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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

#781

Post by RecycledEle »

sfn42 wrote: post #749
RecycledEle wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of equity a society enforces should be inversely proportional to age. If a kindergartener is unable to succeed, we need to give them extra help. If a 45 year old is unable to succeed, they had their chances and it's their fault.

Plenty of kids are just stupid.

Plenty of kids get away with being stupid. If those same kids knew that they would have to provide for themselves once they turned 18, they would be studying and learning to work.

A welfare society trains children to be stupid.

A free market trains children to work.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#782

Post by vGPU »

achates wrote: post #377
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…

Does putting marginal students in advanced classes actually help them?

Judging by the lack of hard numbers and some statistical fuckery they’re doing - no.

> Within two years of this policy, 94% of eligible students are taking these classes.

Preselection.

Additionally, about half of the entire student body took the advanced class.

Considering the fact that the advanced class is Algebra I, I’d wager that just being on the right half of the bell curve would be sufficient to pass. Half of the student population = the right half of the bell curve.

Additionally, I didn’t see whether they were doing individual tutoring, which would have an impact on the results.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#783

Post by johnnyanmac »

sethrin wrote: post #741
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

Your post is content-free, and it says much about the value of your thoughts. This is not a problem of emotions, except in that it's a useful tool for others to manipulate your emotions. The only effective solution would be to subsidize these relationships via taxes, ideally to the point where one partner can devote themselves to childcare. In this society, you want something, you pay for it. You should probably cont…

>his is not a problem of emotions, except in that it's a useful tool for others to manipulate your emotions.

we do it with every other form of advertisement, why not use it to encourage good lifestyles too?

> You should probably contemplate why this isn't being proposed by the people who are supposedly concerned about this problem

simple:

- they aren't concerned about the problem to begin with. Be it apathy, ignorance, or malice. There are different solutions depending on the cause.

- they are, as mentioned above, more afraid of upsetting single families by imposing what can arguably be a healthier family dynamic

- the school board feels that issues with family are outside their purview so they do not even consider it, despite the fact that parents are the biggest strain on any given school teacher.

Maybe take your own advice? They at least gave propositions, while you are simply engaging in rhetorical attacks without contributing anything worth a conversation. What does "you want something, you pay for it" mean in a conversation about government funded education? We're all already paying for it.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#784

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>Either hookups culture needs to die

I think increased awareness of Birth control already solved this problem. Almost every first world country's population is starting to fall under the rate needed to increase the population while most third world countries contribute to the overall global population increase.

I'd also say the lack of stigma around abortions, but ofc we know how that's going in the U.S...

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#785

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>For pure signaling reasons, taking calculus in high school has become very important for college admissions.

I mean, it really depends on the school and the major. If you're taking a STEM major in college, having calculus on your resume is the equivalent of having a degree on your resume. You may not need it to succeed (I do not use calculus in my day to day job), but you can see why it makes you stand out.

But sure, if you're more on a medical/law/humanities track, calculus shouldn't really matter for your admissions. It only matters in that calculus makes you understand math better, and math is one of the core subjects used by the SAT/ACT. Naturally, knowing calculus makes those tests much easier to reason about. Maybe we should revisit why Math is weighed so heavily in national tests if we feel this way about math in the curriculum.

I can see the intents, but it feels like it sweeps the core problems under the rug. As usual for education.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#786

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.

>but the problem is forcing those to learn something when they would rather learn something else.

so, most of my high school classes? I'm not against a more customizable high school experience, but that seems like a harder sell than trying to convince these boards why this initiative is a horrible idea.

>Sure, at a certain point, it would be needed, but that would be for someone wanting to become a statistician, not the general population.

Depends, I guess. Physics has the same issue. Where introductory physics can be taught with formulas, AP physics expects you to understand the calculus behind the formulas and not simply spout out random factoids. There's no particularly best approach here.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#787

Post by DropInIn »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #774
DropInIn wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better idea: Kids just work at thier own pace and don't graduate until they complete all work successfully. Anything else is just a diploma mill.

