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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

#651

Post by dsign »

feoren wrote: post #523
dsign wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. I have met plenty of people during my life who didn’t like math. Would they vote to remove Calculus from high school curriculums, if they believed it would level the playing field? Yes, and without blinking. >> Such a plot may even make a decent movie. A “plausible” one, yes. Incidentally, have you noted how movies don’t ever have any actual hard science, and they never require mathematical thinking on…

> movies don’t ever have any actual hard science, and they never require mathematical thinking on their viewership Um, no, I haven't noticed that. In fact I've seen "this movie is based on hard science!" as being a generally positive selling point for movies, especially sci-fi. I also don't really understand your point: movies and pop novels generally do well when they require very little thinking of any kind. They d…

There is a world of difference between a selling point and the actual thing, but I would be delighted to be proven that there are movies where the viewership requires hard science to understand the plot.

> that does not make them anti-intellectual

Math is old, and therefore, a vital aspect of human culture. By purposefully producing something that “does better” by excluding math, we are effectively doing our darn best to push math out of our collective thought. If doesn’t matter if we call that “anti-intellectual” or “junk-food-for-the-mind.”

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#652

Post by skirmish »

lotu wrote: post #356
flappyeagle wrote: post #312

Earlier 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…

AFAIK, accredited online courses get credit on the high school transcript. Take a look at options: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/where-should-I-take-...

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#653

Post by eftychis »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #627
eftychis wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give a bit of context to all the sibling comments: We are talking about a history where: a) A decision to not occupy a defeated country was made because they were impure/non-white (Mexico)... [I don't think I have encountered a similar historical example. I will spend some time looking/reviewing just in case I am forgetting some similar situation.] b) Called Germans and Finnish immigrants "non-white": https://en.w…

Do you have a source regarding the theory that the race was the primary factor in deciding the territory following the Mexican American war? I haven't encountered this example before. I'm obviously skeptical but willing to read more. As a counterpoint, the last several centuries are full of examples of countries establishing territories or colonies in foreign lands with different ethnicities. In those cases, the loca…

Certainly, good point: 2003 UCLA LAW Review: https://www.uclalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/15_...

See first paragraph section C, page 11 (293) -- also citation, but didn't have time to link it here.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#654

Post by dumpsterdiver »

slt2021 wrote: post #644
kneebonian wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mothers been an educator for many many years now. She says the single biggest factor is parental involvement. But hey convincing both parents to be gone all day and slave away for the corporate masters was smashing the patriarchy and breaking the glass ceiling or something, and the fact that it doubled the labor pool causing supply to go up is entirely unrelated to the fact that wages started stagnating at the sam…

> parental involvement How does that work for black mother of three kids on social programs, whose biological father is incarcerated/nowhere to be found around? This is the typical story of low achievement/high crime kids in public school system.

You realize that even by applying your question to a sad scenario you are still asking the basic question, "How does parental involvement work," right?

Parental involvement "works" by taking an active interest in your child's activities and development. That's it.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#655

Post by TheCoelacanth »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #553
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European countries' history with slavery largely consists of having it in far off colonies and then cutting those colonies loose. The US doesn't have the luxury of making a clean break.

Im not saying there aren't differences, there certainly are. Do you think that the US has been doing such a good job managing race relations that we can take a superior attitude and reject commentary?

No, but we can certainly reject completely uninformed commentary.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#656

Post by petsfed »

slt2021 wrote: post #640
petsfed wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The birth rate (especially the teenage birth rate) has been dropping for the last 20 years. But sure, it's hookup culture that's causing single parent households, and not an evolution of how people of child-rearing age think about marriage, or that the changing shape of the economy means that marriage-as-a-mainly-financial-arrangement is dying a long-overdue death. It's definitely not that legalizing so-called no-fault divorces allows women (especially mothers) to escape abusive situations that are, for one reason or another, impossible to prosecute as such. And that's all to say nothing of the known impact from over-policing of low income communities.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#657

Post by dumpsterdiver »

dsign wrote: post #651
feoren wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> movies don’t ever have any actual hard science, and they never require mathematical thinking on their viewership Um, no, I haven't noticed that. In fact I've seen "this movie is based on hard science!" as being a generally positive selling point for movies, especially sci-fi. I also don't really understand your point: movies and pop novels generally do well when they require very little thinking of any kind. They d…

There is a world of difference between a selling point and the actual thing, but I would be delighted to be proven that there are movies where the viewership requires hard science to understand the plot. > that does not make them anti-intellectual Math is old, and therefore, a vital aspect of human culture. By purposefully producing something that “does better” by excluding math, we are effectively doing our darn bes…

> By purposefully producing something that “does better” by excluding math, we are effectively doing our darn best to push math out of our collective thought.

Strongly disagree, and in fact imo movies that are "junk food for the mind" serve a valuable purpose. The mind requires rest in order to digest new information, and so if we were constantly being reminded to "remember your math!" it would likely become very fatiguing very quickly. Being able to disconnect while still being entertained effectively allows your mind to rest. It's not as good as sleep, but it's better than never stepping away from your math homework to allow it to sink in.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#658

Post by s1artibartfast »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #630
s1artibartfast wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery goes back a lot further than the founding of the US, and is important context for broad swaths of History. Regarding the election of the president, I assume you're talking about the 3/5 compromise. I think this had the opposite impact of what you're claiming. It gave white male voters in the south less power. Representation based on total human population would have given them more. If you were voting white m…

Not so. The 3/5 rule and the Electoral College gave slaveholders drastically more power than they should have had. If the president was elected strictly based on votes cast, the North would have dominated every election. Not only did the South have completely disenfranchised slaves who nevertheless added to their masters electoral votes, but they also had much more limited franchise even for white males. The constitu…

Neither of this North nor the South supported proportional representation based on both votes cast. Your assertion that the 3/5 compromise the South more electoral power begs the question in comparison to what alternative. If you're hypothetical is that became more power than the number of Voters, then sure. But no one at the time was advocating for proportional representation based on the number of men in the state.

Nobody supported the vast majority of people voting. The Electoral College was never based on voter numbers.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#659

Post by distortionfield »

rozap wrote: post #104
distortionfield wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the Dallas experiment? I haven’t heard of this before.

He describes it in the article. Honors math became opt-out rather than opt-in.

Ah thank you, i didn’t catch that

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#660

Post by tnecniv »

mangodrunk wrote: post #634
eftychis wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probability and stats requires calculus
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