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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

latimes.com

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#751

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

genxy wrote: post #741
jmspring wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just shipped the kiddo into the real world, she's leaning liberal arts (her and her mom suck at math), but she has a benefit neither her mom or I had - EU deal citizenship. She's going to do a year here to figure things out - she's also been thinking about Europe. University in Europe, for undergrad, is different than the US. I think the large class model and a barrier of exams to advance makes sense in Europe…

No one has to suck at math. Any human can learn the majority of skills.

No one has to suck at any one thing, but one person can't possibly be good at everything. Time is finite -- everything you choose to do is a choice to not do some other thing.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#752

Post by vnce »

plemer wrote: post #750
genxy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has to suck at math. Any human can learn the majority of skills.

Have you ever taught?

Yes and I standby genxy’s comment. It was always a question of motivation, not ability.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#753

Post by genxy »

plemer wrote: post #750
genxy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has to suck at math. Any human can learn the majority of skills.

Have you ever taught?

I have! My favorite students were the 55+ returning education students that really wanted to finally learn algebra and calculus.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#754

Post by genxy »

vnce wrote: post #752
plemer wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever taught?

Yes and I standby genxy’s comment. It was always a question of motivation, not ability.

And motivation was often impeded by either trauma or not finding a way to make it relevant to the student. Those are prereqs for learning anything. The common denominator for people that are good at something is that they liked it, so they did it more.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#755

Post by suzzer99 »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #157
kleiba2 wrote: post #28

I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercise…

I had the opposite experience, as it were, teaching in the UC system. The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. Most of the students were always great. But it seemed like every quarter, there would be 5-10 problematic students whose, for lack of better term, entitlement, resulted in far more hours of work than worthwhile. And don't get me started on the false disa…

The false disability claims are completely out of control.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#756

Post by Danox »

dnautics wrote: post #714
thot_experiment wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance. I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different sty…

education is highly funded. teachers are not paid well because there is a perception that "anyone can be a teacher" (which is true in the sense that there is no particular enumerable qualification or credential that makes you a good teacher) so the market is full of people who decide that they should be a teacher (many should not, but there is no a priori way of knowing). supply high. a lot of education funding goes…

Education United States is not necessarily highly funded nor are all teachers necessarily good. Can you identify a good teacher? Yes you can. Will you get rid of the ones that are bad well not really.

I still remember all of the teachers that were really good and I remember some of the ones that were bad, the ones that were good. I wish that many of them could have lived long enough for me to say thank you.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#757

Post by jimbob45 »

everdrive wrote: post #71
1970-01-01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the entire problem in a nutshell. You cannot reject more than one or two students in a year or the school will reject you.

In part this is a consequence of blank slate ideology, which presupposes that all students are equally capable of identical outcomes and that individual student failures are always / usually systemic failures in disguise. This is a silly perspective, but the blank slate folks really got their tendrils in just about anywhere. In reality, some people are simply bad at math. More education will help, but they will alway…

Have you not seen Stand and Deliver? We’ve seen incredible teachers prove over and over again that no student is truly unreachable given enough time and attention.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#758

Post by californical »

recursive wrote: post #677
no-name-here wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, moral is to make student loans subject to regular bankrupcy. Aren't the issues that there is no collateral/nothing to repossess? What kind of issuer would give a 5 or 6 figure loan with no collateral and nothing to repossess?

If no one would issue a loan, that might suggest that these loans should not exist.

And maybe that tuition costs must go down so that they can still get students enrolled

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#759

Post by jimbokun »

ziofill wrote: post #708

I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…

What about the demands on the time of professors from students who repeatedly try and fail the exams? Seems like that could get expensive for taxpayers.

Maybe it doesn’t happen much in practice?

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