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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

#471

Post by andrewprock »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #328
fartcannon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, someone was saying precisely this about literacy. And it was as true then as your comment is now. You only need some range of function around the baseline education to operate in society. But if you want society to progress, then everyone needs to learn to read and write.

Bad analogy. Being able to understand statistics at an everyday usage level is the equivalent of being able to read and write. Understanding calculus needed for statistics is the equivalent of needing to understand Latin or comparative linguistics. Noble and useful pursuits for sure, but you can get far with an educated society that just knows how to read and write even if they're iffy on the Latin roots of it all.

This is quite clearly false. Most people on the planet have zero to little understanding of statistics. They get by just fine. The field of Calculus is actually fairly simple compared to stats. By and large calculus is the study of the slope of a line, and the area under the curve.

Statistics is more complicated philosophically and computationally, as you do in fact need calculus to do statistics, since a fundamental tool of statistics is evaluating the area under a variety of distribution curves.

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

#472

Post by alach11 »

cryptonector wrote: post #448
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 think they truly believe they are doing the right thing. The alternative would be awful, no?

There are lots of people who advance agendas (whether in the office or in the government) that they think are best for their careers. Whether they believe the agenda is right or wrong is secondary.

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

#473

Post by micromacrofoot »

300bps wrote: post #465
micromacrofoot wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries? People going hungry, especially children, is a travesty. What is your solution to it? We already have food stamps, welfare, fully subsidized healthcare, child tax credits, social security disability, free school breakfasts and lunches, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, churches, chari…

in my opinion, as long as people are starving we aren’t doing enough… if billionaires aren’t enough tax the millionaires, if the millionaires aren't enough then tax me too… I can’t look at our existing failures and say “good enough, it’s just too hard”

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

#474

Post by nradov »

munk-a wrote: post #401
namelessoracle wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Given the situation on the ground you can comment that it'd be great to stop de-valuing college degrees but I think it's pretty clear that ship has sailed. A lot of jobs do unnecessarily demand college degrees, even going so far as to accept irrelevant degrees... anytime you see "Our ideal candidate has a BS from an accredited university" you can be confident that an arbitrary and discouraging requirement is being pl…

Employers only demand unnecessary college degrees because it's a quick and easy way to filter down a huge stack of applications. If there were fewer college grads available in the labor market then employers will just remove that filter and hire based on other criteria. It's not like they're going to leave those jobs open.

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

#475

Post by StopDarkPattern »

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…

And this is dog shit trash. Meant to destroy our freedom and statehood in general.

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

#476

Post by brimble »

zozbot234 wrote: post #425
aaplok wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of arguments goes in favour of the CMS. If you assume that only a handful of geniuses can do maths then as a society it makes little sense to allocate resources toward something completely inaccessible to the masses. Designing the education system for Scott Aaronson to the detriment of everybody else would be a mistake socially and economically. That is how these people think, not some nonsense blank slate…

They're working with a bizarro Blank Slate theory according to which every student should simply be learning their math by themselves, and if they fail it's their own darn fault, or perhaps society's fault, or anyone else's fault, but certainly not the teacher 's fault. Because the teachers all have Education degrees, and that's what they were told in Ed School. So don't anyone dare "demean" their job by suggesting t…

> Because the teachers all have Education degrees, and that's what they were told in Ed School. So don't anyone dare "demean" their job by suggesting that they have actual work to do in properly educating their students.

You have been to a remarkably bad college of education, if that was your experience. Which is saying something, because most of them aren't great, but for very different reasons.

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

#477

Post by Angostura »

WalterBright wrote: post #438
namelessoracle wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think that but there are work arounds. Yes pretty much every college requires "college algebra". But some schools have "college algebra for stem majors" vs "college algebra for non stem majors". Guess which one is easier, has lots of bonus credit and extra curricular stuff to earn extra credit. (You attended the college showing of "vagely related math movie?! Here's 10 points on your final!") And also grades on…

> Statistics for Sociology An acquaintance asked me if she should take "Calculus for Artists" after I suggested she take a calculus course. I laughed, and said that such a course should be named "Pretend to Learn Calculus". She should take a real calculus course, which she did, and did well in it. If you're in college, stick to the real math classes, not the "math for losers who are forced to take a math class". You'…

> I laughed, and said that such a course should be named "Pretend to Learn Calculus".

Was that based on actual knowledge of the course content?

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

#478

Post by andrewprock »

taeric wrote: post #129
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'll bite. Why is calculus a goal?

It's not a goal. It's a ceiling.

Many high schools offer mathematics through Calculus. You can typically get to that course at the regular high school pace if you were able to take Algebra 1 in 8th grade. If you were ahead of that pace, then you are typically left with few options outside of taking college courses.

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

#479

Post by kodah »

idoh wrote: post #452
kodah wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 grad…

First, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that teacher and that it caused you problems for many years down the line. I'm trying to figure out how this relates. It sounds like you had a bad experience with tracking, and there is a fundamental issue with tracking where some amount of people will have bad experiences, but ultimately you were able to achieve your potential anyway, so why make the experience bad with…

My lack of success in that math program was due to a "bad experience" (I chuckled a little at that phrasing). The fallout of which had social implications, made me entirely disinterested (if not hostile?) to maths, and followed me for years. Point being, separating our classes had little to nil positive impact (for me) in the long run, and the decision of which class I was in failed to address the foundational problems with the class. The latter bit being the most important; in my case it was an abusive teacher with an anger problem, but there's also a good chance that nobody actually sucks at math but that we teach it from a perspective that only a subset of the population will ever relate to or meaningfully learn from. I guess what I'd like to see is some reproducible results showing that giving gifted kids their own course program and separating them from their cohorts actually has a long term benefit when compared to keeping them all together.

Edit:

To make what I'm saying a bit more clear: There's a ton of people in these threads assuming that not everybody is born with math skills (or variants of that attitude). That is exactly what these teachers thought and how different my life would've been had I agreed.

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

#480

Post by andrewprock »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #430
luca3v wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Sounds like the author didn't have any.

She doesn't even have a math degree.
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