Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

scottaaronson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 657 posts

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

#181

Post by thaumasiotes »

roody15 wrote: post #173

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…

> 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

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

roody15 wrote: post #173

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…

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by npunt »

deanCommie wrote: post #130

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?

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.

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

#184

Post by rayiner »

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…

> 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.

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

#185

Post by pishpash »

H8crilA wrote: post #159
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…

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.

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.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

roody15 wrote: post #173

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…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by khazhoux »

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.

No. Learning high-school or early-ungrad statistics does not require knowing calculus. The material will not require integration or differentiation.

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

#188

Post by 300bps »

idoh wrote: post #120

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 proble…

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

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

#189

Post by SOTGO »

H8crilA wrote: post #159
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…

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.

Limits, derivatives, and integrals mostly, plus many applications. There is also a heavy emphasis on computation and very little emphasis on proof.

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

#190

Post by teawrecks »

l33t2328 wrote: post #150
zozbot234 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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.
Post reply on HN