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Kids with no aptitude for math are being made miserable for years, some to the point of dropping out of education altogether. Isn’t that anti intellectual? Your

by _hcuq 4y ago

Kids with no aptitude for math are being made miserable for years, some to the point of dropping out of education altogether. Isn’t that anti intellectual? Your blind dogmatism is also anti intellectual.

nicoburns 4y ago
While it's not the whole story, I've seen a lot more kids struggling with math due to poor teaching (often several years before the class they're currently taking) than due to lack of aptitude.
- akira2501 4y ago
  So, we're trying to optimize a problem that we've built zero infrastructure for? That sounds like paving material for a road no one wants to actually take.
- gexla 4y ago
  Is it really the teaching which makes the difference though? I struggled with math through all levels of school. As an adult, I struggled with with programming, but I was self taught. After putting in the hours, I eventually learned enough to make a living from it. I then realized, that maybe the students who did well with math put the same effort as I did in learning programming. The difference between math and programming for me is that I immediately saw the utility of learning programming.
  - SyzygistSix 4y ago
    In my experience it does. The ways math is taught differs a good bit from when I went to K-12. In my experience the differences in teachers, motivation, and teaching methods all made a significant difference.
barry-cotter 4y ago
That’s just school, nothing special about Math. The High School Study of Student Engagement has 17% of students bored in every class and 66% bored every day. Most people spend a large part of every day in school suffering. That’s what school is.
epgui 4y ago
That's not what anti-intellectualism means.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  It's anti-intellectualism because it judges, bars progress, and limits success in other intellectual fields based on measures of success in one field.
  - epgui 4y ago
    You're free to use your own definition for any word you like, but that's not what anti-intellectualism means to the rest of the world. > Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#Education_and_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#Education...
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      Shrug. You're failing to use your intellect to read the whole definition you just copypastad and see how it might relate to what the commenter said: we're often putting primacy on achievement in mathematics as a gate blocking all the other intellectual pursuits mentioned. Not to mention the bias engineering disciplines seem to have, specifically against art and literature as can be witnessed half the time these topics come on this very forum.
      - epgui 4y ago
        I will agree that these things you're naming are "bad things", just like anti-intellectualism is a "bad thing", or that they are counter-productive, or misguided... But they are not anti-intellectual. Can't just lump and confound all the bad categories of things, precision matters.
      - 4y ago
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
100% agree. And the fact that you're being downvoted so heavily is pretty indicative of the biases in this community to me. Not that it's a surprise, I have personally struggled against those biases my entire adult life. But it's sad. We (North America) filter children early in the education system on the basis of their ability to do accurate arithmetic. Most jurisdictions don't even really teach math proper until high school. By the time kids get there, they've lost their self-confidence because the sheer tedium and boredom of the curriculum in the early grades. Personally: Because of my primary and high school math grades I was barred from entering a computer science degree. But I have a 20+ year software engineering career only because I just really loved computers and pushed my way into the industry, and ended up at Google among other places, despite the lack of degree. But it was hard, really hard, to get into these jobs. And there's always been people in those jobs who gave me the sense they didn't think I belonged there with them. The way we're teaching math to kids is on the whole really awful. I've seen both my kids struggle with it, despite being gifted intellectually and scoring incredibly high on the WISC-V. The whole process seems geared towards grinding kids down in repetition and struggle. Meanwhile we have machines to automate arithmetic and most math generally. In general, my sense of the way math is taught these days: it's an insult to the human spirit. And people who excel in it and struggled through it and "won" have an intrinsic bias in seeing it as the "right" filter and "right" gating for what they're doing today, even when it clearly is not always directly related.
- panic 4y ago
  This is a fantastic comment. I think your analysis at the end is spot-on. It's like the K-12 math curriculum is a hazing ritual for a vast fraternity of "smart people". Without this ritual, their group identity is called into question.
  - ouid 4y ago
    I don't know a single person in this "cabal of smart people" who has a single nice thing to say about the K-12 mathematics curriculum. They largely consider it a travesty, and have vaguely apocalyptic things to say.
Fellshard 4y ago
You presume lack of aptitude. I presume the ineptitude of teachers in the vast majority of cases, through about the algebra level, after which case the levels of abstraction do start learning on genuine aptitude for abstract thinking.
- rimliu 4y ago
  Yes, it is always someone's else fault.
SyzygistSix 4y ago
That is an education policy issue, not a reason to not teach math as a key skill. People who don't ever get math can still learn and work to their strengths.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
The point of the education system at this point of time ought to be to install a love of learning (and different people will love different subjects) but we are still at the stage of producing workers.
misslibby 4y ago
Other kid's lives are being made miserable for years by other subjects. So what is the solution here? Only teach kids things they want to learn? I mean I personally think school is overrated, especially with high quality YouTube videos available for everything. But I don't think that is a common notion? Edit: OK, you know what, why not - yes, abolish schools! They are just prisons for kids.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Obviously, the solution is to calibrate how much of each subject we teach to the general student population, and track people with aptitude into deeper iterations of subjects that are less useful for non-specialists. Aspiring lawyers don't need stunt-integration calculus, and aspiring physicists don't need 20th Century American Lit. We have no trouble with this concept in other fields: you don't take AP Studio Art unless you're tracking to a BFA. But we shoehorn everyone into a math sequence that is not especially valuable. Seems pretty clear?
  - misslibby 4y ago
    But isn't that what is already supposed to happen? Presumably school authorities are trying to work out a useful curriculum, that they adjust from time to time? Maybe a more useful discussion would be how to measure success and how to determine what is necessary? This "8th grade maths is enough" is a bit too handwavy. I can actually imagine that there would not have to be as much focus on doing calculations on paper or in one's head, as everybody has a calculator ready at all times these days. As one example.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      That's the whole point of the conversation we're ostensibly having.
      - misslibby 4y ago
        But not very specific so far. We only have some anecdotes from that article writer about 8th grade maths. To start, I think everybody should be able to do financial calculations (like compounding interest), and be able to decipher the charts they are being bombarded with every day in the media. Other than that I guess I agree with some other posters that it is the people who figure thinks out who are often also good in maths. I am not even sure how to teach that and if traditional maths at school helps.

