This is a logical and natural conclusion of what happens when we give up on the idea of meritocracy.
'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
21–30 of 510 posts
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#22Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…
>Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!!
As someone who fucking hated and still hates academical math: No, kids do not need math. Not in the sense as taught in schools, anyway. That is a straight waste of precious time.
What kids need is broader context and guidance for what math is, how it applies to the world around us, how we can use it, and why it's important. Fuck quadratic equations and counting slices of pie, none of that literal bullshit is useful as taught to kids today.
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#23Has any child ever gotten better at something they don't have to do? It seems the practical effect will be to simply place these children farther behind and never catching up. SFUSD does not appear to be run by intelligent people, however. I don't say that as some Internet slur. I mean that as a descriptive term. Should you disagree, it is worth watching this 2 min video of a meeting from one of their committees http…
"... violations of the heebeas [sic] corpus -- whatever..."
Yikes.
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#24> "Families with resources turn to fee-required online algebra 1 courses in eighth grade, outside the public school system, or enroll their kids in private schools,"
Isn't this obvious result? The Russian School of Mathematics could manage to teach 10-year old kids basic algebra. And there's AOPS, there's Think Academy, and slew of local tutoring schools who can teach kids relatively advanced maths. Let alone many private schools. If I have the means, why would I not send my kids to such schools and therefore fuck up the funding of the public schools? Not that I want to, but it furiates me that the school administrators really hurt the kids who need public education the most in the name of equity. It also saddens me that the constituents are okay with such administrators.
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#25Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…
What’s the fix?
It’s not the system. If you have parents that are involved in education and engage in the kind of child-rearing, that is conducive to education - it doesn’t matter the kind of system you’re operating under (keep in mind, our bar for success is very low - we want kids that graduate high-school to be functionally literate with basic arithmetic and basic general knowledge).
Put another way, if a child graduates and they are functionally illiterate, I don’t care how bad California’s public education is, the fault lays with the parents for letting their child be illiterate.
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#26Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#27When it comes to politics, San Francisco is the world capital of learned helplessness. London Breed et al. are the problem solving equivalent of giving up.
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Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#28Meanwhile, I experienced one of the most unique job interviews at an autonomous driving company just this last week.
It was 45 mins of math.
Questions ranging from simple algebra to probability theory to physics. And I was applying for an embedded systems position.
Boy was I glad that I was good at that kind of math.
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#29> That didn't happen, concludes a study by a team of Stanford professors. "Large ethnoracial gaps in advanced math course-taking . . . did not change." Is there anything that will get these people to realize that maybe they are working with a hypothesis that is fundamentally flawed? It doesn't take a large amount of thinking to imagine what might have more predictive power in explaining what's going on here.
They answer to voters? If so, nothing will unless the voters think otherwise.
Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
#30Has any child ever gotten better at something they don't have to do? It seems the practical effect will be to simply place these children farther behind and never catching up. SFUSD does not appear to be run by intelligent people, however. I don't say that as some Internet slur. I mean that as a descriptive term. Should you disagree, it is worth watching this 2 min video of a meeting from one of their committees http…
>Has any child ever gotten better at something they don't have to do?
Nope, and it's compounded by the fact the vast majority of academical math is irrelevant to life unless and until you make your way into a path of life that requires some of it.
Math education is fundamentally flawed because it attempts to teach irrelevant factoids in a manner that explicitly avoids teaching the hows and whys. No wonder most people end up hating the subject.