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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

#631

Post by fooker »

alephnerd wrote: post #577
fooker wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see India and China missing from your rebuttal, that is close to half of the worlds population and likely more than 2/3rds of all students who go to college.

Because for this conversation, I felt like talking about comparable first world countries and explaining the Chinese and Indian education system to a (fellow) American is annoying and tiring. Points 1-3 are the same for India and China as well. In China, Gaokao (college admissions exam) is only allowed to those who attend College Track high schools (Sr Secondary School). To enter a Sr Secondary School (10-12) in Chin…

Are you just making this up as you type?

Here's the curriculum for CBSE. https://cbseacademic.nic.in/web_material/CurriculumMain24/Sr...

Most state boards are similar to this.

Similarly most Chinese students end up learning calculus in school.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#632

Post by fooker »

guidoism wrote: post #588
tzs wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College level science and engineering education doesn’t make sense without a understanding of at least basic calculus. That doesn't actually mean that you need to cover calculus in high school. The calculus needed for the first year of college science and engineering can be easily taught early in the first year in the classes that need it. That's how it worked at Caltech when I was a student (late '70s and early '8…

I’m curious as to how calculus is used in those fields. I got a degree in CS and we had to take a bunch of calculus classes but never used it in any of our CS classes and in my 20+ years of programming jobs I’ve never had to use it. Any time in my professional career that I needed math I didn’t know I learned just enough of it to solve my problem and promptly forgot it. I absolutely could not tell you how to mechanic…

>Are there professional scientists or engineers out there that do calculus on paper?

Yes.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#633

Post by mangodrunk »

feoren wrote: post #491
DSMan195276 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've gotten a whole lot of replies that seem to miss your point, but I'd say that I've experienced that exact thing - to get to Calc in your senior year you needed to have gotten on a very specific track of math courses back in middle school, and likely your parents needed to know about it to make sure you got in. Otherwise, what appeared to be a very inconsequential choice at middle school actually decided your en…

> it's a pretty common joke how virtually inapplicable calc is to us If you think calculus is not important to software development than you are not bothering to look. Just a few examples: - Calculus was the first math class I took that gave a clear definition of what a "function" really is. Do you use functions? - Analyzing the properties of functions to see what operations made sense to do or not (e.g. continuous v…

I think learning other areas of math would better serve most people. I think logic and probability then maybe combinatorics and statistics would be much better than calculus and especially trigonometry.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#634

Post by mangodrunk »

eftychis wrote: post #347
currymj wrote: post #274

You 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…

With that kind of thinking though we can reach logical results like: - writing prose and composition is unnecessary, as at best one will write on slack and social media; - doing pushups, calisthenics, or running is unnecessary: few jobs require that; - learning about how the government works, civics or sociology or psychology should be skipped: all these are taken care by the employer that is not going to let you go…

I don’t see how that is a logical conclusion. There’s such a thing as opportunity cost and interests. If someone wants to learn something, they should, but the problem is forcing those to learn something when they would rather learn something else. There are basic things that everyone should know, like reading. Instead of calculus, logic would be better, and especially probability and statistics.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#635

Post by lost_tourist »

pwthornton wrote: post #299

This 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…

I'm fine with expecting more, but for those kids who just don't handle it well, it's not right to make them pariahs, just take the math down a notch. I saw kids treated as “less than” because they weren't making it in a certain level of math, and that always pissed me off. Likewise, I even had to report a calculus teacher once anonymously, I recorded the class with a mini-cassette (in the late 90s) recorder and slid it under the principal's door with a note. No the kid wasn't me, but he was a decent guy who I knew a little bit and knew he was trying hard but just couldn't get it.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#636

Post by slt2021 »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #582
btilly wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry. DEI programs have this covered as well. Stop using standardized tests to get in. And then just aim for the perfect "socially desirable" mix. Regardless of ability.

I know it’s vogue to ridicule DEI programs, but the reality is that as the blog post points out, these measures achieve the opposite of DEI (all 3 letters of those). Even standardized tests. There is already evidence that standardized tests reduce equality. Which is not surprising at all because standardized tests are the one part of a college application that someone can excel at purely with concentrated hard work o…

rich white people introduce these regressive DEI policies so that smart poor and not-connected kids could not compete and enter elite ranks of society, and their (relatively dumb, but rich&well connected) kids could easily outcompete everyone.

