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California tries to close the gap in math, but sets off a backlash

60 points by guerrilla 5y ago

causi 5y ago
reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted I could see an argument that there aren't significantly high numbers of genetically gifted children. However, I don't think you can make that argument without recognizing the fact that children's home lives and home cultures have enormous impact on their potential, effects you can't undue with special teacher guidelines. The child who goes home and spends four hours studying quietly is going to demolish in every academic way the child who goes home and listens to his parents cursing at each other and the child who goes home and watches TV for four hours.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  OTOH, when I was a kid, I never did homework at home and I always got straight As in math and science. I was just naturally good at those subjects and was able to not only listen to the lecture in class and learn, but also do my homework for that same day in that same time period. And I retained the knowledge for the quizzes and tests, too. If that isn't "naturally gifted" I don't know what is. I definitely watched other students struggle to maintain a B average with lots of studying and effort. I suffered in other subjects, and others excelled at them with little effort. They were the naturally gifted ones there. It was a constant source of stress to me that they would treat everyone the same when it came to those subjects, to the point that in 6th grade, when reviewing multiplication tables that I'd learned years before, I refused to do my homework. I ended up with an F that semester in math because I was so good at it. Luckily they moved on to harder subjects in the next semester and my grades returned.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    rejecting natural aptitude is ridiculous for sure. It needs to be recognized but it also does not necessarily need to be segregated. People learn from being around smart peers. The important thing imo is to hold _all_ students to a higher bar so that concepts like multiplication tables are drilled in the same year they are taught, not being reviewed in 6th grade
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      The slower students slow down the faster students, the disruptive students disrupt the less disruptive students. This is why there are accelerated classes, to allow each student to reach their potential, as well as why disruptive students need to be removed from the classroom. If you are morally outraged by accelerated classes because they don't have your preferred racial mix, then that's fine, but understand it means that the faster students have their potential held back. If that's an acceptable price for equality of outcomes, then at least say that and don't pretend that somehow you can have your cake and eat it -- that faster students benefit from being taught slower paced material, and that well-behaved students benefit from being in a class with disruptive students, or that math education is improved when calculus and other challenging topics are removed. That's just doublespeak. Have whatever values you want to have, but don't fool yourself into thinking there isn't a price, and that faster or well-behaved students aren't the ones paying the price. What will happen is that wealthy students will pay for extra tutors or private school, and we will be back to a less meritocratic system in which you need to be both rich and smart in order to get the good education, as the state is now focused on making sure the best students don't learn too much to upset the ideals of "equality". This the logical endgame for a state that believes Harrison Bergeron is a utopian work.
      - bllguo 5y ago
        I believed what you said for a long time and still kind of do. But this is how our system has operated for a long time and we see today the effects on our society. Some high performers, but many many people who lack even basic principles of mathematics. Do you think this is okay, or should things change? Is it okay to "sacrifice" some potential to raise the floor for everyone else? (I don't even think that a "sacrifice" is necessarily involved, and there's always self-study - the route all the _truly_ gifted prodigies of history take - but let's operate under that assumption) I think dismissing the whole concept out of hand is just as dogmatic as the caricatured liberal views you seem to have assumed I hold. There are education systems in the world, like in East Asia, that follow these principles, so I think they are worth exploring. This is a weakly held position for me.
        5y ago
  - fatnoah 5y ago
    I had a healthy and stable home life, but also parents who pretty much left me to my own devices when it came to school work. In elementary school, I mostly did my homework and never, ever studied for a test. In high school, I did about 50% of my homework and probably studied for a grand total of 3-4 tests over that four years. All the while, I aced tests with nearly straight As. In school (elementary school especially), I'd finish tests and other work well before other students, would be bored as they asked questions with "easy" answers, etc. When I got to college, I had zero healthy study habits, and got a good six months of getting my ass kicked until I sorted things out. It wasn't until then that I actually felt challenged and engaged. Until then, I expected to get As and didn't have to work for it. Once in college, where I was challenged, EARNING As was so satisfying. I still remember the feeling of accomplishment of getting As in two chemistry classes, which was a subject I didn't like and I had to work HARD for those grades.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Is "naturally gifted" the new "self-made man"? It seems so obviously self-refuting that I can't believe people use it without irony. Can anyone name anyone who is naturally gifted at anything that didn't get taught and learn a million different things (not all of which they were good at) in order to get to the point where they could display their "natural gift"? I say we take anyone's kid who they claim is naturally gifted and dump them on a deserted island shortly after birth and we'll see exactly how well they get on with their natural gifts. Maybe we'll come back in 16 years and they'll be doing calculus, speaking three languages fluently and playing the saxophone, but I doubt it. After all, we wouldn't want them held back by the decades of parental care and schooling that we give to the normies who need to like, learn stuff from books and be fed for years and other such crutches for the feeble-minded lesser beings.
  - ergot_vacation 5y ago
    What on earth are you talking about? Yes, obviously in order to make an apple pie you must first create the universe. In order to be gifted you must first be born, have a basic level of food and shelter, be mostly free of disease and so on. That's not a relevant point of discussion here. We're discussing a case where all things are equal. "But all things aren't equal!" You scream. "Those evil white people grew up in the lap of luxury while the poor, repressed minorities had a life of scraping, miserable poverty!" First, this isn't always true. There are poor white people and middle-class (or even rich) minorities, and to suggest that every minority is hopelessly disadvantaged because they all grew up in the ghetto is its own kind of racism. But second, this is a separate discussion. To answer the question "Are some people naturally gifted?" you have to adjust the other variables to equal first in order to tease out the answer to that specific question. Having discovered that yes, indeed they are, you can then conclude that this CONTINUES TO BE THE CASE in situations where "privilege" is not equal. The fact that some people are handicapped or helped by their economic or racial background does not magically erase the fact that they are ALSO helped or held back by their innate intelligence, and tendency to understand or not understand specific concepts. Some people are smarter than other people, in a way that has nothing to do with economics or racism, but is purely biological luck. In direct contradiction to your assertion, THIS is self-evident, in the same way that "Things fall to the earth when dropped". and "Eventually, everyone dies" are. To deny this is to deny basic, readily-observable and reproducible reality, in a way that suggests either disingenuousness or mental illness. Everyone is not equal, never has been, and never will be. It is an inherent property of the randomness of nature that some members of a species end up with abilities superior to others, completely independent of economics, race, social class, or any other human construction. Stop pushing this inane Harrison Bergeron gibberish.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