by _hcuq 4y ago

nicoburns 4y ago

While it's not the whole story, I've seen a lot more kids struggling with math due to poor teaching (often several years before the class they're currently taking) than due to lack of aptitude.

akira2501 4y ago
So, we're trying to optimize a problem that we've built zero infrastructure for? That sounds like paving material for a road no one wants to actually take.
gexla 4y ago
Is it really the teaching which makes the difference though? I struggled with math through all levels of school. As an adult, I struggled with with programming, but I was self taught. After putting in the hours, I eventually learned enough to make a living from it. I then realized, that maybe the students who did well with math put the same effort as I did in learning programming. The difference between math and programming for me is that I immediately saw the utility of learning programming.
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  In my experience it does. The ways math is taught differs a good bit from when I went to K-12. In my experience the differences in teachers, motivation, and teaching methods all made a significant difference.

barry-cotter 4y ago

That’s just school, nothing special about Math. The High School Study of Student Engagement has 17% of students bored in every class and 66% bored every day. Most people spend a large part of every day in school suffering. That’s what school is.

epgui 4y ago

That's not what anti-intellectualism means.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It's anti-intellectualism because it judges, bars progress, and limits success in other intellectual fields based on measures of success in one field.
- epgui 4y ago
  You're free to use your own definition for any word you like, but that's not what anti-intellectualism means to the rest of the world. > Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#Education_and_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#Education...
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Shrug. You're failing to use your intellect to read the whole definition you just copypastad and see how it might relate to what the commenter said: we're often putting primacy on achievement in mathematics as a gate blocking all the other intellectual pursuits mentioned. Not to mention the bias engineering disciplines seem to have, specifically against art and literature as can be witnessed half the time these topics come on this very forum.
    - epgui 4y ago
      I will agree that these things you're naming are "bad things", just like anti-intellectualism is a "bad thing", or that they are counter-productive, or misguided... But they are not anti-intellectual. Can't just lump and confound all the bad categories of things, precision matters.
    - 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

