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In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

reason.com

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Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#11

Post by 22c »

> the framework concludes that calculus is overvalued, even for gifted students.

I was never taught calculus when I was in high school, when my mind was perhaps a bit more pliable, and I really wish I was. I've mostly gotten by alright without it but it's something that bothers me as a kind of "missed opportunity" to learn.

I do think school's approach to teaching math tends to be quite dry. I think I would have appreciated more of a "discovery" based approach rather than simply solving a bunch of textbook examples. YouTube content creators have really helped open my eyes as to how some of the things I was taught about in school are actually REALLY interesting when you stop and think about it.

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#14

Post by yumraj »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #6

Sacramento is awesome at generating reasons to home school your children. It's been a bit of a challenge, but absolutely the best thing my wife and I have done for our daughter. And by that I mean mostly what my wife has done.

Don’t the kids miss being with other children, how did you handle that?

Also, did you look into the various online schools or did you just manage the entire curriculum yourself? If so, how do you manage/track that?

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#15

Post by mullingitover »

BeetleB wrote: post #5

At the end of the day I'd like to see the data. Somewhat related: There was a recent episode in This American Life that showed how struggling minority students actually became above average or near the top in subjects like calculus when forced to sit in classes for "advanced" students as opposed to "remedial" classes. A number of universities (including some well known ones) have tried this - some for many years - so…

I'm just waiting for AI to get good enough at tutoring that we can get one-on-one education. Bloom's two sigma problem[1] has already shown us that most students are nowhere near their potential, and tutoring is too expensive to give every student their own tutor so we're stuck with this inferior education system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#16

Post by honescbhfv »

yumraj wrote: post #14
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #6

Sacramento is awesome at generating reasons to home school your children. It's been a bit of a challenge, but absolutely the best thing my wife and I have done for our daughter. And by that I mean mostly what my wife has done.

Don’t the kids miss being with other children, how did you handle that? Also, did you look into the various online schools or did you just manage the entire curriculum yourself? If so, how do you manage/track that?

Homeschool communities have all sorts of extra curriculars, the parents I know that homeschool have better socialized kids than the ones that do public school, anecdotally

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#17

Post by ghufran_syed »

BeetleB wrote: post #5

At the end of the day I'd like to see the data. Somewhat related: There was a recent episode in This American Life that showed how struggling minority students actually became above average or near the top in subjects like calculus when forced to sit in classes for "advanced" students as opposed to "remedial" classes. A number of universities (including some well known ones) have tried this - some for many years - so…

I’m currently reading “Surely you’re joking, Mr Feynman”, and this reminds me of his experience in high school where the teacher thought he talked too much and was too noisy because he was bored - so he gave him a copy of “Advanced calculus” by Woods to work through during class time and told him he wasn’t allowed to speak in class until he was done with it. He clearly found that a valuable experience.

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#18

Post by brundolf »

troelsSteegin wrote: post #12

The "Mathematics Framework" in question is at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/ Having looked at that, I am skeptical of the Reason article.

"My 'reason' domain name has a lot of people asking questions already answered by my domain name"

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#19

Post by quantified »

22c wrote: post #11

> the framework concludes that calculus is overvalued, even for gifted students. I was never taught calculus when I was in high school, when my mind was perhaps a bit more pliable, and I really wish I was. I've mostly gotten by alright without it but it's something that bothers me as a kind of "missed opportunity" to learn. I do think school's approach to teaching math tends to be quite dry. I think I would have appr…

Calculus is overvalued. I learned it well, 4 out of 5 on the AP math test, but there are other subjects like statistics, discrete math and logic I wish I’d had instead.

Lots of things are highly useful. I’m not saying drop calculus entirely, but if you have only one year of high school to go beyond trigonometry, calculus shouldn’t be the sole choice.

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