Look at that misleading headline, and then continue to trust the NYT.
- hahajk 5y ago
  What is misleading about the headline?
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    It's not about the "Gap in Math", it is about ideology with regard to social justice, withdrawing support from gifted children, removing difficult topics. They don't want to help kids catch up, they want to make sure nobody can get ahead. The Backlash is not against helping out "poor" kids, it is against hampering the progress of talented kids.
    - hahajk 5y ago
      I thought that was what “closing the gap” was. In fact, in the podcast “Nice White Parents”, they’re explicit about that. It about preventing advanced classes and tutors so the achieving kids can commingle with the struggling kids.
    - rootsudo 5y ago
      100% This.
tjs8rj 5y ago
I heard this talk at Microsoft about outlier success, and while somewhat of a throwaway comment, the speaker mentioned that the vast majority of the low American standing in those international math score comparison is due to motivation. Summarized, he said when taking the PISA math exam used to benchmark countries on their academic rankings, we always hear how the US is nearly last among developed countries, but if you compare how far different county’s students get on the 120 question end-of-assessment question (with nothing to do with math), THAT ranking almost perfectly lined up with the math assessment ranking. Overall, if true, the weak showing of the US seems to be in large part a matter of motivation and persistence than what we’d traditionally call math ability (so maybe we need to change our thinking to include grit to stick it out as part of the math curriculum). Paper on the topic: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24004/w24004.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24004/w240...
- nashalo 5y ago
  Well ability and motivation can also have a causation relation in both ways...
- dmos62 5y ago
  From abstract: > Offering incentives to U.S. students, who generally perform poorly on assessments, improved performance substantially. In contrast, Shanghai students, who are top performers on assessments, were not affected by incentives. That's pretty interesting. What's with US students and motivation?
- npunt 5y ago
  China cherry-picked higher performing, higher socioeconomic regions for their PISA testing, where poorer students don't have access to HS & tests. US PISA scores would be very different if Cambridge and Minnesota and a few other regions were tested. Worth considering before social factors come into play, as large countries have a lot of variance. Not saying motivation isn't also an issue, but there are lots of motivated kids and great schools in the US if you know where to look. https://www.the74million.org/article/schneider-the-strange-case-of-china-and-its-top-pisa-rankings-how-cherry-picking-regions-to-take-part-skews-its-high-scores/ https://www.the74million.org/article/schneider-the-strange-c...
DeWilde 5y ago
Wait, so the idea to close the gap is to lower the standards so you need less effort to score better?
- brippalcharrid 5y ago
  Well the problem that we're trying to address here is inequality of outcomes. Grading people against how intelligent we would expect them to be tends to be too obvious, and going out of our way to cognitively impair some of the them would be too controversial, so our only option for the time being is to redefine what attainment is.
- bllguo 5y ago
  is that the idea, or is that how it's being framed? It could also be to raise the standards so that low-performing students in the class are held to a higher bar.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Getting rid of calculus is lowering standards. >The draft rejected the idea of naturally gifted children, recommended against shifting certain students into accelerated courses in middle school and tried to promote high-level math courses that could serve as alternatives to calculus, like data science or statistics.
    - bllguo 5y ago
      okay that is true, and I will absolutely die on the "calculus is a crucial part of math education" hill I do think there could be a benefit to reducing "gifted"/"accelerated" classes before high school, though, which is something that 1. could be framed as either raising or lowering standards and 2. the general public seems to have a visceral reaction to. that's more what I was addressing
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I think it is understandable for people to have a visceral reaction to even the idea of limiting their kids' potential. I do not see how reducing gifted/accelerated classes can be framed as raising standards though. The standards are the standards, they do not have anything to do with a child's age.
citizenkeen 5y ago
Knowing what I know of math now, having the high level high school math class be statistics or data science instead of calculus would have changed my life.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  In what way?
- amcoastal 5y ago
  Huge agreement. Calculus is one branch on the tree of mathematics and one of the more useless ones in modern society (that can be taught to HS students).
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    How can you understand statistics without understanding basic calculus? e.g. Central Limit Theorem, probability density functions, etc.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      You don't need to take an entire year or semester of calculus to understand statistics.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        You don't need to take an entire year or semester of statistics to understand statistics either if you put the bar that low. Basic statistics is already taught to most kids and there isn't much value in teaching them more complex formulas without also teaching them the needed background to properly understand those formulas.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        > there isn't much value in teaching them more complex formulas without also teaching them the needed background to properly understand those formulas. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I believe with a strong background in algebra and simply knowing how to take an integral and derivative you can go far in stats. Will you be an expert? Obviously not, but high school level stats knowledge can easily be attained.
high_5 5y ago
> According to data from the Education Department, calculus is not even offered in most schools that serve a large number of Black and Latino students. The data mentioned does not show if the problem is in the schools or the Black/Latino students picking such schools.
- joe-collins 5y ago
  Students don't typically pick their high schools. They're sorted into one based on their address. Transfers are possible, within enrollment limits, and subject to a parent's willingness to go through the paperwork, but they're certainly not the norm.
- amcoastal 5y ago
  I'm going to guess you just have no idea how schooling works in the US. Otherwise I'd be super interested in your theory that the poorest parents are spending resources to take their kids out of their way to shittier schools.
  - Dma54rhs 5y ago
    I'm not an American, so can you tell me? Don't you have some sort of state or national standards every school has to cover?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      No. Every state is different, and even within states, every county/city can be different, and even within county/city, different school districts can be different. My city of 200k people has two different school districts led by different people. I am assuming there are some standards tied to federal government funding, or maybe standards at the state level. Generally though, you want to live in the more expensive parts of town because those schools will be better managed (and obviously have a more capable cohort of students due to them being kids of richer parents). When buying a house, the basic question all couples with kids face is "what is the least expensive house in the most expensive neighborhood" in order for their kids to attend the better schools (assuming the parents are not rich enough to send them to $20k+ per year private schools). It is one of the reasons the SAT and Advanced Placement test scores is (or was back in my day) so prominent in determining admittance to college. They are optional tests that kids take to show their proficiency.
wjnc 5y ago
