An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California • Hacker News Board

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#301

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #197

bawolff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for most of them, however i found calculus totally useless for my CS degree (the only time i recall it mentioned was defining big-oh notation). Otoh i liked calculus so still time well spent. Of course, that's not counting "mathamatical maturity" which is super important or if you're doing some specific thing that needs calculus (hello machine learning.)

It's pretty simple: - calculus if you want to do engineering - discrete mathematics if you want to do CS You can teach these in university, it's not a problem. Calculus doesn't need to be taught in high school to everyone but it should be available and it should be the goal state in terms of curriculum pace for everyone so that you should have no problem taking it by the time you are 17 or 18 (which is what we're tal…

> - calculus if you want to do engineering

> - discrete mathematics if you want to do CS

I'd guess the vast majority of software development jobs are like "gluing one API layer to another" and "writing simple-to-complex CRUD apps". Neither calculus or discrete mathematics really helps if your goal is to simply make a computer read data from database X and display it in webform Y.

I found all of the math required by my undergrad degree to be totally useless in real life programming. Whether you need any math at all will highly depend on the application domain you get in to. The most complex math I needed as a code monkey was vector arithmetic (3D graphics) and trigonometry (ocean and aero mapping navigation).

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by paulcole » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

mikebenfield wrote: post #264

paulcole wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability This is generally true. People can find extreme examples that “disprove” this but they’re generally wrong. Most things people do aren’t that hard and people have the ability to learn to do them — they either choose a different path, have fewer choices, or just don’t care. And yes, before you ask, this includes computer programming.

This is so obviously false that I'm always amazed there are people who actually believe this. In _every_ activity I've ever participated in where I can observe many people's performance and progression - including powerlifting, bodybuilding, various ball sports, mathematics, chess, theoretical CS, software engineering, etc - it is transparently obvious that people's natural abilities vary dramatically. Although it's…

Thank you. I am quite stupid.

Talent is real, but generally speaking, ascribing failure or lack of progress to lack of talent is a mistake.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by TimPC » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

Something is rotten in the state of academia when looking at the evidence there are mathematicians, scientists and social scientists standing bravely in favour of a high bar and a quality education program in mathematics.

On the other side of the argument you have people from the Department of Education who specialize in Mathematics Education who seem happy to lower the bar as far as possible in the name of equality.

When I was in University the Department of Education was the most woke department on campus, except for perhaps the Department of Gender Studies. We are now seeing policies that favour wokeness ahead of the best interests of the students affected by the policies.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

heymijo wrote: post #88

BitwiseFool wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables" I get the sense that such rote methods are no longer encouraged and a lot of the "new math" in Common Core is aimed at approximation and reckoning so that students won't rely on memorization.

> Empirically, it seems that drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables early in pre K and earlier elementary will give students a better intuitive math foundation to do algebra very well. This aspect of the Common Core was about recognizing deficits in conceptual understanding resulting from rote methods of drilling arithmetic. The empirical evidence is the opposite of OP's assertion, but the end point…

[deleted]

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by DoingIsLearning » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #252

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is Uğur Şahin. For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the German researchers who developed Pfizer's SARS-COV2 mRNA vaccine. Uğur moved from Turkey to Germany at age 4. At the end of primary school his teacher had assigned him to 'hauptschule'. It was only because of a neighbour's intervention that he was later put through 'Gymnasium' i.e. on track…

You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they can begin serious studies?

Absolutely fair.

This one example just stuck with me when I read it because of how serindipitous his mRNA research turned out to be during an all out worldwide pandemic.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by bjt2n3904 » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:18 PM UTC

FFRefresh wrote: post #166

kurthr wrote: post #27

From the original letter: While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning i…

I don't doubt that the people crafting these proposals care. I think they truly believe they are doing the right thing. I personally think it's just increasingly popular, mistaken moral beliefs that inform these types of proposals. Some of the underlying beliefs: 1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability 2. Any observable differences between humans are merely the result of social factors 3. Any observable diff…

It feels so good seeing this utterly ridiculously ideology so thoroughly debunked, and rightfully attributed for the destructive attacks on education.

