8 ms·

SF CA resident, parent of two school age children chiming in. The direction with math seems pretty dismal, in that as of right now, everyone is singly tracked t

by idoh 4y ago

SF CA resident, parent of two school age children chiming in. The direction with math seems pretty dismal, in that as of right now, everyone is singly tracked together for math through freshman year of high school. This results in children who have higher aptitudes[1] to not be well served by schools. The majority of people I know who have the means opt out of the public school system, which probably makes the problem worse generally but solves a pain point for them. [1] - I take it as a fact that different people have different talent levels for different things, but not everyone agrees with that, and disagreement on this point is a big driver (but not the only driver) in the "everyone gets exactly the same" approach that is trending now.

300bps 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  I'm not sure that would be worse than the current system where the richer American is smarter, better looking, and more physically able
  - 300bps 4y ago
    There are quite literally billions of people that are richer, smarter, better looking and/or more physically able than I am. I'm glad for it. I would never want to bring anyone else down to meet me at my level on any metric.
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries? I don’t want everyone to be the same, but unbridled disparity seems equally as bad to me… especially considering how arbitrary it can be.
      - bendbro 4y ago
        Nobody should care about disparity, people should care about maximizing benefit for every American. I'm not saying it is easy to evaluate this, but it is obviously all we should care about. The existence of gazillionares is fine so long as individual wellbeing in this system is higher relative to other potential systems.
        MrJohz 4y ago
        The two problems with this philosophy are: Firstly, evidentially, people do care about disparity: increasing disparity seems to adversely affect people physiologically, independently from wealth. That is, having someone else be significantly richer than you, independently of your own health, seems to create stress effects in a population. By the metrics of national health and well-being, it seems like wealth disparity is a bad thing in its own right. Secondly, the problem with billionaires is not that they simply have so much money, it's that one's ability to influence society, including making and breaking the rules of society, is intrinsically tied to money. For example, consider the recent news about Bezos buying a new boat, and having to take down and rebuild a bridge to get it to sea. On the one hand, it doesn't really matter to me how much he spends on that boat - it's his money, and he can use it as he likes. However, the people of Rotterdam were promised that the bridge would remain put, yet Bezos' money (presumably via the shipyard that organised this) was enough to override the democratic process, presumably alongside adding a significant inconvenience to the people living there. Or consider the recent trend of billionaires buying media companies. On the one hand, it's kind of irrelevant how they want to invest their money, but on the other hand, these media companies afford significant impact on the views and perspectives seen by society. If we really want to claim that we live in a democracy, it seems dangerous to also accept that one person can, essentially on a whim, buy one of the largest social media platforms with only vague hints as to what he plans to do with it. That sort of power is absolutely not something that you (I assume) or I personally can wield, yet it could well have a significant impact in shaping public opinion. As long as money can be roughly equated to power, then wealth disparity will remain a very important thing to be concerned about.
      - 300bps 4y ago
        It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries? People going hungry, especially children, is a travesty. What is your solution to it? We already have food stamps, welfare, fully subsidized healthcare, child tax credits, social security disability, free school breakfasts and lunches, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, churches, charities, social security death benefit and so much more. People are still hungry. Should we do more? The lesson of Africa says we shouldn’t. Decades of food aid to Africa did little more than make the continent dependent on food aid and drive all the farmers out of business because they couldn’t compete against free. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food.4.7116855.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food... And I haven’t even brought up lthat there simply aren’t enough billionaires to tax to make even a tiny difference in any of this. Even if you took literally their entire net worth, converted it to cash (which is literally impossible) and spent it on the poor it wouldn’t make any difference.
bpoyner 4y ago
That would drive my wife up the wall. Our school district in the Pittsburgh suburbs has 5 math tracks from grades 4-12. They just added linear algebra because so many kids were maxing out the available math curriculum.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  And the course is what, elementary row operations?
  - verall 4y ago
    Sounds the Linear Algebra for Engineers course I took in undergrad...
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    My understanding is that in the US ‘linear algebra’ is used for both the thing that involves manipulating grids of numbers in various ways (so the basis is implicit), the thing that is a bi like algebra but for matrices and vectors, the thing you have in physics where linear maps have specific geometric meanings (so you care about being mostly basis-agnostic, and you care about how the objects change when you change basis), and the thing which is abstract algebra for vector spaces and so on. When I was in school in the U.K. we did the first and second things, including eg multiplying matrices, eigenstuff, diagonalising them, inverting small matrices, some determinant/cross product stuff, and we maybe did the thing where you solve a first order linear ODE system by converting to matrix exponentiation, though I don’t quite remember. I think we just called it vectors and matrices. There was some useful stuff there. The problem is that it was at a course so close to the leaves of the ‘x allowed to depend on material from y’ tree that we didn’t get to apply that much (related example: we had to waste a bunch of time on silly equations in physics because they couldn’t depend on us knowing about the y’ = kx ODE) At university we did some courses in vectors and matrices / vector calculus that went down the practical route towards physics things and useful tools, and we had a course called ‘linear algebra’ that covered the abstract algebra side of things, where everything was lemmas/theorems/proofs beginning with e.g. suppose e1, e2, …, en is a basis for a vector space V over F, …. However it is certainly possible that the US terminology (linear algebra for everything) was more common outside of the courses I took.
