Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity • Hacker News Board

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#321

Post by candiodari » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #184

declan_roberts wrote: post #131

This is one of the many reasons we decided to homeschool, despite having a pretty good experience with public education. It's like a super power to be able to tailor education for your own children. You know their strengths and weaknesses better than anybody.

Just curious, how can we homeschool if we are not teachers ourselves. I understand the Math that's for sure, but I don't have the confidence to serve as a good Math teacher. How do you proceed if you are in the same shoes?

Something like Khan Academy can help with both problems. Just do the exercises, obviously they'll go wrong, explain until they go better. 1:1 feedback is much better than even great teachers.

This solves both how to teach and the bigger problem, what to teach so your kid passes the SATs.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#322

Post by busterarm » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

altcognito wrote: post #309

busterarm wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly my point. Would you deny this same right to kids that attend Jewish day schools? Could you even argue for that without sounding like a massive bigot? Religious people are part of your community and have the right to their religious identity and to be a member of your community. If they want a school just for them, you don't suffer for it. Religion is not at odds with society. We're not the USSR. Re…

At least in the US, The community is not religious by definition in the constitution. The whole gambit with vouchers is that you are laundering money for religious institutions by putting it under "personal" choice.

It must suck going through life thinking that everyone "other" from you is out to fuck you over.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#323

Post by ranting-moth » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #92

It's hyperbolic and not a totally fair comparison, but reading this, I had to go find and reread "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut. https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge... When the means to achieve equality is to handicap the strong, we're going the wrong way. It would be more expensive and harder to try instead to invest in and help those with additional needs. But nobody is interested in…

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Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#324

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

>> The idea behind universal public education is that all children — or almost all, making allowance for those with severe learning disabilities — are fundamentally educable. It is the idea that there is some set of subjects — reading, writing, basic mathematics, etc. — that essentially all children can learn, if sufficient resources are invested in teaching them.

Is that the goal? I don't think it is. I think that schools serve a host of purposes, some of which we don't like to talk about. They are a place where the government can literally inspect children. They are where the malnourish, sick or otherwise distressed children can get noticed by people in a place to help. They are daycares that free up parents to work more and be more productive. They are centers of indoctrination where kids are taught societal norms. They are cultural melting pots where kids learn to navigate self-defining social structures. They are also proving grounds, places where children are judged and assigned numbers (grades) that will either grant or deny them access to higher levels of education or other opportunity. The three Rs have never been the entire mission. Looking at what kids do at schools these days, education seems very much secondary to everything else that schools do.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#325

Post by zapataband1 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

thrashh wrote: post #261

Does anyone have a less biased article about this to tell if this is actually a thing? I remember the controversy over Common Core Math and I realized a lot of people complaining about it weren't very good at math and their criticism was more a reflection of that than valid criticism. Now it's hard to believe when people complain about something when education is involved.

Yeah the article reads as biased, but Dallas is a majorly democrat city probably more than California. So both are 'progressive' policies. One just seems to be geared towards giving kids more access to advanced classes, and tutoring opportunities. It's a no brainer that this is better for outcomes but people will pearl clutch and say 'we have to abandon public education' because some school district tried something.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#326

Post by linuxhansl » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #305

linuxhansl wrote: post #251

I'm reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron We are not, should not, and cannot all be the same. I am bad at languages. Should I now demand that everybody please slow down so that I do not have to feel bad about myself? ... Nope.

You could get extra help after school. Should a teacher just move as fast as the best student? You seem to want the education system to mirror capitalism which I find morally reprehensible.

I can get extra help, instead of everybody else being slowed down.

And come on please, not slowing everybody does not mean that the teacher moves "as fast as the best student".

What you call morally reprehensible is rooted in your own black and white thinking in this matter.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#327

Post by bamfly » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #246

vladgur wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public education system is definitely a positive thing that most of us will pay taxes for. However when public education is not guided by improving meaningful outcomes, but by ideologues, it needs to be checked. Vouchers sounds like a good way to insert some market dynamics and to allow parents to walk away from schools that are on the path to fail to prepare their kids for the future. My son is currently is in publi…

However when public education is not guided by improving meaningful outcomes, but by ideologues, it needs to be checked. Vouchers sounds like a good way to insert some market dynamics and to allow parents to walk away from schools that are on the path to fail to prepare their kids for the future. As opposed to parental ideologues? By letting parents choose, we'll be letting them go to different schools championing di…

> By grouping parents with like-minded parents, we'll amplify groups and clusters, leading to not only further stratification but also further decoupling society and greater inequality.

This effect is super obvious if you've ever sent kids to a private school. A big part of it is that you're opting in to a certain approach and set of attitudes and beliefs, even in secular ones. If you're not a fit for their program, you don't get to meaningfully agitate to change things as you might in a public school—they just tell you to go somewhere else, then pluck another candidate off the wait list to replace your family.

This can be awesome (though still risky, in some ways) if it's a good bubble, but of course they aren't all good ones....

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#328

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

tomsmeding wrote: post #295

Disclaimer: European. Is it not strange how in an article arguing from otherwise a very egalitarian, leftist viewpoint, when it discusses how students perform given more or less difficult classes, it somehow thinks the most relevant statistic is the race of the students? (Approximately, even, because American race designation is kinda weird anyway.) Sure, socio-economic circumstances are correlated with race. (Unfort…

You don’t have the historical or cultural context to be commenting on race relations and policy in the U.S.

Sorry; it’s not personal. Few Europeans do unless they have lived here for a long time (and even then I see many struggle with the topics).

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#329

Post by flappyeagle » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #35

crop_rotation wrote: post #2

In the age of Zoom, won't even slightly well to do parents get tutors from a remote country for a reasonable price for their kids if the school stops teaching math. The only kids who will suffer are the kids where parents are not so much focused on education, thus increasing the disparity.

I don't think you need to get a tutor from a remote country. I would just enroll them in an after-school math program like Kumon. But yes, enhancing the education after school in general is likely what motivated parents with means would do.

Isn't Kumon just drilling basic stuff?

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#330

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

misterbishop wrote: post #125

This just is a total misunderstanding of what's being proposed, and a hamfisted excuse to dress up reactionary stupidity as a defense of "Math". The changes aren't "refusing to teach kids math", they are a better approach to math. Modern approaches emphasize number sense (aka actual understanding) over formulas. Algebra has historically been a kind of gatekeeping in middle school between kids who plug in the formulas…

> In general we need deeper foundational knowledge beyond memorization of notation.

This sounds like you're advocating for more memorization of notation, earlier, so children will have the time to be taught the deeper "foundational" knowledge that requires that notation. Otherwise, I don't know what you're talking about.

> Algebra has historically been a kind of gatekeeping in middle school between kids who plug in the formulas vs the kids who "arent good at math."

Any child can be good at math. A lot of children are traumatized by the unforgiving nature of quantitative reasoning, get discouraged, and are told by innumerate or condescending adults that it's alright to quit because they don't have a math brain, or that the equationa are just military-corporate imperialism used to distract people from their deeper, innate, math-senses.