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

scottaaronson.blog

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

#411

Post by PebblesRox »

digisign wrote: post #233
acomjean wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hone…

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.

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.

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

#413

Post by luca3v »

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 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"

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

#414

Post by cuteboy19 »

klodolph wrote: post #339
rayiner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dow…

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 situat…

> 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.

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

#415

Post by ryukoposting »

klodolph wrote: post #215
FFRefresh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 like your argument. It's basically Hanlon's razor.

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

#416

Post by zozbot234 »

vkou wrote: post #407
TimPC wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 removi…

> 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…

> 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.

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

#417

Post by CivBase »

klodolph wrote: post #215
FFRefresh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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.

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

#418

Post by taeric »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #378
ryandrake wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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 m…

The majority of MDs are reading charts or diagnosing the flu or allergies or stitching up a wound, why should they understand biochemistry?

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.

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

#419

Post by micromacrofoot »

300bps wrote: post #391
micromacrofoot wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would be worse than the current system where the richer American is smarter, better looking, and more physically able

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.

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.

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

#420

Post by fn-mote »

rayiner wrote: post #389
deanCommie wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I believe this is a paper from her thesis work: http://math.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.

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.

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