4 ms·

This reeks of a purposeful misinterpretation of a hot-button incident, and a dogwhistle.

by yterdy 3y ago

scarmig 3y ago
Are you claiming that SFUSD did not, in fact, ban teaching algebra in 8th grade, and are you ignoring that the state of California proceeded to then make it part of its state recommendations? Your isolated "hot button incident" is the real lived experience of hundreds of thousands of parents. Your "dogwhistle" is itself a dogwhistle (your obvious implication being "only a racist Trumptard could support allowing students to take algebra in 8th grade"). Ironic, in that the people defending the decision implicitly believe that non-white people are less capable of learning algebra than white people. Which itself is stupid, from a historical point of view. Who, after all, first formulated algebra?
- yterdy 3y ago
  I'm saying that the issue gets characterized (wrongly) by detractors as pulling down the smart kids so that the other kids won't feel bad, when it's actually a matter of pulling resources for a smaller (parent-driven) "gifted" cohort in order to free those resources for use in improving everyone else's performance. This makes sense because the latter are less likely to be able to place their kids in private tutoring. Here's my lived experience: algebra in 7th grade, black boy. I'd have been better off taking it later, and making it up with summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses /certs in between algebra, algebra ii, calc, and diff eq/calc ii in high school. If that meant my classmates could have a better chance of keeping up, all the better; being in the historically lily-white gifted track at my magnet high school didn't do much in the way of convincing my teachers not to give up on me at the first sign of weakness. Yet another nuance you either miss or refuse to acknowledge.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    That's a massive misrepresentation of what's going on. This isn't dedicating resources to students in need; it's removing opportunities for poor students to take algebra in 8th grade, which is necessary if you want to take calculus in high school. And you might have been rich enough to take supplementary "summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses," but ripping that opportunity from people who don't have those resources is obscene.
    - yterdy 3y ago
      You've given it the most unflattering interpretation in order to support your preexisting notions. In other words, it's warped. The supplementary courses were provided by the school system, by the way. I would have taken them, but I was working or otherwise predisposed. If you really cared, you'd be advocating for the same (especially since a large portion of the general failure to attain math competency in America is due to our excessively long summer breaks).

This reeks of a purposeful misinterpretation of a hot-button incident, and a dogwhistle.

by yterdy 3y ago

This reeks of a purposeful misinterpretation of a hot-button incident, and a dogwhistle.

Are you claiming that SFUSD did not, in fact, ban teaching algebra in 8th grade, and are you ignoring that the state of California proceeded to then make it part of its state recommendations? Your isolated "hot button incident" is the real lived experience of hundreds of thousands of parents. Your "dogwhistle" is itself a dogwhistle (your obvious implication being "only a racist Trumptard could support allowing students to take algebra in 8th grade"). Ironic, in that the people defending the decision implicitly believe that non-white people are less capable of learning algebra than white people. Which itself is stupid, from a historical point of view. Who, after all, first formulated algebra?

yterdy 3y ago
I'm saying that the issue gets characterized (wrongly) by detractors as pulling down the smart kids so that the other kids won't feel bad, when it's actually a matter of pulling resources for a smaller (parent-driven) "gifted" cohort in order to free those resources for use in improving everyone else's performance. This makes sense because the latter are less likely to be able to place their kids in private tutoring. Here's my lived experience: algebra in 7th grade, black boy. I'd have been better off taking it later, and making it up with summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses /certs in between algebra, algebra ii, calc, and diff eq/calc ii in high school. If that meant my classmates could have a better chance of keeping up, all the better; being in the historically lily-white gifted track at my magnet high school didn't do much in the way of convincing my teachers not to give up on me at the first sign of weakness. Yet another nuance you either miss or refuse to acknowledge.
- scarmig 3y ago
  That's a massive misrepresentation of what's going on. This isn't dedicating resources to students in need; it's removing opportunities for poor students to take algebra in 8th grade, which is necessary if you want to take calculus in high school. And you might have been rich enough to take supplementary "summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses," but ripping that opportunity from people who don't have those resources is obscene.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    You've given it the most unflattering interpretation in order to support your preexisting notions. In other words, it's warped. The supplementary courses were provided by the school system, by the way. I would have taken them, but I was working or otherwise predisposed. If you really cared, you'd be advocating for the same (especially since a large portion of the general failure to attain math competency in America is due to our excessively long summer breaks).