California needs real math education, not gimmicks • Hacker News Board

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#41

Post by c_crank » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:07 AM UTC

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #30

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

Quality comments like this are what keep me coming back to HN. I certainly agree. I’m not sure exactly how, but it’s clear there needs to be some sort of incentive for institutions to actually achieve their purpose, but as soon as a metric is measured, it gets exploited and over optimized.

The only incentive that works is letting such institutions crash and burn and be replaced. Even giant monopolies can end up losing money and going under.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#42

Post by keithnz » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:10 AM UTC

To people where math (to some higher level) is kind of okish, this seems bad. But in my experience, most people coming out of school ( and I'm 50+ so going back decades now) don't really have a useful working knowledge of mathematical ideas. For many they just end up hating it, instantly forgetting everything they learned through pain when they leave school, and never want anything to do with math again. I'm all for people trying new ideas to teach math, also changing the way we assess it. As long as there is a path that preserves "academic math"

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#43

Post by anonporridge » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:10 AM UTC

mimikatz wrote: post #18

bushbaba wrote: post #12

California k-12 public education has become a joke. Even the top rated schools are succeeding from students going to after school tutoring and not from the education in the public institution. It’s appalling how California cares more about homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare over education. Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class…

More and more I get the feeling California doesn't care about the homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare. There are just a ton of grifters who make a lot of noise on the topics, but don't push for policies that would actually improve things. Or push for them in a way that is just more red tape that hinders actual results. Education is in the same bucket. Lots of noise from lots of people with bad ideas o…

The homelessness industrial complex is quite profitable.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#44

Post by outlace » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

I think we significantly overestimate how much school actually matters compared to family milieus. My wife and I highly value education, so regardless of when the school says children should learn algebra, I am already tutoring my 6 year old in basic algebra. If school did nothing other than be a daycare for my kids so we could work, they'd probably still be better educated than most kids going through public school because my wife and I will make sure of that because we teach our kids a lot on our own (and we're not hiring tutors or after school programs). If schools were more rigorous then it would save us time from having to do a lot of the educating ourselves, but it won't change family values.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#45

Post by huitzitziltzin » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:12 AM UTC

The strangest thing to me is that American education professors wield power in setting educational standards, when their own field is completely allergic to any serious empirical work on what works. I guess to a state legislator a “professor of mathematics education” sounds like the kind of person who should know about these things?

California math standards resemble New York reading standards in their lack of engagement with studies of what works. There are too many examples like this. We would all be better off if education professors stayed completely out of the business of setting state standards.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#46

Post by ip26 » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:12 AM UTC

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

Pitched competition between well-matched opponents is the only sure-fire antidote. It either keeps the players perpetually lean, or picks off the ones that ossify. You are simply left no choice other than to play seriously or lose.

Tricky to arrange in education, to be sure, because results are difficult to measure objectively.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#47

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:13 AM UTC

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

I think a lot of the organizational dysfunction in education and more broadly comes down to a poor understanding of rule utilitarianism.

In short, rule utilitarianism is an idea that a standard procedure you can't be better than a complex system that attempts to maximize each individual choice.

The classic example that Economist Mike Munger likes to talk about is stop signs. You could replace stop signs with a complex debate and decision tree to try to decide which car at an intersection has greater need and gets priority. However, this complex process may result in longer wait times for all cars, including those that might have the most urgent need to go through the intersection.

This manifests in education through a million rules which try to optimize performance for very specific and conflicting purposes. As a result, you get a complex system weighed down by its inefficiency that doesn't meet any of its goals.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#48

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

c_crank wrote: post #41

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality comments like this are what keep me coming back to HN. I certainly agree. I’m not sure exactly how, but it’s clear there needs to be some sort of incentive for institutions to actually achieve their purpose, but as soon as a metric is measured, it gets exploited and over optimized.

The only incentive that works is letting such institutions crash and burn and be replaced. Even giant monopolies can end up losing money and going under.

In the context of Education or you have an entranched monopoly, this means voting for private school vouchers.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#49

Post by injb » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

outlace wrote: post #44

I think we significantly overestimate how much school actually matters compared to family milieus. My wife and I highly value education, so regardless of when the school says children should learn algebra, I am already tutoring my 6 year old in basic algebra. If school did nothing other than be a daycare for my kids so we could work, they'd probably still be better educated than most kids going through public school…

This. I strongly suspect that the biggest problem in school for children from good families isn't the schooling but rather the presence of children from bad families.

My sister is a primary teacher and the things I've heard make it clear that the system tries to make up for bad parenting but it's and uphill struggle.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#50

Post by blindriver » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

The actions that the California state education system towards Blacks and Brown kids are exactly what the most insidious racist person would do. If I hated Black and Brown kids, I would lower the education standards so low that these kids would graduate high school being unable to compete at the city, state or country level. And this is EXACTLY what is happening. Half of the Black kids in SF are graduating high school and can barely read.

Now with the gutting with math, Black and Brown kids will be even further behind on math than the rest of the demographics. It's horrifying.

Anyone who has money will avoid all this by either sending their kids to private school, which is what we did, or getting enrichment classes after school. Both of those options are unavailable to lower income kids, so the gap between the haves and the have nots will only increase at an exponential rate.

There is nothing more racist than the of lowered expectations in the guise of ruinous empathy for "the poor victims of white supremacy". You help undereducated kids by raising expectations, and pumping money into the system so that the student teacher ratio plummets in the poorest areas that need the most help. Instead SFUSD was spending millions to change the names of school instead of trying to get those kids to learn how to read.