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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

#351

Post by pclmulqdq »

wonnage wrote: post #249
abfan1127 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Don't you think the government deciding you're not fit for going to college would fall into this problem?

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."

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

#352

Post by roody15 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #181
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

"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.

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

#353

Post by zozbot234 »

namelessoracle wrote: post #325
klodolph wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dete…

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…

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.

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

#354

Post by klodolph »

tonguez wrote: post #317
klodolph wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 swi…

“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

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.

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

#355

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

snvzz wrote: post #331
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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).

I was joking, I meant the QED box.

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

#356

Post by andrewprock »

7speter wrote: post #342
klodolph wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dete…

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 scho…

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.

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

#357

Post by 0000011111 »

dymk wrote: post #175
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.

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.

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

#358

Post by kodah »

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…

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.

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

#359

Post by Czarcasm »

School-Cotton wrote: post #252
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is Uğur Şahin. For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the German researchers who developed Pfizer's SARS-COV2 mRNA vaccine. Uğur 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…

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?

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.

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

#360

Post by verall »

selimthegrim wrote: post #346
bpoyner wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the course is what, elementary row operations?

Sounds the Linear Algebra for Engineers course I took in undergrad...
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