof, or Q.E.D.
|
| "[?]"
| jeffbee wrote:
| But strong arithmetic fundamentals are absolutely
| necessary for strong algebra. I've watched kids struggle
| with basic algebra because when they don't instantly
| recognize that 7x8=56, they also don't recognize that
| 7zx8z=56z(edit: squared).
|
| Edit: thanks to the reply; HN ate my superscript 2.
| Apparently it doesn't like the unicode multiplication x,
| either: x 2 ?
| RangerScience wrote:
| Hmm. Alright, I can see solid arithmetic being good for
| introducing the concept of a variable...
|
| ...but the only time I ever saw significant numbers when
| actually doing math was in toy problems that deliberately
| chose weird, big coefficients, where the arithmetic part
| was by far the least significant.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Good point ... however, 7z*8z=56z^2.
| roody15 wrote:
| I have worked in education for 16 years and just wanted to add my
| perspective. Here in Illinois over the last few years the state
| has shifted its goals to "equitable outcomes". This in and of
| itself is responsible for much of the lowering of academic
| standards since it is a flawed (but perhaps well intention-ed)
| goal.
|
| In a excellent school district in a suburb of Chicago a district
| goal was adopted to reach equitable outcomes in higher Math. In a
| nutshell since black students scored statistically lower on AP
| Calculus this was seen as a failure in the school district.
| Despite increasing the number of black students able to pass AP
| Calculus the school district looked to cancel offering the course
| since Asian and affluent white students still scored
| statistically higher.
|
| The idea that all races, genders, or whatever categorization you
| can come up with must have the same equitable outcome is a flawed
| goal. Education used to be about taking a student where they are
| and showing improved learning outcomes.
|
| Equality used to be about striving for equal opportunity. The
| shift to conflating equality with equalized outcomes simply
| doesn't work.
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Equality used to be about striving for equal opportunity. The
| shift to conflating equality with equalized outcomes simply
| doesn't work.
|
| Note that to the extent there was a shift, it took place in the
| 70s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact#The_80%_rule
| roody15 wrote:
| "Note that to the extent there was a shift, it took place in
| the 70s."
|
| This really has ramped up in the last 2-3 years.
| [deleted]
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The worst thing about the CMF effort is that it would only deepen
| the disparities between rich and poor. Public education is often
| the only shot poor kids have to gain knowledge and skills that
| might propel them into STEM fields.
|
| Do we need to mail copies of _Stand and Deliver_ to the entire
| California school board? Or am I the only one that recalls that
| movie... based on something that actually happened... in
| California.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante
| [deleted]
| john_moscow wrote:
| Well, why do you think the elites are unanimously supporting
| the recent equity initiatives? Because in reality they penalize
| the potential contenders from the rank-and-file class, while
| the top ladder plays by their own playback.
| iamleppert wrote:
| I'll save you from reading and get to the point:
|
| It's a lot easier to just move the goal post than to actually
| achieve the goal.
| idoh wrote:
| SF CA resident, parent of two school age children chiming in. The
| direction with math seems pretty dismal, in that as of right now,
| everyone is singly tracked together for math through freshman
| year of high school. This results in children who have higher
| aptitudes[1] to not be well served by schools. The majority of
| people I know who have the means opt out of the public school
| system, which probably makes the problem worse generally but
| solves a pain point for them.
|
| [1] - I take it as a fact that different people have different
| talent levels for different things, but not everyone agrees with
| that, and disagreement on this point is a big driver (but not the
| only driver) in the "everyone gets exactly the same" approach
| that is trending now.
| 300bps wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
|
| _In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to
| the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and
| not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically
| able than anyone else_
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I'm not sure that would be worse than the current system
| where the richer American is smarter, better looking, and
| more physically able
| 300bps wrote:
| There are quite literally billions of people that are
| richer, smarter, better looking and/or more physically able
| than I am.
|
| I'm glad for it. I would never want to bring anyone else
| down to meet me at my level on any metric.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It doesn't bother you sometimes that some people starve
| while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire
| countries?
|
| I don't want everyone to be the same, but unbridled
| disparity seems equally as bad to me... especially
| considering how arbitrary it can be.
| bendbro wrote:
| Nobody should care about disparity, people should care
| about maximizing benefit for every American. I'm not
| saying it is easy to evaluate this, but it is obviously
| all we should care about. The existence of gazillionares
| is fine so long as individual wellbeing in this system is
| higher relative to other potential systems.
| bpoyner wrote:
| That would drive my wife up the wall. Our school district in
| the Pittsburgh suburbs has 5 math tracks from grades 4-12. They
| just added linear algebra because so many kids were maxing out
| the available math curriculum.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| And the course is what, elementary row operations?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| My understanding is that in the US 'linear algebra' is used
| for both the thing that involves manipulating grids of
| numbers in various ways (so the basis is implicit), the
| thing that is a bi like algebra but for matrices and
| vectors, the thing you have in physics where linear maps
| have specific geometric meanings (so you care about being
| mostly basis-agnostic, and you care about how the objects
| change when you change basis), and the thing which is
| abstract algebra for vector spaces and so on.
