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Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

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Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#451

Post by jdale27 »

cobbaut wrote: post #440
djbusby wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start at 10am, go till 4pm?

European here, I went to school from 8:20 till 16:05. You guys really have school starting at 10:00? Who takes care of the kids after parents go to work and before school starts?

No; the comment you replied to sounded like a suggestion, not a description of reality.

In the US, it's common for schools to start at 8:00 or even 7:30. Recently there has been a push to start later to give kids more time to sleep. So pushing it back to say 8:30 or 9:00 (but not shortening the day, so basically everything just gets pushed back, and the kids stay up later, and need more time to sleep...).

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#452

Post by cvalka »

snowwrestler wrote: post #328
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).

The thing is that most Americans don't have the historical context to be commenting on race relations and policy in the US.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#453

Post by cauch »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #292
cauch wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not make any sense: without this measure, the kids that you are trying to save from moping the floor will ... mop the floor twice. Without this measure, the kids that are not able to follow classes that needs things they cannot afford will just fail the lecture and drop from school, from THE WHOLE SCHOOL. Without the measure, you have people who drop out of school and get a mathematical education close to 0…

I think you might be misunderstanding the system. In California, you had standard track math, and advanced or accelerated track. This measure gets rids of advanced/accelerated, and forces everyone into standard. Without the measure you have 5s and 10s separated, with the measure, you have 5s and 10s together. But as the parent post points out, 10s either dominate the class, leave the class, or ignore the class and ta…

Thank you for bringing my attention to that. Looking closer, I'm even more confused: it was never question to drop "advanced math", but to replace "advanced algebra" by "advanced data science mathematics". The program was even claiming (maybe incorrectly, but it's not the point) that they wanted to replace the boring memorization of formula by real life problems more challenging for students.

So, I'm now not even sure where this "dumbing down" the students comes from. Maybe it's yet another moral panic.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#454

Post by pjscott »

croes wrote: post #160

Sounds like a cover up for the real problem: Not enough money and teachers for education.

In the US, inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending on public education has roughly doubled in the past 50 years. If money were the real constraint, I would expect 1970s schools to be absolutely horrible compared to the schools today -- but standardized test scores for things like reading and math have been roughly flat over that time span.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#455

Post by bluGill »

autoexec wrote: post #388
bluGill wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They often don't have a choice. They can stay, but as just one vote they cannot reform the system. They can fight for thier kids, but they may have limited results. (My mom faught hard in ~1965 to be able to take shop, but it was a boys only class and she didn't win)

I'd bet that the school she went to would let a girl into shop class today (assuming the school and class are still around). Change is possible, but it's slow. It also matters if there's one girl who wants to take shop class vs many girls who are asking for it. Parents and students can work to change the ways their schools are run. They may have to campaign for and promote their causes so that "one vote" grows into m…

Sure, but it was too late for my mom. My mom would have been better off finding a different district that would let her in (this may not have been possible), instead of fighting a system that ultimately failed her.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#456

Post by cauch »

tyg13 wrote: post #350
cauch wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is not allowing people to take more advanced classes, if they so choose. The article itself says that students who want to go ahead will get private lessons. The idea is not stopping people to get more advanced classes, the idea is to cancel more advanced classes as long as "normal pace" classes are not present. The way it works is that if you put an advanced class and no normal pace class, people who n…

> The article itself says that students who want to go ahead will get private lessons. This is a ridiculously privileged view that hurts the people it claims to help. As a child, I was heavily invested in math, but I was raised by a mother who had no resources or inclination to pay for private lessons. Luckily my public school district had a few advanced classes available for all, and along with my own initiative, I…

> This is a ridiculously privileged view that hurts the people it claims to help.

I'm not saying it is what it will happen, I'm saying that some says "this measure is stupid, smart students will get private lessons anyway" and other are saying "this measure is stupid, smart students are forced to not learn".

All I was saying was: if you think that the "private lessons" argument is elitist or unrealistic, then you should disagree with the author of the article.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#457

Post by xgl5k »

x3qt wrote: post #448

In most of Europe we have gymnasiums (advanced secondary) and lyceums (advanced high) schools, while primary is "just school" and the same for everyone. After primary education, usually 4 years, entry exams are held at gymnasiums, which have a lot of profiles (PhysMath, ChemBio, Philology etc, mine was Informatics), and those talented enough to pass them are transferred there, while the majority is filtered out and s…

is that actually most of Europe or just Germany?

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#458

Post by bluGill »

pierat wrote: post #237
bluGill wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should not make that point. Society works much better if you accept the wierd beliefs of as many people as you can. Fight againt cannibalism (does any of that even exist anymore?), but be very careful about even that.

Simply put: why does their religion get money from the state when mine does not? I dont care if you have weird beliefs. I just don't want weird beliefs funded by the state. And that's also including my own weird beliefs.

The state is not funding religion. It is funding a school for kids. The the school in this case is also owned by a religion is not relevant.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#459

Post by alephnerd »

chociej wrote: post #426
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 narr…

> I think we present things like calculus as dryly as possible

A lot of this is because the hiring pipeline has dried up. I went to a top hs here in the Bay Area and had teachers who were very knowledgeable and invested in STEM education.

Because of extremely low salaries when factoring in CoL, a replacement pipeline hasn't formed. I had 4-5 of my classmates in HS end up majoring in STEM and minoring in Education at the big 3 UCs, but all of them decided to become Data Analysts or SWEs instead because they would be provided a living wage without having to go get a masters for an additional $30-40k and/or a formal teaching credential for an additonal $12-15k. They were looking at a $150k bill just to earn $70-80k starting AT BEST in Silicon Valley.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#460

Post by x3qt »

xgl5k wrote: post #457
x3qt wrote: post #448

In most of Europe we have gymnasiums (advanced secondary) and lyceums (advanced high) schools, while primary is "just school" and the same for everyone. After primary education, usually 4 years, entry exams are held at gymnasiums, which have a lot of profiles (PhysMath, ChemBio, Philology etc, mine was Informatics), and those talented enough to pass them are transferred there, while the majority is filtered out and s…

is that actually most of Europe or just Germany?

Eastern Europe in my case, Belarus specifically
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