quirino 4y ago
As a student who participated in Math Olympiads throughout middle and high school, having to be on the same track as everyone was downright painful. This type of thing really shouldn't exist.
kodah 4y ago
I think I can respond to your footnote. I went to a Catholic school that split us up into separate tracks for maths specifically in grades 4-8. I was in the upper level math class for a year before they moved me. I had a teacher who celebrated and encouraged bullies, slapped children with a ruler, and threw a chalkboard eraser at me from the front of the classroom because I appeared to be falling asleep. When my grades fell the knee jerk reaction was that I was wrongly assigned to this class and it was expected to have below some magical threshold of attrition. The ramifications for me were that my old friend group would no longer interact with me the way they used to, I was immediately bored in our lower maths class, and I was now a "dumb" kid. It wasn't until I'd dropped out of college and taught myself math, because of the interviews in this industry, that I learned to enjoy math again. My point is that you're really fucking with the social firmware of kids when you do that. Also, reading between the lines of my life, not being in that upper level math class clearly had no impact on the latter parts of my life.
- idoh 4y ago
  First, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that teacher and that it caused you problems for many years down the line. I'm trying to figure out how this relates. It sounds like you had a bad experience with tracking, and there is a fundamental issue with tracking where some amount of people will have bad experiences, but ultimately you were able to achieve your potential anyway, so why make the experience bad with tracking if people will eventually get to the right level over time - is that a fair interpretation of your comment?
  - kodah 4y ago
    My lack of success in that math program was due to a "bad experience" (I chuckled a little at that phrasing). The fallout of which had social implications, made me entirely disinterested (if not hostile?) to maths, and followed me for years. Point being, separating our classes had little to nil positive impact (for me) in the long run, and the decision of which class I was in failed to address the foundational problems with the class. The latter bit being the most important; in my case it was an abusive teacher with an anger problem, but there's also a good chance that nobody actually sucks at math but that we teach it from a perspective that only a subset of the population will ever relate to or meaningfully learn from. I guess what I'd like to see is some reproducible results showing that giving gifted kids their own course program and separating them from their cohorts actually has a long term benefit when compared to keeping them all together. Edit: To make what I'm saying a bit more clear: There's a ton of people in these threads assuming that not everybody is born with math skills (or variants of that attitude). That is exactly what these teachers thought and how different my life would've been had I agreed.
luca3v 4y ago
I don't know if it's still there in the revision, but in chapter one of the earlier draft of the California framework it said, in a prominent place "we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents" Edit: in the new version it has been changed to "high-level mathematics achievement is not dependent on rare natural gifts, but rather can be cultivated"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  Sounds like the author didn't have any.
  - andrewprock 4y ago
    She doesn't even have a math degree.
  - archagon 4y ago
    Sounds like you’re making shit up.
- juve1996 4y ago
  > "high-level mathematics achievement is not dependent on rare natural gifts, but rather can be cultivated" I mean, I would hope this is true. I'm not "naturally" gifted at mathematics, but like reading, writing, and other things, I can learn them in school and got quite good at them. Public education is like mass transit. Not everyone gets their own Lamborghini. Most have to take the bus. Its goal should be providing the best general education it can for all people and making as many people as possible productive. If you looked at society 500 years ago you could assume that only certain people were smart enough to read and write.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Actual math is irrelevant to this whole argument, just as actual literacy was irrelevant ~500 years ago. This isn't about math ability, it's about the fact that STEM is an obstacle to woke bureaucrats' projection of power.
crystoloxy 4y ago
It’s honestly a fucking nightmare to live here, especially with kids. I’m a crazy “leftist” where I grew up but SF/CA is bonkers (e.g. re: [1] — are you fucking kidding me? Have you not met a single real fucking living human being? My family has a “curse” we ascribe to all the clumsy folks of our blood and I assure you there are more than can be reasonably blamed on chance).
- leaflets2 4y ago
  (personally I don't understand what your saying / what the point is, but I'm also tired. I'm not GP btw. -- in what ways is it a nightmare for example? What's a real human and a not real human? "the clumsy folks of our blood" -- I don't understand, how are they clumsy for example)
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Worse, if some faster pupils get bored, the chance is very high that they begin to sabotage classes as they are for everyone.