A question for the mathematically inclined / advanced: Where do you feel your interest in math was mostly developed? For me it's clearly at home. My dad loved math and statistics, taught me concepts from a young age and a generation on I try to pass that on to my children. Given their aptitude and results it seems to work. I don't much believe that "some people just can't grok math" other than a basic correlation with IQ. I think we don't lay the foundation right for kids struggling with math since they have to follow or be dragged along a median path. If mathematical enthousiasm is mostly developed at home, do American parents have or take less time to give kids that enthousiasm? My kids get extra schooling in math in school (K-12 is the US equivalent), a few hours a week with a dedicated teacher for those hours. Okay, that teacher doesn't really grok math (gives the answers to the really hard questions, with 9 years olds ;), but the extra sessions with the peers combined with attention at home give good results on standardized tests plus exactly that enthousiasm that I'm hoping for.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > A question for the mathematically inclined / advanced: Where do you feel your interest in math was mostly developed? I liked math because it was easy. And then I continued to like math because it continued to be easy. Then at a phd level and you had to write papers and do other tedious things etc, I realized I didn't care that much and learned programming instead.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > If mathematical enthousiasm is mostly developed at home, do American parents have or take less time to give kids that enthousiasm? I am going to say something controversial when we see the the success of former soviet countries in Maths and the lack of success in central Europe and North America, despite the resources, to me, there appears to be a difference in how schooling handles suffering/frustration in those cultures. What I mean is that often the process of learning maths needs frustration and sometimes feeling overwhelmed and you have to stay with it, until your brain re-organizes and things click. In most western cultures there is a general sense that all learning should be fun and interesting and that children should be sheltered from frustration. I agree with it for the most part as a general principle, but I don't believe that works with the re-wiring needed to _understand_ topics in mathematics.
kbos87 5y ago
I don’t know how math education has evolved since the late 90s - early 2000s when I experienced it, but it was far more damaging to my self esteem and my relationship with math than anything else. I learned from a pretty early age that solving long equations with a pencil and paper is simply something my mind is never going to be good at. I hated every minute of it, and it was a huge source of anxiety for me and my parents. My mom, a house cleaner at the time, managed to muster the money to get me a tutor, which got me through high school and into college. Fast forward 15 years and my relationship with math couldn’t be any different. In the context of my career where math has a practical purpose and I no longer have an artificially imposed requirement to memorize, I actually have quite a bit of use for and natural curiosity around math. I’m not saying that my experience means that math education should change dramatically for everyone, but it certainly fails a wide swath of people like me. Their math education is traumatic, that they are “bad at math” is reinforced into their brains by the educational system, and they live the rest of their lives avoiding it. (I’m married to someone like this!) I’m just glad that I was able to see how math as it is experienced in the classroom is pretty dramatically different from the way it is used in the professional world, and that I’m only bad at the former, not the latter.
- deepsun 5y ago
  I hear this "let's change math education" often. But how do you propose to do it?
  - beej71 5y ago
    A lot of the attempts at teaching Common Core math that I looked at were far superior to my experience in the 80s/90s. I was taught math wrongly. Like the GP, I didn't grow to appreciate it like I do today until years after the fact... and I got a math minor! But really what I'd like to see is math taught in a far more granular way. Weekly chunks that were pass/no-pass. If you didn't get it, repeat the week. If you got it, progress to the next week. If you have _n_ weeks of math done, great, you get a HS diploma. If you have _m_, you have a minor, etc. And I'm saying "math", but that could be broken down into subspecialities. You don't qualify for precalc week 1 until you've reached Trig Week 12 and Geometry Week 8, or whatever. Weeks could be "challenged", as well, if you were able to skip ahead. And there'd be no need for a gifted program. (Such programs--I was in one--always sat the wrong way with me. Like it was an artifact of bad structural design of the education system.) Anyway, that's what I'd do if I were king. In fact, I'd change every subject to use this model. (HT Kahn Academy and their flipped-classroom work.)
piokoch 5y ago
I think we are nearing the point where "liberals" or "the left" would have to meet reality. "reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted" That's simply not true, empirically not true. Clearly some children are naturally gifted in math, ability to play music, drawing, computer programming, sport, learning foreign languages and so on. Obviously we can ignore reality, in the same way as not-so-long dead communistic block ignored reality of economy, but this always end up in the same way - reality wins, soon or later, but the price of learning this is typically rather high. The tragic part here is that obviously rich kids will go to private schools that will let them develop their skills and talents. Those who will be hurt are gifted kids from poor families.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> "The draft also suggested that math should not be colorblind" That is an example of CRT. If our society is colorblind, then there's no oppressor-oppressed divide, the central tenet of CRT. How schools are infecting kids with critical race theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uZGyh1uTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uZGyh1uTk What's not said in the article is that the agenda is also to support NCLB (No Child Left Behind), which allows students to graduate without knowing any material, or even being able to read.
retrac 5y ago
One thing often left out of this discussion is that gifted students often do not do well in regular programming. I was placed in the gifted program after third grade when I failed everything. I was bored out of my mind. I am pretty sure I would have become a delinquent without it. I still flunked out of high school when I was 17 but I kept going as long as I did because the teachers were interesting and the coursework challenging (even if I never did much of it). Not all intelligent kids are studious by nature.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  Same, but I just dropped out and did my GED at 16. Worthless to waste my time in a place I did not want to be, had to wake up at 5AM and had to play along. Best decision I made. I would never put my children to any USA public school, private or entirely outside the USA.
  - skyde 5y ago
    As the father of a gifted kid I feel the same. But i have 0 experience with private school because I grew up in Canada where they are extremely rare. How do you suggest I proceed to find which private school are actually better and not just religion oriented?
    - rootsudo 5y ago
      It's a hard question, I was lucky to have some private school but for my high school years it was public and a complete waste. Religion for the schools I went too weren't that enforced, but I would say ask other parents, there should be a good tour of the school included, and then check out the clubs they offer. "Better" though, is hard. I would just review how they teach STEM - interview the teachers with open ended questions and see how they respond. One big PLUS though is the networking, private school, the peers/kids are usually from "better*" (for lack of a better word.) off families so that could mean better success, even if religious. It's hard to quantify it, but the friends I made from my private school days helped me tremendously learn so many different things - how life is different for the truly well off, to community, and "success". It sounds odd writing it like this, but in the USA many kids in school are there because it is compulsory and it is not a profit center, it is a cost center, bigger classrooms per teacher, smaller campuses, food not healthy, and draconian rules like no water bottles in class or other. Of course it does depend per school, but those pain points about public school, can be taken to see if you can find a proper private school. And if you do, I would get the most of your dollar and do the parent events too - meet the other parents and strike bonds that may really last your childs lifetime.
