11–20 of 55 posts
Welfare. These low-income and minority kids know they won't starve to death, they think that learning is "acting white". Here's the result. Oh well, better for the rest of us.
Do you really think so? I'd prefer to live in a society where everyone was well-educated, or at least enjoyed learning.
I think you'd find there is some spillover benefit for yourself to be had from "these low-income and minority kids" receiving high-quality education.
Welfare. These low-income and minority kids know they won't starve to death, they think that learning is "acting white". Here's the result. Oh well, better for the rest of us.
"Oh well, better for the rest of us." Do you really think so? I'd prefer to live in a society where everyone was well-educated, or at least enjoyed learning. I think you'd find there is some spillover benefit for yourself to be had from "these low-income and minority kids" receiving high-quality education.
Unfortunately this kind of "magical" thinking is a very weak argument, and just doesn't work.
Welcome to the real world.
Examining a Discovering Algebra book at http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Algebra-Investigative-Appr... suggests that the book is not so bad (though obviously this only allows previewing a few pages)...however, I'm unsure whether this is even the same book, since the OP doesn't mention the name of the publisher.
It's hard to judge whether the books themselves are poor or whether the failure stems from teachers unwilling to adapt to a knowledge-building rather than a purely didactic approach. Education is important and worth spending money on but (as a European) I'm frequently horrified by American teachers, whose union seems defensive even of members who exhibit basic deficiencies in literacy or numeracy. It's still strange to me, for example, to consider that there are teacher's editions of textbooks that include answer keys for scoring homework - I ask myself what possible need a competent teacher could have for such a thing, and why school districts are wasting money on buying them.
I'm strongly against dumbing down school curricula; on the other hand, I think discovery of knowledge by experiment imprints knowledge far better than mere receptive learning (cf. recent HN posts about college physics students who learn the material well but are hopelessly incapable of applying it to a novel context). So I'm inclined to favor the approach of these textbooks (without endorsing their actual content). This article http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/the_constan... suggests that at least some of the problem stems from parental or school unfamiliarity with the methods, such as complaints about an 'overemphasis on...problem solving'.
Hmmm. I think we need to take a closer look before jumping onto the 'blame the book' bandwagon. The books discussed may well be inadequate, but it's hard to judge that without a more reasoned critique. If anything, this lends further support to opinion of many HN readers that we should be moving towards open-source textbooks instead of the current cosy arrangement between school districts and publishers.
Welfare. These low-income and minority kids know they won't starve to death, they think that learning is "acting white". Here's the result. Oh well, better for the rest of us.
I suggest that the disparity of result may have always existed, but in the past there were fewer women in the workforce and more jobs in manual labor such as manufacturing etc., so that a lack of academic achievement didn't necessarily result in economic insecurity.
I am made uneasy about someone that contrasts 'low income' and 'white' in their graphs. I do however, still holding a low opinion of the discovery math pedagogical model in general, as it requires more math sophistication than is likely to be found in an elementary/middle/high school's teacher.
I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Oh well, better for the rest of us." Do you really think so? I'd prefer to live in a society where everyone was well-educated, or at least enjoyed learning. I think you'd find there is some spillover benefit for yourself to be had from "these low-income and minority kids" receiving high-quality education.
I'd prefer to live in the society where all people would have unlimited supply of food, water, heath care, wouldn't kill each other, have lots of fun. Unfortunately this kind of "magical" thinking is a very weak argument, and just doesn't work. Welcome to the real world.
In short, dumb people are not going away, so there needs to be a means for them to earn a legal living.
From the article >>In this approach math is substantially dumbed down for "equity" reasons and students are asked to discover age-old principles on their own. Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, wrote the free eBook (pdf) "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
America’s transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the implementation and installation of the system” in all areas of government—federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance of the “system’s” control would take place in the school—through indoctrination and the use of behavior modification...",
I gave up.
American schools may be many things, but only the delusional can claim that they are a plot to socialism. They do have a certain totalitarian bent compared to the schools I remember, for sure, but I'm not sure what that has to do with social democracy...
There is also a certain irony in the fact that the schools in "socialist democracies", by which I assume they mean countries like Sweden, consistently show better results than their American counterparts. I'm not sure how the "system" would think that dumbing down the school system will help them achieve that.
I am made uneasy about someone that contrasts 'low income' and 'white' in their graphs. I do however, still holding a low opinion of the discovery math pedagogical model in general, as it requires more math sophistication than is likely to be found in an elementary/middle/high school's teacher.
I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.
Is it foolish to write an interpreter as a pedagogical exercise because someone has written a better one?
I am made uneasy about someone that contrasts 'low income' and 'white' in their graphs. I do however, still holding a low opinion of the discovery math pedagogical model in general, as it requires more math sophistication than is likely to be found in an elementary/middle/high school's teacher.
I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.