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These efforts feel misguided. Black and Latino people aren't bad at math because of the language used in math education (most of the language seems neutral from
by ironman1478 5y ago
These efforts feel misguided. Black and Latino people aren't bad at math because of the language used in math education (most of the language seems neutral from what I remembered), it's because they are largely poor, due to structural racism or they are first generation immigrants who didn't come to work in tech or something. They're just poor and unfortunately it's hard to really do anything when you're poor in America.
My parents immigrated from Romania and were part of the Florida Romanian community. Many were poor, didn't really have a great support system, and didnt really get America. Many of the kids in that community just dropped out or didn't do well in school and that's largely because of a poor home life and just not having access to anything. All the countries that have great education systems also have great support systems for families.
Algebra isn't hard (though it is time consuming imo), you can pass all the tests with memorization since it's applying a few patterns over and over again. Delaying it isn't going to make people better at it.
- wyager 5y agoThe PC model that unequal outcomes would disappear if you simply addressed poverty, fought putative structural discrimination via affirmative action, etc. has been repeatedly applied and disproven at massive scale dozens of times since the 60s. It's a nice story but it doesn't seem to reflect reality at all. I don't think the model of "it's because the way math is phrased is racist" is a better model - in fact, it's strictly worse - but it's the obvious next step in tacking more epicycles onto the progression of theories that have been palatable to post-WW2 progressives (who mostly dominate things like school policy).
- zozbot234 5y agoThe 'PC model' has actually done very little to address poverty. If anything, it has actively perpetuated detrimental attitudes.
- ironman1478 5y agoSorry, I didn't mean to imply that fighting poverty would solve all issues by itself. However, its unclear to me how reducing poverty wouldn't help? I know its not related to the specific topic, but for example many people of color drop out of college because they cannot afford to stay in or feel obligated to help their families in time of need. https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2014/06/childhood-poverty https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2014/06/child... It seems like alleviating poverty will help? It also just feels... obvious?
- thizzbuzz 5y agoWhat are you talking about, you noxious tool? Wealth inequality is higher than ever since before the 1960s. There is every indication that reducing poverty improves educational outcomes.
- dang 5y agoYikes - posting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: since all of your comments in the last 6 years have broken the site guidelines, I've banned the account. Admittedly there were only 3 of them, but that's still definitely not ok. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- zozbot234 5y ago> These efforts feel misguided. Black and Latino people aren't bad at math because of the language used in math education Language issues are actually a likely challenge for some Latino students.
- rendang 5y agoIf black students do worse mainly on account of poverty, why do wealthy black kids score worse than poor whites on the SAT? https://www.jstor.org/stable/2999198 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2999198