threatofrain 5y ago
Here is a link to the Equitable Math proposal which is in the process of being finalized. https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I found it notable that in a lengthy multi-part document about white supremacy in math, there is zero mention of the word "Asian" despite that Asians are about 15% of California's population.
- cullinap 5y ago
  Actually if you read the document and remove the phrase "white supremacy" I tend to agree with some of the conclusions. For example the section about procedural knowledge vs. conceptual is spot on. You don't need to be a human calculator to be good at math. Schools emphasize surface level understandings and almost never allow you to go deep on a topic.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  In 2050, the contemporary struggle against white supremacy that is purportedly found in pretty much everything will be listed among great examples of moral panics. And the society will be morally panicking about something else, because this seems to be a generic weakness in human nature, not amenable to learning.
- tim333 5y ago
  Asians of course don't fit the narrative of balming underperformance of some racial groups on racism, being of a different racial group themselves but probably out performing whites on average.
cullinap 5y ago
Maybe emphasis on conceptual understanding vs. calculation is what we need to be driving at. Higher level math is not focused on getting exact answers. I always thought that starting out with set theory would be a better as it is the historical precursor calculus anyway. Most calculus courses seemed to be focused on the memorization of techniques that don't make much sense until you take an analysis course. Atleast set theory gives you a foundation for understanding probability which gives you a foundation for stats.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  The problem is closed book exams, not calculus itself, right?
deleted 5y ago
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syspec 5y ago
Ironically such a document frames Black / Latino students as 1 monolith, frames them all as too stupid to get math, frames them all as poor, frames them all as caring about their community of color (ie have no friends outside their own race), cannot be gifted or excel at math naturally. It does all this by pretending math needs to change, when there are a million other things we could fix in bad schools to make all students perform better at math. If you expect less from people, they will meet that mark. If you expect more from people they will rise to the challenge 150 years ago most people in America were not literate. Now it's expected so they are
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  > Tracking is part of a larger debate about access to college. Under the current system, students who are not placed in accelerated courses by middle school may never get the opportunity to take calculus, which has long been an informal gatekeeper for acceptance to selective schools. > > According to data from the Education Department, calculus is not even offered in most schools that serve a large number of Black and Latino students. Expecting but then not providing opportunity to learn isn’t a great model. And, this problem is not universal for all people attending those schools. The fact that Black and Latino folks are statistically more impacted is important, yet not necessary for wishing to improve.
  - skyde 5y ago
    why make it about race? Those school also have student that are not black and latino. There are 2 distinct problems: 1- School in poor neighborhood don’t offer calculus 2- Poor neighborhood have more Black and latino. Changing math for everyone or reserving spot for black and latino in university is not the solution it will just make the USA less educated compared to other country. there is only one real solution are: 1- Make sure school in poor neighborhood have enough funding to offer calculus 2- Stop telling minorities they are not smart enough and couldn’t succeed if they tried. Asian parent know kids are smart enough to learn math and just need to work hard! that’s why they send kid to tutoring school. And that’s why asian are good at school even if they are a minority
keyboardCowBoy 5y ago
Math is racist because thinking is hard
rootsudo 5y ago
Math isn't political. Math is Math. All this abstraction is just excuses and bandages for why the USA is falling behind compared to China, Japan, Russia, Philippines and more. It's just sad. 1+1=2. It shouldn't equal 11 or whatever political current events of the day are.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  This is what a dying country looks like. The ship is sinking, and we're arguing about whether the scrollwork above the bar is cultural appropriation.
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    100% Agree.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  The USA is not falling behind those countries. It’s in healthier shape than all of them.
skyde 5y ago
“ reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted” as a father of a gifted kid this make me angry! Why is it ok to say some kid are one standard deviation below the curve and need special class and teacher. But it’s not ok to say some student are also one standard deviation above the curve and also bold special class and teachers?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  If you reject the idea that anybody is "naturally gifted", you must also reject the idea that anybody is smarter than anybody else, unless you want to waste everybody's time on meaningless semantics and pretend that the word "smart" doesn't mean what everybody uses it to mean… but wasting time on meaningless semantics is a popular pastime these days! I can understand why some people hate to face the fact that some people are smarter than some other people (maybe even themselves!) and I'm honestly surprised that this has only become a societal problem recently.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > Why is it ok to say some kid are one standard deviation below the curve and need special class and teacher. Because it doesn't offend the families of the average children, who make most of the population.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
More accurate title: "California seeks to turn Math education into anti-white, anti-intelligence propaganda devoid of any connection to reality. Few remaining sane people in state protest fruitlessly." These people are monsters. They're literally tearing apart civilization (education of children is foundational) for the sake of their doomed ideology. If you can't see the parallels to the Soviet Union, you're either already drinking the kool-aide or incomprehensibly dense.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  What does this have to do with Soviet Union? Soviet Union always had gifted student programs.
  - pushingice 5y ago
    Lysenkoism, usually, when people refer to denial of reality in connection with the Soviet Union.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Also, there was a weird period when cybernetics was considered bourgeoise pseudo-science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_pseudoscience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_pseudoscience Late Stalinism is worth studying, if only to learn how twisted can an entire country become out of fear.
      - garbagecoder 5y ago
        Yeah imagine a country getting freaked out over a few dozens of millions of dead and going crazy and passing a bunch of insane laws and having its politics go insane. It’s not like that doesn’t describe post 9/11 America.
        Viliam1234 5y ago
        The timing was a bit different though: first the country got crazy, then it passed a bunch of insane laws, then a few dozens of millions died, then they started WW2 (Molotov–Ribbentrop pact), and then a few more millions died.
tonfreed 5y ago
Have we ever considered the idea that teachers are to blame for the disparity? As long as I've been alive and even further back, teaching has been peoples' "backup". It's not attracting the best and brightest, and now it attracts all these angry woke virgins who deliberately want to force communism into their classes. I think it might be time to figure out some hard questions for the union to answer