If school wasn't also an important social benchmark that would make sense. But as it is, there is some benefit to setting a pace. I do agree that we should encourage students to self pace themselves. Another aspect of school I had to de-program myself on: it's OKAY to repeat courses you are struggling on. Expensive, yes, but sometimes coming in a 2nd time gives you the perspective to start focus on the subtleties whi…

There's nothing keeping age peers from hanging out and being friends, just because they're at different levels in different subjects...

In actuality it's more likely that socialization would improve as kids weren't forced through stress periods where they were not permitted to socialize, grouped arbitrarily and explicitly set against each other in various programs (eg - sports, group assignments, etc)....

And that's without yet raising the fact that the kid who does well in language but not math would end up friends with the kid who does well in math but not language, helping each other and challenging each other to succeed in a positive fashion, rather than ending up pitted against each other by the fundamental structure of the class structure.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#788

Post by nradov »

sfn42 wrote: post #749
RecycledEle wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of equity a society enforces should be inversely proportional to age. If a kindergartener is unable to succeed, we need to give them extra help. If a 45 year old is unable to succeed, they had their chances and it's their fault.

Plenty of kids are just stupid.

Plenty of kids aren't able to perform well in institutionalized schools. The root cause is seldom stupidity.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#789

Post by johnnyanmac »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #372
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…

The USA is currently obsessed with race, and this influences all discussions. I agree that this topic could be more accurately and inclusively framed as how to improve outcomes for low income students, or children with absentee/incarcerated parents, or children of addicts. Unfortunately, some people care much more about racial outcomes than they do about any of those I mentioned. The point of the racial framing IS to…

>Talking about helping poor children doesn't get people as riled up, and has the risk of actually leading to agreement and a solution.

Funny, but let's not underestimate how much class warfare there is in modern politics. Even if they do a great job using identity politics to lampshade it.

I think Occam's razor suggests the reasons of race are much simpler: race is considered a public statistic, one not trying to be hidden behind welfare, stocks, shell companies, tips, etc. Financial status is much more complex and varies based on COL. Easier statistic, easier to focus on.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#790

Post by johnnyanmac »

DropInIn wrote: post #787
johnnyanmac wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If school wasn't also an important social benchmark that would make sense. But as it is, there is some benefit to setting a pace. I do agree that we should encourage students to self pace themselves. Another aspect of school I had to de-program myself on: it's OKAY to repeat courses you are struggling on. Expensive, yes, but sometimes coming in a 2nd time gives you the perspective to start focus on the subtleties whi…

There's nothing keeping age peers from hanging out and being friends, just because they're at different levels in different subjects... In actuality it's more likely that socialization would improve as kids weren't forced through stress periods where they were not permitted to socialize, grouped arbitrarily and explicitly set against each other in various programs (eg - sports, group assignments, etc).... And that's…

>There's nothing keeping age peers from hanging out and being friends, just because they're at different levels in different subjects

Nothing tangible. But your peers you do work with very much influences the kinds of peers that become your friends.

But that's tangential to the real point I was making: socializing around a bunch of different peers your age in a specific nigh mandatory environment helps develop a sense of public etiquette. How to socialize, how to figure out who you do/don't want to hang out with, how to manage arguments or de-escalate tension. Potentially delaying or skipping that can be catastrophic, and you can argue that there's so many people today that feel like they never got that.

This can theoretically be replicated outside of school. But given how few venues of loitering there are these days for adults, I don't have much faith that we'll create such places for minors.

>the kid who does well in language but not math would end up friends with the kid who does well in math but not language, helping each other and challenging each other to succeed in a positive fashion, rather than ending up pitted against each other by the fundamental structure of the class structure.

It's all theoretical. But my experience makes me much less optimistic of that outcome than you.

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