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California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

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Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#721

Post by pclmulqdq »

Retric wrote: post #689
pclmulqdq wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the students are interested in learning a subject to a high academic standard and will be bored otherwise? I was getting lower grades at my easy "teach to the bottom 10%" public school than the very difficult private school I moved to. By just dismissing academic rigor, you are alienating the high-performers who WANT to care. That's a bad group of people for a society to ignore.

“alienating the high-performers” And that’s a bad thing because? You where receiving exactly the kind of minimum education that was seemingly enough even if your grades where poor. Remember life doesn’t hold your hand, self motivation is just as important for long term success as innate intelligence. Hand holding the academically gifted to cram as much as possible into young minds has been traded before it doesn’t ac…

Do you really think that it is NOT bad for a society to demoralize and demotivate the people who might otherwise be very productive knowledge workers? There are arguably two goals to the public education system: giving a minimum education to everyone and raising up lower class folks who can't otherwise afford an education. It sounds like you only want the first one.

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#722

Post by hellol-amda »

tutors are the best when used wisely but the worst when they become necessacity. one size fit for for for all doesn't work, will never work. quality of teachers matters most than than anything.

readiness of the kid is as important as the quality of teachers, rest is just bunch of opinions

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#723

Post by Retric »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #721
Retric wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“alienating the high-performers” And that’s a bad thing because? You where receiving exactly the kind of minimum education that was seemingly enough even if your grades where poor. Remember life doesn’t hold your hand, self motivation is just as important for long term success as innate intelligence. Hand holding the academically gifted to cram as much as possible into young minds has been traded before it doesn’t ac…

Do you really think that it is NOT bad for a society to demoralize and demotivate the people who might otherwise be very productive knowledge workers? There are arguably two goals to the public education system: giving a minimum education to everyone and raising up lower class folks who can't otherwise afford an education. It sounds like you only want the first one.

Cost vs benefit.

Considering how many of todays highly effective knowledge workers where demoralized and demotivated in public school, you are talking about a short term effect. Personally I and many people at know greatly befitted from an easy public school education that enabled me plenty of free time to dive extremely deep into various personal projects. In comparison I took plenty of difficult electives in collage like Differential Equations for the fun of it, but thinking back I would have been better served with more free time.

I still remember coming up with the equivalent of the Bit Torrent algorithm in collage before BT was a thing, and thinking I just don’t have time to build it. In the wider context not a big deal, but don’t assume you can simply ramp things up without any cost.

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#724

Post by zwirbl »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #594
zwirbl wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system is less about ability than which social class one belongs to. Affluent -> Gymnasium Poor -> Hauptschule Realschule gets some of both

Is the stratification by social class an example of correlation or causation?

This could be rephrased as: Are poor people less able?

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#725

Post by vanusa »

foxhop wrote: post #719
pas wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how reason (or falsifiability) works.

Apparently I don't have a STEM degree or couldn't teach a child which could flourish in such a program at my dinner table, so I was waiting for a subject matter expert to correct my statement.

The first rule of science club is that ain't got nothing to do with having no stinking degree.

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#726

Post by foxhop »

vanusa wrote: post #725
foxhop wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently I don't have a STEM degree or couldn't teach a child which could flourish in such a program at my dinner table, so I was waiting for a subject matter expert to correct my statement.

The first rule of science club is that ain't got nothing to do with having no stinking degree.

/degree/education/

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#727

Post by charlieyu1 »

cik wrote: post #518
userbinator wrote: post #451

I'm perpetually perplexed at why some people seem to think that lowering the standards is going to help anyone. Do they not realise the source of all scientific and technical advancement is really the result of a minority of high achievers, and that by trying to "flatten" this inequality and effectively make everyone equally stupid, they are also going to be affected negatively? applies social justice principles to m…

This is the problem. It's also horrifically bad for the future economy. For comparison, the rest of the world - at least the parts that want to catch up aren't running this slowly. Also - I think the lack of basic Science + Math education is part of the reason we see things like vaccine hesitancy - but that's just a guess. My daughter in grade 4 (Israel) is currently learning basic algebra tenets, notably associative…

[flagged]

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#729

Post by eggy »

eggy wrote: post #570
moksly wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> citation on Denmark teaching Algebra later and the data on this https://www.webmatematik.dk/lektioner/7-9-klasse/algebra https://matematik.gyldendal.dk/til_laeren/01-om-portalen/06-... We’re not the best inspiration for how to run your school system though, we have had several huge reforms since the 1995, and the most recent major reform is failing miserably compared to what they are doing in other Scandinavian cou…

Thanks for the links; I'll have a look. The Finnish idea of less hours, but more concentrated effort sounds like it could work. I have five children from medical school age to elementary school, and I have seen the hours of homework go up, but not the time to properly teach, or at least the lecture/lab model in university. Passion to learn, curiosity, and finally, need drive successful learners.

The first link jumps to mathplanet when I select English for the site. I tried searching, but couldn't find a similar article there.

The second link appears to be a curriculum by grade. I'll try again later, thanks!

Re: California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide

#730

Post by Viliam1234 »

cs702 wrote: post #602
gumby wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you invert your thesis. Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard”: 1 - American school teach the alphabet before grade 1, and push kids to read early. German schools don’t even teach the alphabet until grade 1' yet by the end of that year the reading level of the kids is the same as US kids at the end of grade 1, or better. German Pädagogin justify this by saying there is some neural development issu…

Your comment changed my mind about the debate in California: > Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard” To be clear: I don't know enough detail about the proposal in California to judge it, but the idea that most children might be better off learning certain subjects at a later age, when they are more mature, cannot be dismissed a priori, without facts, based on ideological arguments. Your comment reminds m…

If you move certain topics to later age, you should make sure there is enough time left, because school isn't forever. The knowledge can be a prerequisite for another knowledge, which is a prerequisite for yet another knowledge, so if you move things too much, it can lead to "oops, no time to teach this at high school at all", and then you teach formerly high-school stuff at university, which again means you need to cut corners at some university topics. (It also means that kids who don't go to university, will not learn the formerly high-school stuff.)

Whether this indeed is the case, need to be discussed separately for each topic.

> Finland's educational system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world

Finland achieves good education of the average student by sacrificing the potential of the best. For example, look at their results at international mathematical olympiad: the last (and only) time they had a gold medal was in 1981. They are below-average not just compared to the developed countries, but globally. This is intentional; Finnish students who are "too good" at math are strongly advised to focus on other subjects instead.

https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=FIN

Now, we can discuss whether it is better to focus on the average students, or on the best student. (In my imaginary utopia, we would provide the best individually tailored opportunity for both. In reality, no country seems able to achieve both.) An argument in favor of the best students is that we need people to invent new things.

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