We should replace algebra with gender studies so that less people will be misgendered.
Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
421–430 of 816 posts
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lengthen the school _year_ sure, but I'm skeptical that lengthening the school _day_ won't have, at best, mixed effects, especially given all the studies on sleep etc.
Start at 10am, go till 4pm?
Hell, start at 10am go to 6pm. That's still less than 8 hours of instruction considering there's lunch, gym/recess, etc.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't really address it: tutoring is OBVIOUS, everyone knows that tutoring works. The reason they are applying this measure is because tutoring is not doable. > We don't need to dumb down anything. We need to raise everyone up by investing in education. And we can also give poney to every kids.That's a nice thought but that is so deconnected from reality, which means that you are pushing for something that will…
We can tax corporations and billionaires. Building a functional education system isn't an unrealistic pipe dream, its an imperative for a well adjusted society.
Billionaires aren't the unlimited money piñata that you might hope; their total assets are less than federal yearly tax revenues, and good luck getting even a tiny fraction of that per year. As for corporations, I assume you're proposing raising the corporate tax rate -- but we're already near the revenue-maximizing peak of the Laffer curve on that particular tax, and there's just not much room to get more money that way.
(Also, only about a third of the incidence of corporate taxes falls on shareholders, with the rest being split about equally between lower wages for workers and higher prices for customers. It can be surprisingly regressive!)
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#424The author says > The idea that offering children fewer educational resources through the public school system will help the poor kids catch up with rich ones, or help the Black kids catch up with the White and Asian ones, is unsupported by any available evidence of which I am aware. I was wondering if some people are aware of studies supporting this strategy. I could try to dig them up, but I remember few studies de…
No-one does real intelligence studies in humans because it's such a third-rail in academia. Think "The Bell Curve". Some scientists seem to believe that intelligence is intrinsic. The analogy with dog breeds, with their different temperaments and capabilities, with individual variation, applies to humans as well. See Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast https://www.…
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Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#425This is the way. Teach kids more, not less. Ask more of them, not less. If you need to lengthen the school day and school year to do so, do it. Do it now. "So what should we do instead? Dallas came up with an answer: Teach kids more math instead of teaching them less. In 2019, Dallas Independent School District implemented a new equity policy that encouraged many more people to take honors math classes: Many capable…
> with the goal of improving opportunity for all I'm chatting with some friends who are parents in the Bay Area. Their admittedly very Californian response is that at least this should reduce competition for college spots. (Their kids are obviously going to get tutoring.)
Not sure exactly what you're dancing around, but man, if some of those top schools in CA could reduce competition by, say, expanding admissions, that would be great.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#426You can imagine the following perspective: - Most people don't need to learn calculus at all, and it's fine if the few weird students who do start when they get to college (maybe the advanced students can learn single-variable calculus in high school). - For pure signaling reasons, taking calculus in high school has become very important for college admissions. - In order to take calculus in high school, you need to…
> it's only a small number of unusual people who need to learn calculus Any STEM career. Finance and economics. Data science--the component they're replacing middle-school algebra with, the CMF's authors know as much about data science as about math. Californians whose parents can't afford tutors have been effective gated from these careers.
It also depends heavily on how you define "need". Calculus changed the way I view many, many concepts and phenomena. I think we present things like calculus as dryly as possible, and only to those blessed few who we perceive as able to understand it, and in doing so, we deprive so many people of a useful new way of considering problems. Whether it ends up being critical to their chosen career seems like a really narrow and poor criterion.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a way to have time to cover Calculus in high school while still taking it slower: Block scheduling. My high school shifted to it. It's like a college day where you have four longer classes instead of eight shorter ones. Courses are semester-long, not year-long. This means you can take two math classes in one year (algebra in the fall and geometry in the spring). This also enabled my high school to offer AP C…
Eight different classes in one day? How can that work?
When I was in high school, IIRC we did 55 minute classes with 5 minutes between classes, 4 core classes 2 or 3 electives + lunch. It doesn't work, by time you start, the class settles, late arrivals show up, homework is collected, questions asked and whatnot, there's probably only 30 mins of real instruction. Class would boil down to either teaching or worksheets but not both.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start at 10am, go till 4pm?
Hell, start at 10am go to 6pm. That's still less than 8 hours of instruction considering there's lunch, gym/recess, etc.
This really should vary with grade. It's hard to keep a 6 year old's attention for almost 8 hours. Far more possible in High School.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#429Has anyone tried giving kids a vote in school-board elections? Teachers' unions are increasingly compromised. Electeds use kids as pawns to appeal to radicals to promote random social causes. And parents seem to focus on grades going up at the expense of an actual education. Maybe they'll just vote themselves candy. But in my experience, kids understand--at least as well as the median adult voter--what they need to s…
A year ago, a kid in our district made a presentation to the board asking for homework to be eliminated. The district is now undergoing a review of the homework policy, with equity-focused board members/administrators pushing for all homework to be eliminated, or at least reduced. One board member literally made the argument that "we don't actually know if homework increases learning, do we?".
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. These "equity" arguments are indistinguishable from a deliberate attack.... the sort of attack you'd expect from a country that, having been unable to either compete with the West or conquer it, is well-known to have resorted to memetic warfare.
> I don't know.
But you do, it sounds like. Enlighten us.