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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

#501

Post by stanford_labrat »

majormajor wrote: post #441
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some schools which allow students to take calculus 1 and 2 before senior year also offer multivariate calculus (3), differential equations, and linear algebra courses to round out the fourth year of math. This is especially prevalent when students can take geometry in 8th grade which leads to Algebra II, Pre-Cal, Calculus, Advanced Math Electives as the four year progression.

My public high school in TX had that track. Is this uncommon in California schools? (I think the idea that it's in any means required to be able to do STEM in college is ludicrous, but having the option is great.)

My public high school in WA also had this. "AP Calculus" covered Calc I and II, and once you had completed that there was a special elective called "Advanced Calculus" that covered Calc III (and prepared you for the AP Calc BC exam). In my graduating class about 30/430 ended up in this Advanced Calculus class senior year having finished AP Calculus as juniors, but many more who completed "regular" AP Calculus as seniors also ended up in STEM fields.

I took Advanced Calc and AP Stats senior year, which in retrospect was a mistake :P

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

#502

Post by TexanFeller »

zozbot234 wrote: post #353
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…

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.

How the heck can you call college algebra a “weedout course”?! I was a math major and skipped over it to start college in Calc 2, but I saw my friends tutoring those intro classes and saw the work my professor-friends put into trying to make basic algebra accessible and get them over the line. They really did everything they could. Many students still struggled though because public high school utterly fails most people and/or those peoples brains just weren’t wired for math.

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

#503

Post by alsetmusic »

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…

> 4. If you observe differences at your org/institution, it's your moral duty to create policies which disfavor groups of humans performing better and to favor groups of humans performing worse, as those performance differences are due to oppression.

I don’t know anyone who seems to disadvantage high-achieving individuals. Only people who wish to raise the performance of as many as possible to the same level. And yes, I see oppression everywhere, including education.

It would be a net loss to society to deliberately reduce the performance of anyone.

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

#504

Post by ouid »

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…

Calculus is a terrible thing to be teaching in high school, and we should be teaching linear algebra instead.

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

#505

Post by mr_toad »

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…

In an ideal world employers would have better ways of assessing ability and students could go to college to learn, rather than take tests.

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

#507

Post by archagon »

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.

Sounds like you’re making shit up.

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

#508

Post by shadowfacts »

kurthr wrote: post #140
taeric wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Why is calculus a goal?

Because, without it you will be at a great disadvantage in entering any STEM undergraduate program in the US.

I don't disagree, but it's an unfortunately circular argument. "Calculus is the peak of HS math because college STEM programs expect you to have calculus because it's the peak of HS math." I think probability and statistics is almost certainly more useful in the real world, but it will never become the baseline while everyone is fixated on calculus.

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

#509

Post by hitekker »

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…

Same, I had a really hard time parsing that comment. My read is that they had a terrible teacher who had the power to label them as “average” instead of “above average”.

It’s hard to see that as undermining tracking as a concept, since the problem is actually the absence of oversight and termination of bad teachers. No one teacher should have the power to doom a student, but a school needs to be able to recognize and cultivate talent.

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

#510

Post by klabb3 »

majormajor wrote: post #428
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…

Do you disagree with the following re-formulations: Some observable differences are due to social factors. Some observable differences by certain groups are the result of past actions by other groups. You should favor policies to correct for the result of past harms. One cannot reasonably claim that no groups in the US are still disadvantaged today due to actions taken on a centuries-long timescale. It seems willfull…

Not parent, but I agree with them.

> Some observable differences are due to social factors.

> Some observable differences by certain groups are the result of past actions by other groups.

Agreed with this as well.

> You should favor policies to correct for the result of past harms.

Mostly disagree. I'm wholly convinced there's never going to be even remote consensus about ancestral oppression and victimhood. I think that if you want to correct harms, you should focus on the current social issues. Not only do I think that has much less shitty side effects (such as exacerbating group identity), but I also think it will be more effective at reaching those that have been mistreated in the past - both directly and their ancestors. The US in particular has, let's say, a decent amount of low-hanging fruit in terms of social issues to address (homelessness, lack of preventative health care, incarceration for victimless crimes etc etc).

> there's no need to try to mitigate things, everything is peachy

This is not the only option. You can recognize that things are fucked but have a vastly different opinion on how to improve.

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