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An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#171

Post by the_only_law »

zozbot234 wrote: post #133
cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Then I have no idea what my school was doing then because as a senior you either took Calc or Stats.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#172

Post by hnrj95 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #133
cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#173

Post by roody15 »

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.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#174

Post by ejb999 »

robotresearcher wrote: post #39
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where are all the extra engineers going to come from? Unfortunately, maybe where they come from now? India, China, and other immigration.

Unfortunately? Well-trained people showing up by themselves is a huge advantage.

Yes unfortunately.

The unfortunate part is we don't educate enough of our own citizens for these well paid jobs.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#175

Post by dymk »

0000011111 wrote: post #141

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…

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.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#176

Post by Lev1a »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #30
brummm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany splits students into different schools starting 5th grade and it's absolutely great.

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.

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.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#177

Post by hintymad »

kurthr wrote: post #27

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 i…

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.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#178

Post by jhbadger »

zozbot234 wrote: post #133
cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#179

Post by devindotcom »

FFRefresh wrote: post #166
kurthr wrote: post #27

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 i…

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 diff…

No post body was provided.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#180

Post by amanwithnoplan »

chadash wrote: post #77
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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.

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.

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