100% agree. And the fact that you're being downvoted so heavily is pretty indicative of the biases in this community to me. Not that it's a surprise, I have personally struggled against those biases my entire adult life. But it's sad. We (North America) filter children early in the education system on the basis of their ability to do accurate arithmetic. Most jurisdictions don't even really teach math proper until high school. By the time kids get there, they've lost their self-confidence because the sheer tedium and boredom of the curriculum in the early grades. Personally: Because of my primary and high school math grades I was barred from entering a computer science degree. But I have a 20+ year software engineering career only because I just really loved computers and pushed my way into the industry, and ended up at Google among other places, despite the lack of degree. But it was hard, really hard, to get into these jobs. And there's always been people in those jobs who gave me the sense they didn't think I belonged there with them. The way we're teaching math to kids is on the whole really awful. I've seen both my kids struggle with it, despite being gifted intellectually and scoring incredibly high on the WISC-V. The whole process seems geared towards grinding kids down in repetition and struggle. Meanwhile we have machines to automate arithmetic and most math generally. In general, my sense of the way math is taught these days: it's an insult to the human spirit. And people who excel in it and struggled through it and "won" have an intrinsic bias in seeing it as the "right" filter and "right" gating for what they're doing today, even when it clearly is not always directly related.

panic 4y ago
This is a fantastic comment. I think your analysis at the end is spot-on. It's like the K-12 math curriculum is a hazing ritual for a vast fraternity of "smart people". Without this ritual, their group identity is called into question.
- ouid 4y ago
  I don't know a single person in this "cabal of smart people" who has a single nice thing to say about the K-12 mathematics curriculum. They largely consider it a travesty, and have vaguely apocalyptic things to say.

Fellshard 4y ago

You presume lack of aptitude. I presume the ineptitude of teachers in the vast majority of cases, through about the algebra level, after which case the levels of abstraction do start learning on genuine aptitude for abstract thinking.

rimliu 4y ago
Yes, it is always someone's else fault.

SyzygistSix 4y ago

That is an education policy issue, not a reason to not teach math as a key skill. People who don't ever get math can still learn and work to their strengths.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

The point of the education system at this point of time ought to be to install a love of learning (and different people will love different subjects) but we are still at the stage of producing workers.

misslibby 4y ago

Other kid's lives are being made miserable for years by other subjects. So what is the solution here? Only teach kids things they want to learn? I mean I personally think school is overrated, especially with high quality YouTube videos available for everything. But I don't think that is a common notion? Edit: OK, you know what, why not - yes, abolish schools! They are just prisons for kids.

tptacek 4y ago
Obviously, the solution is to calibrate how much of each subject we teach to the general student population, and track people with aptitude into deeper iterations of subjects that are less useful for non-specialists. Aspiring lawyers don't need stunt-integration calculus, and aspiring physicists don't need 20th Century American Lit. We have no trouble with this concept in other fields: you don't take AP Studio Art unless you're tracking to a BFA. But we shoehorn everyone into a math sequence that is not especially valuable. Seems pretty clear?
- misslibby 4y ago
  But isn't that what is already supposed to happen? Presumably school authorities are trying to work out a useful curriculum, that they adjust from time to time? Maybe a more useful discussion would be how to measure success and how to determine what is necessary? This "8th grade maths is enough" is a bit too handwavy. I can actually imagine that there would not have to be as much focus on doing calculations on paper or in one's head, as everybody has a calculator ready at all times these days. As one example.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    That's the whole point of the conversation we're ostensibly having.
    - misslibby 4y ago
      But not very specific so far. We only have some anecdotes from that article writer about 8th grade maths. To start, I think everybody should be able to do financial calculations (like compounding interest), and be able to decipher the charts they are being bombarded with every day in the media. Other than that I guess I agree with some other posters that it is the people who figure thinks out who are often also good in maths. I am not even sure how to teach that and if traditional maths at school helps.