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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

#411

Post by DSMan195276 »

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…

You've gotten a whole lot of replies that seem to miss your point, but I'd say that I've experienced that exact thing - to get to Calc in your senior year you needed to have gotten on a very specific track of math courses back in middle school, and likely your parents needed to know about it to make sure you got in. Otherwise, what appeared to be a very inconsequential choice at middle school actually decided your entire math track. Getting back on the track after you get off basically doesn't happen.

I definitely think we should teach more advanced math (and other) courses, but that particular way of doing it is just not very good - plenty of people who probably could have managed Calc just fine didn't get to take it, due to choices made for them years past probably by parents who didn't understand the significance. The structure and order of classes needs to be redone, which is hard.

I will say though I find it funny how much people are coming to Calc's defense. I'm in software development and it's a pretty common joke how virtually inapplicable calc is to us. I'm still happy I learned it but for software development it's definitely less useful than the other advanced math you'll learn.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#412

Post by s1artibartfast »

snowwrestler wrote: post #328
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…

You don’t have the historical or cultural context to be commenting on race relations and policy in the U.S. Sorry; it’s not personal. Few Europeans do unless they have lived here for a long time (and even then I see many struggle with the topics).

Conversely, many European countries have a history that includes slavery and an arguably better track record of successful abolition and reconciliation. Maybe there's something the US can learn.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#413

Post by anthomtb »

mikepurvis wrote: post #361
pwthornton wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a way to have time to cover Calculus in high school while still taking it slower: Block scheduling. My high school shifted to it. It's like a college day where you have four longer classes instead of eight shorter ones. Courses are semester-long, not year-long. This means you can take two math classes in one year (algebra in the fall and geometry in the spring). This also enabled my high school to offer AP C…

My Toronto high school was like this, back in the early 2000s.

My Colorado high school was also like this, same time frame.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#414

Post by veave »

mydriasis wrote: post #33

> Guess what? Children are educable. If you invest the resources of the state in poor kids and underrepresented minorities, they will learn. It is shocking to me that this has to be said. What in the world...

It's not exactly like that. Average IQ is very different between races. That explains many discrepancies. And it also explains these policies that revolve around cutting down the tall poppies.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#415

Post by slothtrop »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #173
jasonlotito wrote: post #75

Yeah, as best I can tell, this article is making stuff up. Referencing the article he cites and fails to link to, it's clear that no one is refusing to teach kids math. The headline and the rhetoric used in the article are misinformation at best if I assume the author is simply ignorant.

It's honestly nonsense. The way he frames the other side of this argument as "dumbing down" the education system in the name of racial equality. If this doesn't immediately set off your BS detector you need it tuned up.

You can dress it up any way you like, but that's effectively what it comes down to.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#416

Post by gloryjulio »

Motivated and rich parents don't care about it. If you don't provide the learning opportunities to the gifted students, those parents will just look for somewhere or someone else to get the job done. Only the poor and the underprivileged gifted students are deprived of the opportunities. At the end of the day, that's how things work in the real world

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#417

Post by daniel-cussen »

It'll get USA screwed on the World stage too. For me getn tracked in math classes pretty much the whole time, n to the point we had a class w four people in it, smallest class-size in the school already w the smallest class sizes in the country, all four of us, on that table getn the closest thing to tutoring the Chilean education system could give us in its most expensive school International School Nido de Aguilas, n then it's like...without tracking i would have hated math, got bullied much more for always cracking the curve, all that shit.

Elon Musk already complained about the basic difference between the CCP politicians n the American senators n congressmen is the former have a distantly n vertically superior knowledge of math n science than their American counterparts, being engineers w a v rigorous sink-or-swim training, than the American politicians who are generally lawyers n only one of which has a PhD. There's as many PhDs as comedians in Congress for fuck's sake, like not hating the comedian i appreciate there being one, that's cool, but for there only to be one PhD, what the fuck?! Some people need to have a PhD, it matters sometimes it is generally a good way to get technical expertise spesh w subjects w high stakes that require planning for executing correctly, which is why i went into algorithms instead, my laptop had no choice but to obey n compile what i wrote, n run it, automaton after all, that computer was my only audience but an audience nonetheless. There it's fine, n that's why coders don't need degrees for the most part, low cost of failure, not like a civil engineer which i would not allow building a bridge j like that.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#418

Post by bluescrn »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #375
throw9away6 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha that’s not actually happening though because college admissions aren’t going to be based in knowledge but on ability to jump through hoops perfectly

AI is going to upend everything about education. I can't imagine colleges doing much beyond lots of AI interviews in the near future. That's if there is even a point in getting 95% of degrees anymore anyway.

The internet should have transformed education. For curious self-learners it has, there’s incredible resources online for those who seek them out. But it hasn’t made much of a dent in ‘the education system’

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#419

Post by gnicholas »

1024core wrote: post #392

This seems such an obvious thing to me, and I'm not even in the field of Education. I agree with everything the writer wrote and found myself nodding repeatedly, thinking, it's obvious. So why can't our so-called professionals see this too? Taking away learning opportunities from kids does them no good! I remember once when I was in 9th grade and my elder brother was a sophomore in college. I found a textbook of his…

The effect is even greater on younger students. My kid went into elementary school loving math and wanting to learn more. They refused to accelerate or even test her to see what she knew. She had to do endless busywork and sit through lessons on topics she'd mastered years earlier. She learned no math for years on end. The only lesson she learned is that "school doesn't care whether I learn".

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#420

Post by throwanem »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #395
throwanem wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's all that obvious, you should have no problem naming who's behind this and providing evidence to support your claim, rather than merely fearmongering to no useful end.

I don't know. These "equity" arguments are indistinguishable from a deliberate attack.... the sort of attack you'd expect from a country that, having been unable to either compete with the West or conquer it, is well-known to have resorted to memetic warfare.

> I don't know.
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