60 points by guerrilla 5y ago

reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted I could see an argument that there aren't significantly high numbers of genetically gifted children. However, I don't think you can make that argument without recognizing the fact that children's home lives and home cultures have enormous impact on their potential, effects you can't undue with special teacher guidelines. The child who goes home and spends four hours studying quietly is going to demolish in every academic way the child who goes home and listens to his parents cursing at each other and the child who goes home and watches TV for four hours.

wccrawford 5y ago
OTOH, when I was a kid, I never did homework at home and I always got straight As in math and science. I was just naturally good at those subjects and was able to not only listen to the lecture in class and learn, but also do my homework for that same day in that same time period. And I retained the knowledge for the quizzes and tests, too. If that isn't "naturally gifted" I don't know what is. I definitely watched other students struggle to maintain a B average with lots of studying and effort. I suffered in other subjects, and others excelled at them with little effort. They were the naturally gifted ones there. It was a constant source of stress to me that they would treat everyone the same when it came to those subjects, to the point that in 6th grade, when reviewing multiplication tables that I'd learned years before, I refused to do my homework. I ended up with an F that semester in math because I was so good at it. Luckily they moved on to harder subjects in the next semester and my grades returned.
- bllguo 5y ago
  rejecting natural aptitude is ridiculous for sure. It needs to be recognized but it also does not necessarily need to be segregated. People learn from being around smart peers. The important thing imo is to hold _all_ students to a higher bar so that concepts like multiplication tables are drilled in the same year they are taught, not being reviewed in 6th grade
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    The slower students slow down the faster students, the disruptive students disrupt the less disruptive students. This is why there are accelerated classes, to allow each student to reach their potential, as well as why disruptive students need to be removed from the classroom. If you are morally outraged by accelerated classes because they don't have your preferred racial mix, then that's fine, but understand it means that the faster students have their potential held back. If that's an acceptable price for equality of outcomes, then at least say that and don't pretend that somehow you can have your cake and eat it -- that faster students benefit from being taught slower paced material, and that well-behaved students benefit from being in a class with disruptive students, or that math education is improved when calculus and other challenging topics are removed. That's just doublespeak. Have whatever values you want to have, but don't fool yourself into thinking there isn't a price, and that faster or well-behaved students aren't the ones paying the price. What will happen is that wealthy students will pay for extra tutors or private school, and we will be back to a less meritocratic system in which you need to be both rich and smart in order to get the good education, as the state is now focused on making sure the best students don't learn too much to upset the ideals of "equality". This the logical endgame for a state that believes Harrison Bergeron is a utopian work.
    - bllguo 5y ago
      I believed what you said for a long time and still kind of do. But this is how our system has operated for a long time and we see today the effects on our society. Some high performers, but many many people who lack even basic principles of mathematics. Do you think this is okay, or should things change? Is it okay to "sacrifice" some potential to raise the floor for everyone else? (I don't even think that a "sacrifice" is necessarily involved, and there's always self-study - the route all the _truly_ gifted prodigies of history take - but let's operate under that assumption) I think dismissing the whole concept out of hand is just as dogmatic as the caricatured liberal views you seem to have assumed I hold. There are education systems in the world, like in East Asia, that follow these principles, so I think they are worth exploring. This is a weakly held position for me.
      - 5y ago
- fatnoah 5y ago
  I had a healthy and stable home life, but also parents who pretty much left me to my own devices when it came to school work. In elementary school, I mostly did my homework and never, ever studied for a test. In high school, I did about 50% of my homework and probably studied for a grand total of 3-4 tests over that four years. All the while, I aced tests with nearly straight As. In school (elementary school especially), I'd finish tests and other work well before other students, would be bored as they asked questions with "easy" answers, etc. When I got to college, I had zero healthy study habits, and got a good six months of getting my ass kicked until I sorted things out. It wasn't until then that I actually felt challenged and engaged. Until then, I expected to get As and didn't have to work for it. Once in college, where I was challenged, EARNING As was so satisfying. I still remember the feeling of accomplishment of getting As in two chemistry classes, which was a subject I didn't like and I had to work HARD for those grades.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Is "naturally gifted" the new "self-made man"? It seems so obviously self-refuting that I can't believe people use it without irony. Can anyone name anyone who is naturally gifted at anything that didn't get taught and learn a million different things (not all of which they were good at) in order to get to the point where they could display their "natural gift"? I say we take anyone's kid who they claim is naturally gifted and dump them on a deserted island shortly after birth and we'll see exactly how well they get on with their natural gifts. Maybe we'll come back in 16 years and they'll be doing calculus, speaking three languages fluently and playing the saxophone, but I doubt it. After all, we wouldn't want them held back by the decades of parental care and schooling that we give to the normies who need to like, learn stuff from books and be fed for years and other such crutches for the feeble-minded lesser beings.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  What on earth are you talking about? Yes, obviously in order to make an apple pie you must first create the universe. In order to be gifted you must first be born, have a basic level of food and shelter, be mostly free of disease and so on. That's not a relevant point of discussion here. We're discussing a case where all things are equal. "But all things aren't equal!" You scream. "Those evil white people grew up in the lap of luxury while the poor, repressed minorities had a life of scraping, miserable poverty!" First, this isn't always true. There are poor white people and middle-class (or even rich) minorities, and to suggest that every minority is hopelessly disadvantaged because they all grew up in the ghetto is its own kind of racism. But second, this is a separate discussion. To answer the question "Are some people naturally gifted?" you have to adjust the other variables to equal first in order to tease out the answer to that specific question. Having discovered that yes, indeed they are, you can then conclude that this CONTINUES TO BE THE CASE in situations where "privilege" is not equal. The fact that some people are handicapped or helped by their economic or racial background does not magically erase the fact that they are ALSO helped or held back by their innate intelligence, and tendency to understand or not understand specific concepts. Some people are smarter than other people, in a way that has nothing to do with economics or racism, but is purely biological luck. In direct contradiction to your assertion, THIS is self-evident, in the same way that "Things fall to the earth when dropped". and "Eventually, everyone dies" are. To deny this is to deny basic, readily-observable and reproducible reality, in a way that suggests either disingenuousness or mental illness. Everyone is not equal, never has been, and never will be. It is an inherent property of the randomness of nature that some members of a species end up with abilities superior to others, completely independent of economics, race, social class, or any other human construction. Stop pushing this inane Harrison Bergeron gibberish.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