|
| When I was in school in the U.K. we did the first and
| second things, including eg multiplying matrices,
| eigenstuff, diagonalising them, inverting small matrices,
| some determinant/cross product stuff, and we maybe did the
| thing where you solve a first order linear ODE system by
| converting to matrix exponentiation, though I don't quite
| remember. I think we just called it vectors and matrices.
|
| There was some useful stuff there. The problem is that it
| was at a course so close to the leaves of the 'x allowed to
| depend on material from y' tree that we didn't get to apply
| that much (related example: we had to waste a bunch of time
| on silly equations in physics because they couldn't depend
| on us knowing about the y' = kx ODE)
|
| At university we did some courses in vectors and matrices /
| vector calculus that went down the practical route towards
| physics things and useful tools, and we had a course called
| 'linear algebra' that covered the abstract algebra side of
| things, where everything was lemmas/theorems/proofs
| beginning with e.g. suppose e1, e2, ..., en is a basis for
| a vector space V over F, .... However it is certainly
| possible that the US terminology (linear algebra for
| everything) was more common outside of the courses I took.
| verall wrote:
| Sounds the Linear Algebra for Engineers course I took in
| undergrad...
| luca3v wrote:
| I don't know if it's still there in the revision, but in
| chapter one of the earlier draft of the California framework it
| said, in a prominent place "we reject ideas of natural gifts
| and talents"
|
| Edit: in the new version it has been changed to "high-level
| mathematics achievement is not dependent on rare natural gifts,
| but rather can be cultivated"
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Sounds like the author didn't have any.
| [deleted]
| quirino wrote:
| As a student who participated in Math Olympiads throughout
| middle and high school, having to be on the same track as
| everyone was downright painful. This type of thing really
| shouldn't exist.
| kodah wrote:
| I think I can respond to your footnote. I went to a Catholic
| school that split us up into separate tracks for maths
| specifically in grades 4-8. I was in the upper level math class
| for a year before they moved me. I had a teacher who celebrated
| and encouraged bullies, slapped children with a ruler, and
| threw a chalkboard eraser at me from the front of the classroom
| because I appeared to be falling asleep. When my grades fell
| the knee jerk reaction was that I was wrongly assigned to this
| class and it was expected to have below some magical threshold
| of attrition. The ramifications for me were that my old friend
| group would no longer interact with me the way they used to, I
| was immediately bored in our lower maths class, and I was now a
| "dumb" kid.
|
| It wasn't until I'd dropped out of college and taught myself
| math, because of the interviews in this industry, that I
| learned to enjoy math again. My point is that you're really
| fucking with the social firmware of kids when you do that.
| Also, reading between the lines of my life, _not being in that
| upper level math class_ clearly had no impact on the latter
| parts of my life.
| TimPC wrote:
| This curriculum has been brought to you by the campaign to import
| all technology workers from foreign countries.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Recipe for societal collapse
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Here's my experience as a parent of a 20yo who went through the
| MVLA school district in Mountain View.
|
| It's a warning to any parents of younger children: Unless
| something has changed radically in the past 8 years, your child
| will be put into a math track in 6th grade: Separated into
| standard, accelerated and advanced classes. Which track you're in
| is determined by grades, standardized tests and teacher input
| after _5th grade_.
|
| This track determines which classes you can take in 7th and 8th.
| If you were in the advanced class, you will have finished Algebra
| 1 by the end of 8th grade. This allows the student to begin 9th
| grade taking Algebra 2, and then extending from there so that by
| their senior year they can take AP Calculus.
|
| If you want little Suzy to be in more advanced classes, you
| better be prepared to be the most vocal Tiger Mom Karen you can
| imagine, because you'll have plenty of competition. As a result,
| almost no child moves between tracks. And in fact, in my opinion,
| the difference between normal and accelerated is so little, I'm
| pretty sure it's there just to give those children somewhere to
| go.
|
| In other words, if your child doesn't demonstrate math skills as
| an 11yo, they will unlikely be able to take AP calculus 7 years
| later without doing something extra like taking summer classes,
| redoing an entire school year (an option a fellow parent I know
| took), or extraordinary effort like that.
|
| Even if the MVLA education system isn't exactly the same now, or
| you live in a district that does something totally different, or
| even if you're in another state, I suspect this sort of thing is
| happening everywhere.
|
| I personally was happy my son was in accelerated classes, right
| up until 9th grade when I realized how this circumscribed his
| future options for classes. In the end he would never have wanted
| to take AP Calculus, so it was fine. But I personally felt like I
| had fucked up as a parent because I simply wasn't paying
| attention. Planning out your kid's future math classes in detail
| in the 5th grade never crossed my mind, or if it had, I would
| have dismissed it as ludicrous overparenting! Had I known, I
| might have sent him to a math camp or something if I had realized
| how important the difference between a B+ and an A in math was at
| that moment. And he my have really gotten into mathematics as a
| subject. I really don't know.
|
| So anyways, that's my experience. California is such a massive
| change from where I grew up in rural NH, I honestly can't imagine
| where to begin to fix a system with so many millions of children
| from such a varied socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. I
| barely got my one kid through the system unscathed, and I live in
| one of the wealthiest districts in the country.
| [deleted]
| bigbillheck wrote:
| My high school didn't offer calculus, and now thirty years later
| I'm posting on the hacker news forums.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-26 23:00 UTC)