California needs real math education, not gimmicks • Hacker News Board

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#121

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:20 AM UTC

slt2021 wrote: post #60

s1artibartfast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of Education or you have an entranched monopoly, this means voting for private school vouchers.

private school vouchers seems like a great idea, but I am afraid it will mirror college situation. most state schools will have bare bones programs, except few select, while private schools will be many levels ahead and become "elite". do we want "ivy league" situation with K-12 education system?

I would say yes. Most states schools provide excellent value, and I would even extend that to community colleges which provides even better value for their students.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#122

Post by twothamendment » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:22 AM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #106

another_story wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an increased distance between those doing the actual work and those making decisions about how it should be done. Bureaucratic depth keeps any real change from taking place, instead leaving those on the ground level to try and work within a set growing rules. Any attempt to affect change has to be filtered through so many levels and takes so long. As a longtime teacher, I don't think there are any soluti…

My solution to the education attitude issue in the us, which is very real: pay the families that perform best in school districts. Take the top grades on each years final tests and give the family money. The entire society will change overnight, as people will suddenly be asking kids why they aren’t studying.

My son struggled to read when he was young. Over the summer we set a goal and attached a payout to it. Yes, I bribed my son to read. The problem is now I can't get him to stop.

Money talks.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#123

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:22 AM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #5

As someone with a PhD in education, anytime someone uses the phrase “real education” as an attack on new approaches to teaching and learning, it’s a gigantic red flag that their argument is unserious.

I haven't seen anything serious in the field of education. Education can and should be a science. There should be experiments to determine what works and what doesn't work. Instead, we have 5 different preschool pedagogies, 5 different elementary pedagogies, and 5 different secondary pedagogies, and nobody bothering to figure out what works at scale.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#124

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:22 AM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #66

s1artibartfast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of Education or you have an entranched monopoly, this means voting for private school vouchers.

No, private schools can reject students. This means voting for charter schools.

Rejecting students is a feature not a bug. If you have a student that attacks other students or teachers institutions should be able to expel them.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#125

Post by dangus » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:23 AM UTC

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #31

Well, "Yes Prime Minister" already figured it out. The whole education system is more for the welfare of bureaucracies and teachers/unions instead of students'. And that was some 40 years ago.

[flagged]

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#126

Post by grantsch » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:23 AM UTC

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

There is no incentive whatsoever without profit motive to help others repeatedly in an efficient way

Large organizations just further exacerbate this

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#127

Post by tayo42 » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:32 AM UTC

aeonik wrote: post #10

The Author may have good points, but there is still a lot of value in teaching basic statistics, and I don't understand why Algebra is required to understand basic stats. Even just learning the basic descriptive statistics and getting people fluent in reading charts can be very valuable. The fact that they may not understand the deeper nuances is fine in my opinion. Also... I work with a lot of data analysts and data…

the way calculus is taught is so far removed from any application. i had no idea what was going on. area under curved and x approaches infinity is all i remember.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#128

Post by thaumasiotes » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:37 AM UTC

hakfoo wrote: post #110

WalterBright wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works everywhere in the private sector. Having a base salary plus incentive pay for meeting objective goals is commonplace. Companies wouldn't do that if it didn't work. In my own company, Zortech, the staff was paid a base rate plus a cut of the gross sales for the month. > it would almost certainly result in teachers focusing all of their efforts on the best students and none of it on those who are struggling Ac…

I suspect the problem is how you can reasonably write a general spec for that which doesn't systematically doom some teachers, especially during the bootstrap phase (arguably quite a few years). In an ideal world, our perfectly spherical students would enter the classroom "at grade level" and ready to proceed to the next level. But what happens if you inherit a class of students that's barely above "remedial"-- start…

> But what happens if you inherit a class of students that's barely above "remedial"-- starting one or two grades back on day 1-- what's the right metric for success? Getting all the way up to "at grade level" is probably unrealistic, but should we expect them to make up 1.25 grades per year, or 1.75?

Well, obviously, they've been making less than 1.0 grades per year so far; you'd expect them to keep going at that rate, not to suddenly double their rate.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#129

Post by vacuity » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:46 AM UTC

readthenotes1 wrote: post #55

smilekzs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a.k.a. Iron Law of Bureaucracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_ir...

Iirc in systemantics, it was phrased as "the goal of a system is to perpetuate and extend itself, not to achieve whatever it was created for"

Silly thought: so it's shoehorning evolution into organizations. Regardless of how something is made to replicate itself, it inherently does so because that's what it does. Evolution arises when changes (accidental or not, from some perspective) present opportunities for thriving. It's not a matter of will as it is a matter of fact. I suppose for organizations, regulations and oversight are necessary to prevent evolution towards fulfilling perverse incentives. A bit hard to do when we're dealing with hyacinths, though. Herbicide, anyone?

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#130

Post by mst_moonshine » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 4:47 AM UTC

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

I grew up in China and came to the same conclusion as yours! I never expect such a similarity. I've always thought that education in the US must be much better.

After graduating from college, I realized that the problem I was facing was a systematic one of the whole society, rather than one limited to particular teachers, middle schools, or even the entire education system.

Many people say Chinese maths education is better than the US but I can hardly agree. But based on what I have seen, there are problems on both sides. Chinese education is focusing too much on memorizing existing pieces of knowledge, but too less on teaching the young how to create new ones. The knowledge which our ancestors had struggled for thousands of years to find was taught to us in a spendthrift manner. Aside from lacking training on how to find/create new knowledge, Chinese education does not encourage students to learn advanced topics since it could have negative effects on the students' grades. But there is nothing you can do to change it, because too many things are correlated: fair distribution of teaching resources, less demand for highly educated people in the job market, and the overall not-so-innovation-appealing social vibe. I cannot foresee any possibility of a true, self-driven, systematic reform.

Education in the US, especially math education, on the other hand, is somehow too frivolous. I have no learning experience in any US middle school, so my opinions can be biased. But it seems that US education is more like elite education. The average/universal maths education level should be a little higher in such a highly modernized society.

These different (or even opposite) problems surprisingly show some similarity. Shall I say the problems actually reflect some real problems in the two societies?