Look at that misleading headline, and then continue to trust the NYT.

hahajk 5y ago
What is misleading about the headline?
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  It's not about the "Gap in Math", it is about ideology with regard to social justice, withdrawing support from gifted children, removing difficult topics. They don't want to help kids catch up, they want to make sure nobody can get ahead. The Backlash is not against helping out "poor" kids, it is against hampering the progress of talented kids.
  - hahajk 5y ago
    I thought that was what “closing the gap” was. In fact, in the podcast “Nice White Parents”, they’re explicit about that. It about preventing advanced classes and tutors so the achieving kids can commingle with the struggling kids.
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    100% This.

tjs8rj 5y ago

I heard this talk at Microsoft about outlier success, and while somewhat of a throwaway comment, the speaker mentioned that the vast majority of the low American standing in those international math score comparison is due to motivation. Summarized, he said when taking the PISA math exam used to benchmark countries on their academic rankings, we always hear how the US is nearly last among developed countries, but if you compare how far different county’s students get on the 120 question end-of-assessment question (with nothing to do with math), THAT ranking almost perfectly lined up with the math assessment ranking. Overall, if true, the weak showing of the US seems to be in large part a matter of motivation and persistence than what we’d traditionally call math ability (so maybe we need to change our thinking to include grit to stick it out as part of the math curriculum). Paper on the topic: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24004/w24004.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24004/w240...

nashalo 5y ago
Well ability and motivation can also have a causation relation in both ways...
dmos62 5y ago
From abstract: > Offering incentives to U.S. students, who generally perform poorly on assessments, improved performance substantially. In contrast, Shanghai students, who are top performers on assessments, were not affected by incentives. That's pretty interesting. What's with US students and motivation?
npunt 5y ago
China cherry-picked higher performing, higher socioeconomic regions for their PISA testing, where poorer students don't have access to HS & tests. US PISA scores would be very different if Cambridge and Minnesota and a few other regions were tested. Worth considering before social factors come into play, as large countries have a lot of variance. Not saying motivation isn't also an issue, but there are lots of motivated kids and great schools in the US if you know where to look. https://www.the74million.org/article/schneider-the-strange-case-of-china-and-its-top-pisa-rankings-how-cherry-picking-regions-to-take-part-skews-its-high-scores/ https://www.the74million.org/article/schneider-the-strange-c...

DeWilde 5y ago

Wait, so the idea to close the gap is to lower the standards so you need less effort to score better?

brippalcharrid 5y ago
Well the problem that we're trying to address here is inequality of outcomes. Grading people against how intelligent we would expect them to be tends to be too obvious, and going out of our way to cognitively impair some of the them would be too controversial, so our only option for the time being is to redefine what attainment is.
bllguo 5y ago
is that the idea, or is that how it's being framed? It could also be to raise the standards so that low-performing students in the class are held to a higher bar.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Getting rid of calculus is lowering standards. >The draft rejected the idea of naturally gifted children, recommended against shifting certain students into accelerated courses in middle school and tried to promote high-level math courses that could serve as alternatives to calculus, like data science or statistics.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    okay that is true, and I will absolutely die on the "calculus is a crucial part of math education" hill I do think there could be a benefit to reducing "gifted"/"accelerated" classes before high school, though, which is something that 1. could be framed as either raising or lowering standards and 2. the general public seems to have a visceral reaction to. that's more what I was addressing
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I think it is understandable for people to have a visceral reaction to even the idea of limiting their kids' potential. I do not see how reducing gifted/accelerated classes can be framed as raising standards though. The standards are the standards, they do not have anything to do with a child's age.

citizenkeen 5y ago

Knowing what I know of math now, having the high level high school math class be statistics or data science instead of calculus would have changed my life.

guerrilla 5y ago
In what way?
amcoastal 5y ago
Huge agreement. Calculus is one branch on the tree of mathematics and one of the more useless ones in modern society (that can be taught to HS students).
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  How can you understand statistics without understanding basic calculus? e.g. Central Limit Theorem, probability density functions, etc.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    You don't need to take an entire year or semester of calculus to understand statistics.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      You don't need to take an entire year or semester of statistics to understand statistics either if you put the bar that low. Basic statistics is already taught to most kids and there isn't much value in teaching them more complex formulas without also teaching them the needed background to properly understand those formulas.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        > there isn't much value in teaching them more complex formulas without also teaching them the needed background to properly understand those formulas. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I believe with a strong background in algebra and simply knowing how to take an integral and derivative you can go far in stats. Will you be an expert? Obviously not, but high school level stats knowledge can easily be attained.

high_5 5y ago

> According to data from the Education Department, calculus is not even offered in most schools that serve a large number of Black and Latino students. The data mentioned does not show if the problem is in the schools or the Black/Latino students picking such schools.

joe-collins 5y ago
Students don't typically pick their high schools. They're sorted into one based on their address. Transfers are possible, within enrollment limits, and subject to a parent's willingness to go through the paperwork, but they're certainly not the norm.
amcoastal 5y ago
I'm going to guess you just have no idea how schooling works in the US. Otherwise I'd be super interested in your theory that the poorest parents are spending resources to take their kids out of their way to shittier schools.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  I'm not an American, so can you tell me? Don't you have some sort of state or national standards every school has to cover?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    No. Every state is different, and even within states, every county/city can be different, and even within county/city, different school districts can be different. My city of 200k people has two different school districts led by different people. I am assuming there are some standards tied to federal government funding, or maybe standards at the state level. Generally though, you want to live in the more expensive parts of town because those schools will be better managed (and obviously have a more capable cohort of students due to them being kids of richer parents). When buying a house, the basic question all couples with kids face is "what is the least expensive house in the most expensive neighborhood" in order for their kids to attend the better schools (assuming the parents are not rich enough to send them to $20k+ per year private schools). It is one of the reasons the SAT and Advanced Placement test scores is (or was back in my day) so prominent in determining admittance to college. They are optional tests that kids take to show their proficiency.

wjnc 5y ago

A question for the mathematically inclined / advanced: Where do you feel your interest in math was mostly developed? For me it's clearly at home. My dad loved math and statistics, taught me concepts from a young age and a generation on I try to pass that on to my children. Given their aptitude and results it seems to work. I don't much believe that "some people just can't grok math" other than a basic correlation with IQ. I think we don't lay the foundation right for kids struggling with math since they have to follow or be dragged along a median path. If mathematical enthousiasm is mostly developed at home, do American parents have or take less time to give kids that enthousiasm? My kids get extra schooling in math in school (K-12 is the US equivalent), a few hours a week with a dedicated teacher for those hours. Okay, that teacher doesn't really grok math (gives the answers to the really hard questions, with 9 years olds ;), but the extra sessions with the peers combined with attention at home give good results on standardized tests plus exactly that enthousiasm that I'm hoping for.

