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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 socie

by 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.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> Do you think this is okay, or should things change? This is not the result of accelerated classes, it's the lack of accelerated classes. Really it's the result of insufficient sorting. If we had good sorting, we'd be routing half our kids into trade schools where they learn useful skills, and route the other half of our kids into real college prep high schools where the slow track would do calculus and the fast track would do differential equations. But instead, we send everyone to the same school, pretend that everyone should go to college, and then slow things down so that the slowest student in the room sets the pace. Then we don't remove disruptive students, hire social crusading teachers who themselves don't have a passion for the subjects they teach, and end up with our current outcomes. Most US high school teachers wouldn't even be qualified to teach at a gymnasium in Europe because even our standards for teachers are so low. Yes, you have to do heroics to learn anything in a U.S. school. The solution to that is not to do more of the same that got us here. The U.S. used to have high schools with college-preparatory ("prep") emphasis that existed side by side with vocational high schools where you could learn a useful trade. High schools even used to have entrance exams. We've fallen a long way in the name of pretending everyone is equal - just in the last 60 years - and the end result is that we have a shortage of both skilled tradesmen and skilled engineers - now we need to import both, and immigrants come from all over the world and earn much higher salaries than the native born because they got a better education. For example many systems in Europe still do good sorting, managing to give a good education to both fast and slow students by sending one to a gymnasium and the other to a vocational school, and the result is high paying careers for both. So what's happening in California is merely the continuation of dumbing things down in the name of equality, an ideological process that has been happening for many decades, but taking it to such a level of absurdity and doublespeak that more people are starting to recognize how foolish it all is.
- causi 5y ago
  If we had good sorting, we'd be routing half our kids into trade schools where they learn useful skills, and route the other half of our kids into real college prep high schools where the slow track would do calculus and the fast track would do differential equations. I mean that's also a world in which the humanities don't seem to exist at all.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> 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? I would pin this on widening income/wealth gaps, family problems at home, cultural differences, and other non advanced class related reasons. I dismiss the concept because I think trying to attack a problem not at the root is a waste of time, and in this case, actually harmful. The big elephant in the room with all these problems is wealth and power redistribution, but that is untouchable so efforts are redirected to things like this.

by bllguo 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

> Do you think this is okay, or should things change? This is not the result of accelerated classes, it's the lack of accelerated classes. Really it's the result of insufficient sorting. If we had good sorting, we'd be routing half our kids into trade schools where they learn useful skills, and route the other half of our kids into real college prep high schools where the slow track would do calculus and the fast track would do differential equations. But instead, we send everyone to the same school, pretend that everyone should go to college, and then slow things down so that the slowest student in the room sets the pace. Then we don't remove disruptive students, hire social crusading teachers who themselves don't have a passion for the subjects they teach, and end up with our current outcomes. Most US high school teachers wouldn't even be qualified to teach at a gymnasium in Europe because even our standards for teachers are so low. Yes, you have to do heroics to learn anything in a U.S. school. The solution to that is not to do more of the same that got us here. The U.S. used to have high schools with college-preparatory ("prep") emphasis that existed side by side with vocational high schools where you could learn a useful trade. High schools even used to have entrance exams. We've fallen a long way in the name of pretending everyone is equal - just in the last 60 years - and the end result is that we have a shortage of both skilled tradesmen and skilled engineers - now we need to import both, and immigrants come from all over the world and earn much higher salaries than the native born because they got a better education. For example many systems in Europe still do good sorting, managing to give a good education to both fast and slow students by sending one to a gymnasium and the other to a vocational school, and the result is high paying careers for both. So what's happening in California is merely the continuation of dumbing things down in the name of equality, an ideological process that has been happening for many decades, but taking it to such a level of absurdity and doublespeak that more people are starting to recognize how foolish it all is.

causi 5y ago
If we had good sorting, we'd be routing half our kids into trade schools where they learn useful skills, and route the other half of our kids into real college prep high schools where the slow track would do calculus and the fast track would do differential equations. I mean that's also a world in which the humanities don't seem to exist at all.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> 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? I would pin this on widening income/wealth gaps, family problems at home, cultural differences, and other non advanced class related reasons. I dismiss the concept because I think trying to attack a problem not at the root is a waste of time, and in this case, actually harmful. The big elephant in the room with all these problems is wealth and power redistribution, but that is untouchable so efforts are redirected to things like this.