I've run into it so often by a vocal minority who slander anyone who objects. Fortunately, the popularity is waning.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by hintymad » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:18 PM UTC

deathanatos wrote: post #275

hintymad wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Have you observed multiple kids in the same family? Same parents. Same "privilege". Same pressure. Same education down to the same teachers, tutors, books, and parent temperament. And you know what, some of the kids simply beat their siblings who can be years older, in STEM or writing or reading or leadership without even trying. Have you observed your classmates? Some are driven, ambitious, self-discip…

Me & my sister grew up, like you say, in the same family, same parents, same pressure. We largely went to the same schools, even. She probably acceled further, academically, than I did. (She probably went to the more prestigious college, her GPA/SAT/etc. were better, she earned a doctorate, while I got a BS…) Without pointing to a vague notion of "we're different people", I think there's a few key things that were di…

To digress a bit: good education will be a finite resource as we have finite number of good educators and good schools. I don't think it's possible for everyone to access good education, especially given that we have different definition for "good education". Saying everyone should go to MIT (or any scarce education resource) is like saying living in beach property is human right. Maybe so, but it'll be a different topic.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

Lev1a wrote: post #176

TulliusCicero wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding the future of your life in 4th grade (when students are evaluated in Bavaria, at least) is maybe not great. Was living in Munich for five years and I'm glad we left before our son got sorted. There's also a strong racial/class component to who gets into Hauptschule/Realschule/Gymnasium, surprise surprise.

Here in M-V I had to go through "Orientierungsstufe"¹ which I partly blame for my learning difficulties and anger issues later in school, since in those two years we later had to find out that we missed 1-1,5 years of material and/or learning methods depending on the subject. I mean... e.g. in Philosophy the teacher was absent for most of those two years resulting in us having to entertain ourselves for those "lesson…

I've heard pretty terrible things about Germany tolerating bullying, +1 for that count I guess.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Post by klodolph » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #279

klodolph wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that those beliefs are a workable explanation here. These proposals come from committees and groups of people, and it's just not realistic to write off the entire group of people behind these proposals as having some uniform set of beliefs like that, especially when they give other rationales for the proposals! The current school system makes decisions in middle school (8th grade and earlier) which dete…

There are no two people in the world with the same beliefs - nobody is suggesting that. There is however a very broad movement of people who believe that unequal outcomes are a manifestation of racism and so they act accordingly in their roles in government etc.. Many of these people are in the civil service and so this will influence their view. It would be 'insane' to ignore this movement, it's one of the most powe…

You're saying it's one of the "most powerful social forces in the US right now"... is there any particular reasoning here? To be honest, it sounds like an extremist take on the nature vs nurture argument which has been playing out for millennia and I don't see a reason to believe that somehow the extreme version nurture side of the argument has become dominant here. If anything, it's easy to remember the pendulum swinging back and forth in the past decades, and the pendulum doesn't seem to swing that far in either direction.

> Many of these people are in the civil service and so this will influence their view.

It influences the political pressures placed on people in the civil service more than anything else. People in the civil service are in the civil service for a long time, typically. Often they are in the civil service for decades. On the other hand, elected officials and political appointees rotate in and out much more quickly.

I know people in the civil service, they have a much more long-term and level-headed view of things, and my impression is that they "weather the storm" of changing political pressures. At least, the ones who survive in the job do. Political appointees and elected officials are much more mercurial. Appointees know that their position is (somewhat) an extension of their own political power to begin with.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#310

Post by ceeplusplus » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 8:21 PM UTC

npunt wrote: post #131

cortesoft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the gist of the argument is that when you split students into 'normal' and 'advanced' classes at a young age, the students who are not put into the advanced classes will believe they are just naturally not good at math and will give up on trying to get better because they will think they just "don't have a math brain". Here is a short blurb about the idea: > The framework would not forbid districts from acc…

Yep, tracking students into systems like high/low early on makes it very hard to ever escape that track, as they're a sort of self-perpetuating system. That has downstream effects for one's entire life. It's a crude method of personalizing education within the context of factory education. Downsides are that kids develop at different times, have different educational needs, have home life issues that can temporarily…

From what I've seen there are three major problems with edtech that gives a personalized education:

1) A lot of K-8 education is babysitting. If you let kids do their own thing they'll just watch YouTube and play Roblox instead. Most kids are not _that_ self motivated at this point in life. It's hard for teachers to manage a classroom if everyone is working on different things.

2) Staring at a computer screen is not a great learning experience. A classroom is an interactive, social experience with active feedback. It's hard to socialize when the kid next to you is not working on the same activity or problems you are.

3) Personalizing education diminishes the importance of teachers in the classroom, which teachers unions obviously oppose. Teachers can't teach if every kid is learning something different, and online education strongly promotes winner-take-all dynamics where the best teacher and content can scale up infinitely and dominate.

Out of all these I think 2) and 3) are the hardest problems to solve and whoever solves them is going to meaningfully advance education. But I'm not very convinced by the startups I'm seeing in this space that anyone has solved it yet.