by idoh 4y ago

300bps 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else

micromacrofoot 4y ago
I'm not sure that would be worse than the current system where the richer American is smarter, better looking, and more physically able
- 300bps 4y ago
  There are quite literally billions of people that are richer, smarter, better looking and/or more physically able than I am. I'm glad for it. I would never want to bring anyone else down to meet me at my level on any metric.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries? I don’t want everyone to be the same, but unbridled disparity seems equally as bad to me… especially considering how arbitrary it can be.
    - bendbro 4y ago
      Nobody should care about disparity, people should care about maximizing benefit for every American. I'm not saying it is easy to evaluate this, but it is obviously all we should care about. The existence of gazillionares is fine so long as individual wellbeing in this system is higher relative to other potential systems.
      - MrJohz 4y ago
        The two problems with this philosophy are: Firstly, evidentially, people do care about disparity: increasing disparity seems to adversely affect people physiologically, independently from wealth. That is, having someone else be significantly richer than you, independently of your own health, seems to create stress effects in a population. By the metrics of national health and well-being, it seems like wealth disparity is a bad thing in its own right. Secondly, the problem with billionaires is not that they simply have so much money, it's that one's ability to influence society, including making and breaking the rules of society, is intrinsically tied to money. For example, consider the recent news about Bezos buying a new boat, and having to take down and rebuild a bridge to get it to sea. On the one hand, it doesn't really matter to me how much he spends on that boat - it's his money, and he can use it as he likes. However, the people of Rotterdam were promised that the bridge would remain put, yet Bezos' money (presumably via the shipyard that organised this) was enough to override the democratic process, presumably alongside adding a significant inconvenience to the people living there. Or consider the recent trend of billionaires buying media companies. On the one hand, it's kind of irrelevant how they want to invest their money, but on the other hand, these media companies afford significant impact on the views and perspectives seen by society. If we really want to claim that we live in a democracy, it seems dangerous to also accept that one person can, essentially on a whim, buy one of the largest social media platforms with only vague hints as to what he plans to do with it. That sort of power is absolutely not something that you (I assume) or I personally can wield, yet it could well have a significant impact in shaping public opinion. As long as money can be roughly equated to power, then wealth disparity will remain a very important thing to be concerned about.
    - 300bps 4y ago
      It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries? People going hungry, especially children, is a travesty. What is your solution to it? We already have food stamps, welfare, fully subsidized healthcare, child tax credits, social security disability, free school breakfasts and lunches, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, churches, charities, social security death benefit and so much more. People are still hungry. Should we do more? The lesson of Africa says we shouldn’t. Decades of food aid to Africa did little more than make the continent dependent on food aid and drive all the farmers out of business because they couldn’t compete against free. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food.4.7116855.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food... And I haven’t even brought up lthat there simply aren’t enough billionaires to tax to make even a tiny difference in any of this. Even if you took literally their entire net worth, converted it to cash (which is literally impossible) and spent it on the poor it wouldn’t make any difference.

bpoyner 4y ago

That would drive my wife up the wall. Our school district in the Pittsburgh suburbs has 5 math tracks from grades 4-12. They just added linear algebra because so many kids were maxing out the available math curriculum.

selimthegrim 4y ago
And the course is what, elementary row operations?
- verall 4y ago
  Sounds the Linear Algebra for Engineers course I took in undergrad...
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  My understanding is that in the US ‘linear algebra’ is used for both the thing that involves manipulating grids of numbers in various ways (so the basis is implicit), the thing that is a bi like algebra but for matrices and vectors, the thing you have in physics where linear maps have specific geometric meanings (so you care about being mostly basis-agnostic, and you care about how the objects change when you change basis), and the thing which is abstract algebra for vector spaces and so on. When I was in school in the U.K. we did the first and second things, including eg multiplying matrices, eigenstuff, diagonalising them, inverting small matrices, some determinant/cross product stuff, and we maybe did the thing where you solve a first order linear ODE system by converting to matrix exponentiation, though I don’t quite remember. I think we just called it vectors and matrices. There was some useful stuff there. The problem is that it was at a course so close to the leaves of the ‘x allowed to depend on material from y’ tree that we didn’t get to apply that much (related example: we had to waste a bunch of time on silly equations in physics because they couldn’t depend on us knowing about the y’ = kx ODE) At university we did some courses in vectors and matrices / vector calculus that went down the practical route towards physics things and useful tools, and we had a course called ‘linear algebra’ that covered the abstract algebra side of things, where everything was lemmas/theorems/proofs beginning with e.g. suppose e1, e2, …, en is a basis for a vector space V over F, …. However it is certainly possible that the US terminology (linear algebra for everything) was more common outside of the courses I took.