Jensson 5y ago
> A question for the mathematically inclined / advanced: Where do you feel your interest in math was mostly developed? I liked math because it was easy. And then I continued to like math because it continued to be easy. Then at a phd level and you had to write papers and do other tedious things etc, I realized I didn't care that much and learned programming instead.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> If mathematical enthousiasm is mostly developed at home, do American parents have or take less time to give kids that enthousiasm? I am going to say something controversial when we see the the success of former soviet countries in Maths and the lack of success in central Europe and North America, despite the resources, to me, there appears to be a difference in how schooling handles suffering/frustration in those cultures. What I mean is that often the process of learning maths needs frustration and sometimes feeling overwhelmed and you have to stay with it, until your brain re-organizes and things click. In most western cultures there is a general sense that all learning should be fun and interesting and that children should be sheltered from frustration. I agree with it for the most part as a general principle, but I don't believe that works with the re-wiring needed to _understand_ topics in mathematics.

kbos87 5y ago

I don’t know how math education has evolved since the late 90s - early 2000s when I experienced it, but it was far more damaging to my self esteem and my relationship with math than anything else. I learned from a pretty early age that solving long equations with a pencil and paper is simply something my mind is never going to be good at. I hated every minute of it, and it was a huge source of anxiety for me and my parents. My mom, a house cleaner at the time, managed to muster the money to get me a tutor, which got me through high school and into college. Fast forward 15 years and my relationship with math couldn’t be any different. In the context of my career where math has a practical purpose and I no longer have an artificially imposed requirement to memorize, I actually have quite a bit of use for and natural curiosity around math. I’m not saying that my experience means that math education should change dramatically for everyone, but it certainly fails a wide swath of people like me. Their math education is traumatic, that they are “bad at math” is reinforced into their brains by the educational system, and they live the rest of their lives avoiding it. (I’m married to someone like this!) I’m just glad that I was able to see how math as it is experienced in the classroom is pretty dramatically different from the way it is used in the professional world, and that I’m only bad at the former, not the latter.

deepsun 5y ago
I hear this "let's change math education" often. But how do you propose to do it?
- beej71 5y ago
  A lot of the attempts at teaching Common Core math that I looked at were far superior to my experience in the 80s/90s. I was taught math wrongly. Like the GP, I didn't grow to appreciate it like I do today until years after the fact... and I got a math minor! But really what I'd like to see is math taught in a far more granular way. Weekly chunks that were pass/no-pass. If you didn't get it, repeat the week. If you got it, progress to the next week. If you have _n_ weeks of math done, great, you get a HS diploma. If you have _m_, you have a minor, etc. And I'm saying "math", but that could be broken down into subspecialities. You don't qualify for precalc week 1 until you've reached Trig Week 12 and Geometry Week 8, or whatever. Weeks could be "challenged", as well, if you were able to skip ahead. And there'd be no need for a gifted program. (Such programs--I was in one--always sat the wrong way with me. Like it was an artifact of bad structural design of the education system.) Anyway, that's what I'd do if I were king. In fact, I'd change every subject to use this model. (HT Kahn Academy and their flipped-classroom work.)

piokoch 5y ago

I think we are nearing the point where "liberals" or "the left" would have to meet reality. "reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted" That's simply not true, empirically not true. Clearly some children are naturally gifted in math, ability to play music, drawing, computer programming, sport, learning foreign languages and so on. Obviously we can ignore reality, in the same way as not-so-long dead communistic block ignored reality of economy, but this always end up in the same way - reality wins, soon or later, but the price of learning this is typically rather high. The tragic part here is that obviously rich kids will go to private schools that will let them develop their skills and talents. Those who will be hurt are gifted kids from poor families.

redis_mlc 5y ago

> "The draft also suggested that math should not be colorblind" That is an example of CRT. If our society is colorblind, then there's no oppressor-oppressed divide, the central tenet of CRT. How schools are infecting kids with critical race theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uZGyh1uTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uZGyh1uTk What's not said in the article is that the agenda is also to support NCLB (No Child Left Behind), which allows students to graduate without knowing any material, or even being able to read.

retrac 5y ago

One thing often left out of this discussion is that gifted students often do not do well in regular programming. I was placed in the gifted program after third grade when I failed everything. I was bored out of my mind. I am pretty sure I would have become a delinquent without it. I still flunked out of high school when I was 17 but I kept going as long as I did because the teachers were interesting and the coursework challenging (even if I never did much of it). Not all intelligent kids are studious by nature.

rootsudo 5y ago
Same, but I just dropped out and did my GED at 16. Worthless to waste my time in a place I did not want to be, had to wake up at 5AM and had to play along. Best decision I made. I would never put my children to any USA public school, private or entirely outside the USA.
- skyde 5y ago
  As the father of a gifted kid I feel the same. But i have 0 experience with private school because I grew up in Canada where they are extremely rare. How do you suggest I proceed to find which private school are actually better and not just religion oriented?
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    It's a hard question, I was lucky to have some private school but for my high school years it was public and a complete waste. Religion for the schools I went too weren't that enforced, but I would say ask other parents, there should be a good tour of the school included, and then check out the clubs they offer. "Better" though, is hard. I would just review how they teach STEM - interview the teachers with open ended questions and see how they respond. One big PLUS though is the networking, private school, the peers/kids are usually from "better*" (for lack of a better word.) off families so that could mean better success, even if religious. It's hard to quantify it, but the friends I made from my private school days helped me tremendously learn so many different things - how life is different for the truly well off, to community, and "success". It sounds odd writing it like this, but in the USA many kids in school are there because it is compulsory and it is not a profit center, it is a cost center, bigger classrooms per teacher, smaller campuses, food not healthy, and draconian rules like no water bottles in class or other. Of course it does depend per school, but those pain points about public school, can be taken to see if you can find a proper private school. And if you do, I would get the most of your dollar and do the parent events too - meet the other parents and strike bonds that may really last your childs lifetime.

