the phrase 'luxury beliefs' is over- and wrongly- used , but it is useful in the sense that luxuries are one of the first things to dispense during crises.
The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
601–610 of 922 posts
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, I'll bite, how are IQ tests racist?
Let's take a math story problem. Give an upper class white kid a problem involving tennis scores, no problem. The kid will be able to easily understand what is being talked about, there isn't anything mentally jarring going on. Give a poor black kid a problem involving tennis scores, boom, problem. Odds of a poor black kid knowing how tennis scoring works, much less likely. My, largely well to do, neighborhood has te…
school administrators can choose an "older" test to purposefully get biased results
Do you have any evidence of school administrators choosing "older" tests with biased questions about tennis scores or whatever other cultural trivia rich white kids are most likely to know about? I took an IQ test when I was a kid (early 90's) and it was a bunch of abstract questions involving mental rotations of objects, determining the next number in a sequence, determining the missing object from a set of objects, and so on. There were no questions about vocabulary or trivia of any kind.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#603Equality of opportunity is impossible. Equality of outcome is an order of magnitude more impossible. Each of us was born into this world through a randomized process that was not created by humankind: the genes you were born with, the environment you were given before you could manage your own affairs, the accumulation of genetic mutations over the course of countless millennia that resulted in who you are today. Thi…
Ironically, equality of outcome is actually easier to realize, because you can just drag everyone down to the same crappy level by state mandate and call it "equity". True equality of opportunity would require the admission that certain cultures glorify things which are not conducive to academic success. We accept that black culture values athletics (and that this creates outsized athletic success for black people), why can we not accept that that same culture would deprioritize academics over athletics?
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#604It's probably time to stop letting people in our society that are not building up systems terrorize the rest of us with scarcely hidden threats of slandering your name as a racist. There is nothing racist about having a merit based system within education. If the problem is that it is not entirely merit based, the solution comes from improving the on ramp, not from destroying the program. We should treat people who w…
I always have the same question for people like this. What do you want the world to look like 10, 20, 50 years from now, and how would the changes you're pushing for making immediately get us all closer to that?
I want the world to look look like a place where superficial racial difference is no more importantly regarded than differences in hair and eye colour are today. It seems rather clear to me that emphasizing these differences is taking us farther away from this world.
How well-represented are blondes in executive leadership or government? Well, no one cares and no one is really counting, are they? That's the world I want to live in.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
Puberty cannot be understated in terms of its effects...
I have a similar story, and puberty was definitely an issue. I didn't get good at math until I was old enough to buy alcohol.
This could be read as "once I needed to figure out how much alcohol per hour I was earning, I learned math".
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
And conservatives are flat-out wrong, as usual, because they're arguing against strawmen they've invented. No one is talking about individuals. The discussion is about group statistics. Individuals are irrelevant to the discussion. If there is a statistical difference in outcomes, why? Is one group inherently inferior? Or is there maybe not the equality of opportunity that they claim?
They are talking about individuals because that is what they value. That's not wrong, you just don't see the value in it.
They don't see the value in hyping up ethnic/racial identifies. It's a difference of values / philosophy.
And inferior is loaded language. Success in something does not mean those that aren't are inferior.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You’re describing why you believe it’s okay to discriminate against that Asian student because there’s “too many yellows, not enough blacks”. Not really. If intelligence is equal between races and a system is an actual meritocracy, then the balance between groups should be the same. One group outperforming indicates a difference in circumstances. If you believe those circumstances aren't because of disadvantages th…
> If you believe those circumstances aren't because of disadvantages then you either believe one group is inherently more capable than the other, one group works harder than the other, or that one group has a more effective culture. The more blindingly obvious conclusion is study time among asians is far higher than all other races. [0] > Generally, there is a lot of animosity within the black community toward ̶A̶s̶i…
just so we can be perfectly clear, is the point you are trying to defend, that the differences circumstances of black people in America as compared to Asians can be explained with work ethic?
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#608I hate this woke nonsense about equity in students. Man I probably would have been so bored in school and settled for the status quo if I had to be in classes where the lowest common denominator was the average American student. Luckily all we had to do was pass an assessment to get into gifted classes. They really should change the name though, but keep the classes. We are equal in our human rights, not in our capacity to learn certain things. That said, obviously students in less academically strenuous classes shouldn't be swept under the rug and they should get as tailored an education as possible. Trying to squash all kids into the same politically correct group won't work and hurts everyone.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
They aren't saying that. They are recognizing that many forms of power in society are zero sum. There are plenty of ways to get a great education but only one Harvard and a limited amount of power to be distributed via an institution like Harvard. You and many like you believe that access to these institutions should be gatekeeped via a meritocracy. The supporters of this form of affirmative action recognize that in…
> There are plenty of ways to get a great education but only one Harvard We had only one Harvard when the country's population was quite a bit smaller. Perhaps, instead of the zero-sum struggle for Harvard attendance, we should be working to create new Harvards. We have the oversupply of academics.
> Perhaps, instead of the zero-sum struggle for Harvard attendance, we should be working to create new Harvards.
That takes not dis-investing in public higher ed to the degree we did during the 2008 recession. It takes decades to build a new R1 research institution, and a commitment of large sums of money over that time. Rockefeller created the University of Chicago, Leyland Stanford his namesake, where are Buffet, Bloomberg, Walton, Mars, and Gates Universities? That could be a good use of some of the modern billionaire money, if we're not going to spend tax dollars on new R1 institutions.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#610There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays without getting into politics but politics and structural inequality are at the core of this. For the benefit of non-US readers, know that how the US funds public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city your property taxes can vary a lot with the same value property. But what this me…
As an American, how is this problem avoided in other countries?
Even asking that question is a positive step.
One polarizing topic at the moment is critical-race theory ("CRT"). There are a lot of false claims about what this is. Ultimately, CRT was something taught in law schools. Now CRT has become a catch-all for teaching the true (rather than whitewashed) history of the United States.
A lot of people are opposed to this because they're mistaken about what the goals are or are opposed to people being educated about historical and current inequality. A common argument is that CRT makes children "feel bad". But take slavery as one example. Did you directly participate in slavery? Of course not. No one is asking you to feel personally responsible for this.
But you can be taught the ramifications of slavery that continue to this day. Take something as simple as the GI Bill. This contributed to the White Flight. It allowed white Americans to build up generational wealth. In a system where property values are so entangled with educational outcomes, you should be able to recognize that slavery and segregation aren't just historical artifacts.
You can recognize how you benefit from generational privilege without feeling personally responsible for its origins. An awful lot of people don't want that to happen however.
So how did other countries avoid this? There are many factors here but ultimately the US founding is deeply tied to white supremacy. That continues to thi say. The language may have changed (eg propagandists might now use terms like "legacy Americans") but this belief has never gone away. We as a country have never had a serious reckoning with this past.
50+ years ago towns were racially segregated openly. The term "sunset town" came about for a reason. While those direct segregation laws might be gone they've been replaced with laws and institutions that have the same effect. For example: making housing expensive is exclusionary by design.
I say all this to point out that local funding of education is part of a deliberately exclusionary system. It may not be the reason other countries fund things at a national or state level. But our inequality in outcomes through local funding is deliberate for those reasons.