Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we have the same idea: stupid grades that don't measure actual results are bad. Not that I'm salty, but I always had poor grades because I rarely if ever did homework. But I aced the tests, so why bother?
Yup. There should be fast tracks and slow tracks. If I already know the material, I get to advance. No need to hold everyone back.
Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
461–470 of 816 posts
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#462You 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…
>This is my best guess about the line of thinking that motivates these "no advanced math" policies. You've explained the thought process of the "reformers" fairly well, but there is another additional element that's important as well: a sizeable contingent of people believe that advanced math itself is intrinsically bad or negative. Usually this is either because math is fundamentally exclusionary in some core way, o…
I ... I don't understand. This is literally the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard. Here's the thing: if a shadow cabal of lizard-people were actually using space lasers to mind control everyone into thinking the Earth is round so we never discover their hidden evil lairs at the edges of the flat Earth, or what have you ... if any those wacko theories were actually true, it would actually represent a terrible evil that humanity should fight to overcome. Such a plot might even make a decent movie. But this? Advanced math? What? Math is conspiring against humanity? I cannot even fathom a B-movie plotline where that holds together at all. No suspension of disbelief makes this make any sense. Math!?
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#463In 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
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was you wonder if a foreign state adversary is influencing us to stupify our next generation. I'll keep my comments civil here but its pretty obvious who is behind this.
If it's all that obvious, you should have no problem naming who's behind this and providing evidence to support your claim, rather than merely fearmongering to no useful end.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
- There are many taxes, not a single tax rate
- It completely ignores the idea of progressive taxation: rich individuals and giant megacorps can afford to pay higher tax rates without the same issues that would occur by applying those tax rates on lower and middle classes and small business.
- It cannot be empirically validated without cherry picking data because it ignores many crucial factors.
It's basically just propaganda paid for and promoted by the rich to convince the proles to let them keep more money.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#466This 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…
Does putting marginal students in advanced classes actually help them?
That’s all.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#468Earlier 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 idea is to cancel more advanced classes Canceling advanced classes quite literally prevents people from taking those classes. If someone doesn't want to do the advanced classes, they don't have to. But don't prevent others from taking those classes if they want to take them. > people who need the normal pace class This is about allowing people to take the advanced classes if they choose, and allowing others to…
1) You've cut my sentence, which says "cancel more advanced classes IF ...", which means that not all advanced classes are cancelled.
2) You are therefore asking to cancel "beginner's classes". I'm saying "cancel advanced classes as long as there are not enough beginner classes", so you are in practice canceling beginner classes. As any "advanced class" student was first a "beginner class" student, you are canceling the path towards advanced class.
> This is about allowing people to take the advanced classes if they choose, and allowing others to take normal classes.
Quickly looking closer to this, it was NEVER QUESTION TO CANCEL ADVANCED CLASSES. Simply, instead of algebra, do advanced data science (basically statistics), which is probably 1) more challenging, 2) more engaging, 3) more practical.
> Just allow people to take those advanced classes if they choose, and allow others to take take the normal classes. Problem solved.
Which problem exactly? It looks like the "no advanced classes" is just people on the internet getting all exited for something that was never considered.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#469The 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.…
It just doesn't look good. Pretty much every study done has shown such a strong lean towards genetics everyone avoids it.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that this point of view ignores reality: motivated parents will just have their children learn calculus in outside classes. The reality is for these students, "standard" middle and high school math is mind-numbingly boring. The best outcome would be that the best schools and teachers use the surplus time to teach stuff that's off-curriculum like logic, discrete math, stats, programming, etc.
Maybe true but that won't get them a calculus credit on their transcript. > The reality is for these students, "standard" middle and high school math is mind-numbingly boring. >The best outcome would be that the best schools and teachers use the surplus time to teach stuff that's off-curriculum like logic, discrete math, stats, programming, etc. This is also true I was one of these students. My middle school did almo…
What textbook / textbooks did your class use for this?