threatofrain 5y ago

Here is a link to the Equitable Math proposal which is in the process of being finalized. https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I found it notable that in a lengthy multi-part document about white supremacy in math, there is zero mention of the word "Asian" despite that Asians are about 15% of California's population.

cullinap 5y ago
Actually if you read the document and remove the phrase "white supremacy" I tend to agree with some of the conclusions. For example the section about procedural knowledge vs. conceptual is spot on. You don't need to be a human calculator to be good at math. Schools emphasize surface level understandings and almost never allow you to go deep on a topic.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
inglor_cz 5y ago
In 2050, the contemporary struggle against white supremacy that is purportedly found in pretty much everything will be listed among great examples of moral panics. And the society will be morally panicking about something else, because this seems to be a generic weakness in human nature, not amenable to learning.
tim333 5y ago
Asians of course don't fit the narrative of balming underperformance of some racial groups on racism, being of a different racial group themselves but probably out performing whites on average.

cullinap 5y ago

Maybe emphasis on conceptual understanding vs. calculation is what we need to be driving at. Higher level math is not focused on getting exact answers. I always thought that starting out with set theory would be a better as it is the historical precursor calculus anyway. Most calculus courses seemed to be focused on the memorization of techniques that don't make much sense until you take an analysis course. Atleast set theory gives you a foundation for understanding probability which gives you a foundation for stats.

chakkepolja 5y ago
The problem is closed book exams, not calculus itself, right?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

syspec 5y ago

Ironically such a document frames Black / Latino students as 1 monolith, frames them all as too stupid to get math, frames them all as poor, frames them all as caring about their community of color (ie have no friends outside their own race), cannot be gifted or excel at math naturally. It does all this by pretending math needs to change, when there are a million other things we could fix in bad schools to make all students perform better at math. If you expect less from people, they will meet that mark. If you expect more from people they will rise to the challenge 150 years ago most people in America were not literate. Now it's expected so they are

ViViDboarder 5y ago
> Tracking is part of a larger debate about access to college. Under the current system, students who are not placed in accelerated courses by middle school may never get the opportunity to take calculus, which has long been an informal gatekeeper for acceptance to selective schools. > > According to data from the Education Department, calculus is not even offered in most schools that serve a large number of Black and Latino students. Expecting but then not providing opportunity to learn isn’t a great model. And, this problem is not universal for all people attending those schools. The fact that Black and Latino folks are statistically more impacted is important, yet not necessary for wishing to improve.
- skyde 5y ago
  why make it about race? Those school also have student that are not black and latino. There are 2 distinct problems: 1- School in poor neighborhood don’t offer calculus 2- Poor neighborhood have more Black and latino. Changing math for everyone or reserving spot for black and latino in university is not the solution it will just make the USA less educated compared to other country. there is only one real solution are: 1- Make sure school in poor neighborhood have enough funding to offer calculus 2- Stop telling minorities they are not smart enough and couldn’t succeed if they tried. Asian parent know kids are smart enough to learn math and just need to work hard! that’s why they send kid to tutoring school. And that’s why asian are good at school even if they are a minority

keyboardCowBoy 5y ago

Math is racist because thinking is hard

rootsudo 5y ago

Math isn't political. Math is Math. All this abstraction is just excuses and bandages for why the USA is falling behind compared to China, Japan, Russia, Philippines and more. It's just sad. 1+1=2. It shouldn't equal 11 or whatever political current events of the day are.

ergot_vacation 5y ago
This is what a dying country looks like. The ship is sinking, and we're arguing about whether the scrollwork above the bar is cultural appropriation.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  100% Agree.
SamReidHughes 5y ago
The USA is not falling behind those countries. It’s in healthier shape than all of them.

skyde 5y ago

“ reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted” as a father of a gifted kid this make me angry! Why is it ok to say some kid are one standard deviation below the curve and need special class and teacher. But it’s not ok to say some student are also one standard deviation above the curve and also bold special class and teachers?

commandlinefan 5y ago
If you reject the idea that anybody is "naturally gifted", you must also reject the idea that anybody is smarter than anybody else, unless you want to waste everybody's time on meaningless semantics and pretend that the word "smart" doesn't mean what everybody uses it to mean… but wasting time on meaningless semantics is a popular pastime these days! I can understand why some people hate to face the fact that some people are smarter than some other people (maybe even themselves!) and I'm honestly surprised that this has only become a societal problem recently.
Viliam1234 5y ago
> Why is it ok to say some kid are one standard deviation below the curve and need special class and teacher. Because it doesn't offend the families of the average children, who make most of the population.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

More accurate title: "California seeks to turn Math education into anti-white, anti-intelligence propaganda devoid of any connection to reality. Few remaining sane people in state protest fruitlessly." These people are monsters. They're literally tearing apart civilization (education of children is foundational) for the sake of their doomed ideology. If you can't see the parallels to the Soviet Union, you're either already drinking the kool-aide or incomprehensibly dense.

lostmsu 5y ago
What does this have to do with Soviet Union? Soviet Union always had gifted student programs.
- pushingice 5y ago
  Lysenkoism, usually, when people refer to denial of reality in connection with the Soviet Union.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Also, there was a weird period when cybernetics was considered bourgeoise pseudo-science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_pseudoscience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_pseudoscience Late Stalinism is worth studying, if only to learn how twisted can an entire country become out of fear.
    - garbagecoder 5y ago
      Yeah imagine a country getting freaked out over a few dozens of millions of dead and going crazy and passing a bunch of insane laws and having its politics go insane. It’s not like that doesn’t describe post 9/11 America.
      - Viliam1234 5y ago
        The timing was a bit different though: first the country got crazy, then it passed a bunch of insane laws, then a few dozens of millions died, then they started WW2 (Molotov–Ribbentrop pact), and then a few more millions died.

tonfreed 5y ago

Have we ever considered the idea that teachers are to blame for the disparity? As long as I've been alive and even further back, teaching has been peoples' "backup". It's not attracting the best and brightest, and now it attracts all these angry woke virgins who deliberately want to force communism into their classes. I think it might be time to figure out some hard questions for the union to answer