1. It is incredibly hard for rich&connected kid to excel among smart & hard-working individuals

2. If barrier is lowered, and overall pool is "diverse" in terms of IQ and ability, then for a rich kid it gets much easier to outcompete and stand out (due to parent's $$$ and connections)

3. The only reason rich white privileged people want regressive DEI is to make it easier for their kids to stand out from competition

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#637

Post by chinchilla2020 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #300
toast0 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is the case, while avoiding the privileged ones to run ahead is not ideal, the alternative of doing nothing is even worse (which is in practice what a lot of people criticizing this measure prone: they did not have any plan to change anything before the subject was introduced). > I think that the idea is not to "dumb down" the kids, but to have a goal that everyone can achieve instead of a goal that is imposs…

Let me get this straight. We're behind the rest of our class and we're going to catch up to them by going slower than they are? -Bart Simpson People who fall behind don't need a slower pace. They need to move faster. That means not just more attention but longer hours. But there is only so much time. A school wanting to maximize its graduation rate needs to spend less energy on teaching people who are good at a subje…

Unfortunately, many social scientists are pushing the idea that students learn better by having far less hours in school. There is also a lot of sketchy science claiming that homework is detrimental.

I think you are correct, but you are pushing against the headwinds of academia.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#638

Post by mangodrunk »

guidoism wrote: post #597
jonfromsf wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone needs to understand probability and statistics maybe 10X better than they currently do. That should be the focus!

Yes, this! It’s crazy that we spend a decade of a person’s life forcing them to learn a skill that is so completely irrelevant to their lives and yet we ignore skills that could help them from being manipulated or forced into debt slavery. I need to come up with a better analogy, but it’s like we were still forcing our children to manipulate a cotton gin and know the ins and outs of maintaining and repairing one. I m…

> Most high-school math classes are still preparing students for the Sputnik era. Steve Levitt wants to get rid of the “geometry sandwich” and instead have kids learn what they really need in the modern era: data fluency. [1]

I do agree probability and statistics would be much better than calculus, trigonometry, and some minutiae of algebra and geometry.

[1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/americas-math-curriculum-do...

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#639

Post by dumpsterdiver »

tootie wrote: post #581
marcusverus wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, much of this comes down to blind empathy. Folks are more worried about hurting people’s feelings than about their life outcomes. They would rather “lean in” and embrace the huge rise in single parent households than push back, even with the knowledge that these social changes have resulted in millions of children living in poverty who otherwise would not have! It’s absolutely bananas.

What the hell does pushing back on single-family homes look like? Christian fundamentalism? Think about this from a perspective of getting positive outcomes from the actual world that exists. Divorce happens. Unplanned pregnancy happens. Family planning is being actively dismantled by the same people who are pushing for increased privatization of schooling and decreases in social safety nets. I don't think that's a c…

> What the hell does pushing back on single-family homes look like?

A previous poster spelled it out:

> by encouraging and aggrandizing stable two-parent families instead of getting schools and teachers to fill proxy parenting roles

You seem to be thinking of "pushing back" as some sort of attack upon single parents, when I believe that the original spirit of the comment was more along the lines of:

Let's strive to spread awareness of the myriad of benefits two parents can provide in a child's life.

Let's try to move the conversation an inch or two away from 'my happiness above all else' and slightly more towards 'sometimes being part of a family requires sacrifice.'

Hell, let's create a national holiday dedicated to households with two parents raising children together as a team.

Let's remind people that they aren't freaks for not getting divorced as soon as the initial spark died down. That it's okay to continue trying to make things work for the benefit of their children.

So often today I encounter the sentiment that "there are so many fish in the sea, and it's so easy to find them, why bother putting effort into it if it isn't perfect from the get go?"

In my opinion, the prevalence of this school of thought is harmful to the propagation and stability of two parent families. American society at some point became so obsessed with "self care" that, you guessed it - they forgot about the children.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#640

Post by slt2021 »

petsfed wrote: post #548
msravi wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > It does not matter if they grow up in foster care or a two-parent family. But it does! Very much. I just don't understand why the US tries everything other than fixing the most glaring cause. Lots of problems can be fixed by encouraging and aggrandizing stable two-parent families instead of getting schools and teachers to fill proxy parenting roles.

It turns out that a lot of what makes a relationship work is also what causes the children of 2-parent families to do better. Namely, if you remove the stress of scrambling just to make ends meet, and remove food and housing and healthcare and employment insecurity, then people have more time to spend on their families. And provided the parents aren't terrible people, that leads to better outcomes, more stable marria…

there is relationship (as in one night stand) and there is lifelong relationship.

There is fundamental conflict:

1. All people (especially young) want hook-ups due to hormones and stuff, as many as possible. These leads to pregnancies and kids.

2. Family requires you to limit your desires only to your partners and create lifelong commitment, which means responsibilities (not only for yourself, but for your partners and kids).

There is mismatch fundamentally. Either hookups culture needs to die, or kids have to be allowed only by stable families

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