quirino 4y ago

As a student who participated in Math Olympiads throughout middle and high school, having to be on the same track as everyone was downright painful. This type of thing really shouldn't exist.

kodah 4y ago

I think I can respond to your footnote. I went to a Catholic school that split us up into separate tracks for maths specifically in grades 4-8. I was in the upper level math class for a year before they moved me. I had a teacher who celebrated and encouraged bullies, slapped children with a ruler, and threw a chalkboard eraser at me from the front of the classroom because I appeared to be falling asleep. When my grades fell the knee jerk reaction was that I was wrongly assigned to this class and it was expected to have below some magical threshold of attrition. The ramifications for me were that my old friend group would no longer interact with me the way they used to, I was immediately bored in our lower maths class, and I was now a "dumb" kid. It wasn't until I'd dropped out of college and taught myself math, because of the interviews in this industry, that I learned to enjoy math again. My point is that you're really fucking with the social firmware of kids when you do that. Also, reading between the lines of my life, not being in that upper level math class clearly had no impact on the latter parts of my life.

idoh 4y ago
First, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that teacher and that it caused you problems for many years down the line. I'm trying to figure out how this relates. It sounds like you had a bad experience with tracking, and there is a fundamental issue with tracking where some amount of people will have bad experiences, but ultimately you were able to achieve your potential anyway, so why make the experience bad with tracking if people will eventually get to the right level over time - is that a fair interpretation of your comment?
- kodah 4y ago
  My lack of success in that math program was due to a "bad experience" (I chuckled a little at that phrasing). The fallout of which had social implications, made me entirely disinterested (if not hostile?) to maths, and followed me for years. Point being, separating our classes had little to nil positive impact (for me) in the long run, and the decision of which class I was in failed to address the foundational problems with the class. The latter bit being the most important; in my case it was an abusive teacher with an anger problem, but there's also a good chance that nobody actually sucks at math but that we teach it from a perspective that only a subset of the population will ever relate to or meaningfully learn from. I guess what I'd like to see is some reproducible results showing that giving gifted kids their own course program and separating them from their cohorts actually has a long term benefit when compared to keeping them all together. Edit: To make what I'm saying a bit more clear: There's a ton of people in these threads assuming that not everybody is born with math skills (or variants of that attitude). That is exactly what these teachers thought and how different my life would've been had I agreed.

luca3v 4y ago

I don't know if it's still there in the revision, but in chapter one of the earlier draft of the California framework it said, in a prominent place "we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents" Edit: in the new version it has been changed to "high-level mathematics achievement is not dependent on rare natural gifts, but rather can be cultivated"

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
Sounds like the author didn't have any.
- andrewprock 4y ago
  She doesn't even have a math degree.
- archagon 4y ago
  Sounds like you’re making shit up.
juve1996 4y ago
> "high-level mathematics achievement is not dependent on rare natural gifts, but rather can be cultivated" I mean, I would hope this is true. I'm not "naturally" gifted at mathematics, but like reading, writing, and other things, I can learn them in school and got quite good at them. Public education is like mass transit. Not everyone gets their own Lamborghini. Most have to take the bus. Its goal should be providing the best general education it can for all people and making as many people as possible productive. If you looked at society 500 years ago you could assume that only certain people were smart enough to read and write.
- mbg721 4y ago
  Actual math is irrelevant to this whole argument, just as actual literacy was irrelevant ~500 years ago. This isn't about math ability, it's about the fact that STEM is an obstacle to woke bureaucrats' projection of power.

crystoloxy 4y ago

It’s honestly a fucking nightmare to live here, especially with kids. I’m a crazy “leftist” where I grew up but SF/CA is bonkers (e.g. re: [1] — are you fucking kidding me? Have you not met a single real fucking living human being? My family has a “curse” we ascribe to all the clumsy folks of our blood and I assure you there are more than can be reasonably blamed on chance).

leaflets2 4y ago
(personally I don't understand what your saying / what the point is, but I'm also tired. I'm not GP btw. -- in what ways is it a nightmare for example? What's a real human and a not real human? "the clumsy folks of our blood" -- I don't understand, how are they clumsy for example)

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Worse, if some faster pupils get bored, the chance is very high that they begin to sabotage classes as they are for everyone.