I'm perpetually perplexed at why some people seem to think that lowering the standards is going to help anyone. Do they not realise the source of all scientific and technical advancement is really the result of a minority of high achievers, and that by trying to "flatten" this inequality and effectively make everyone equally stupid, they are also going to be affected negatively?
applies social justice principles to math lessons
The inmates aren't running the asylum anymore; they're running the government. All I hope is that this cancerous ideology (I'll resist the prop65 joke...) doesn't grow any further than it already has. The decline is certainly sad to see and already rather visible.
What if you invert your thesis. Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard”:
1 - American school teach the alphabet before grade 1, and push kids to read early. German schools don’t even teach the alphabet until grade 1' yet by the end of that year the reading level of the kids is the same as US kids at the end of grade 1, or better. German Pädagogin justify this by saying there is some neural development issue — I think that is likely bull. But what I do recognize is that instead of being pushed to read before the kids are ready, the kids instead learn other valuable life skills. I happened to learn to read at age 5 (not in Germany nor USA) but that didn’t make me “better” than other kids; they did other things.
2 - kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner. Kids whose parents each have two jobs to get food on the table, well, they simply can’t. So the former define “higher standards” because they chose their parents well?
3 - To combine the two: if we can open up opportunities for all the kids aren’t we likely to end up with a larger pool of well educated people who will end up being the inventors, leaders, poets etc of the future? How many ramanujans are we leaving behind?
I’m not saying “throw out all the standards” but rather quite the opposite. I think your unidimensional absolutism is narrow and inadequate.
To be clear: I don't know enough detail about the proposal in California to judge it, but the idea that most children might be better off learning certain subjects at a later age, when they are more mature, cannot be dismissed a priori, without facts, based on ideological arguments.
Your comment reminds me of this passage from an old article about Finland's educational system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world:
> Children [in Finland] spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. “We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori [a Finnish teacher]. “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?”
Text in brackets is mine. I highly recommend reading the whole article:
The thing is that you have to adjust curriculum to the developmental stage of the INDIVIDUAL child. Teaching someone too early only wastes the time, resources and money of that teaching. Too late and you lose future options.
I didn't learn to read until 1st grade but many of my peers learned in kindergarten. Individuals do NOT all reach the same learning readiness phase at the same time or same age (two different things).
BTW this "teacher's credential 101".
Systems like Montessori focus on this dynamic and thus have fairly open-ended schedules for things. Falling behind is defined by not meeting ANY learning goals but being on schedule is meeting enough learning goals.
Naturally customization of education like this does not fit well into a "School as a Factory; Child as a manufactured Part" model or the efficiency metrics that factories typically have that are similarly applied to public schools in the US (standardized testing is akin to process control; you do want some type of testing but it has to be structured with more nuance because children are not factory parts with narrow distributions of variance).
At this point, home schooling probably can't be worse. But more focus on customization of education is pretty essential. US Schools are 80%-90% focused on the bottom 10%-20% of IQ based on actual school budgets and funding. And for those not in that bottom group, it's all 100% uniformity and low budgets. One size can never fit all.
Wealthy parents will still define higher standards, because they will send their kids to private schools where more advanced math is taught (e.g. Phillips Exeter Academy teaches calculus to all students and offers linear algebra, statistics, and discrete math to advanced students.[1]).
Instead of opening up opportunities for all the kids, this will ensure that no poor student can compete because the courses won't even be available.
It is so ironic that you mention Germany,where kids are split (at age 10, 12?) into hauptschule (lower ability), realschule (medium ability), and gymnasium (higher ability).
To think ramanujans of this world would benefit from lower standards is also having no idea or never knowing one in real life.
I learned how to read in Spanish, and very shortly thereafter I moved to an English country.
Totally different. You just cant compare a phonetic language to one like English.
My daughter is now learning how to read in the best school in my city and its taking her over year compared to me. We started at roughly the same age, but she and her classmates are struggling through hours of practice.
“Thats a sharp e honey”
“That letter is silent, baby”
“You’ll never sound that out, that words just messed up”
We began algebra in 5th grade in India. In much humbler circumstances.
Luckily, our teachers made it clear that math was about effort, not skills, talents, or parents.
We were all expected to practice a lot of math, including algebra, until we figured it out.
And it worked - the ‘gifted’ students needed less practice, everyone else needed more practice. But by 6th grade, everybody passed algebra and figured out the basics. By 9th grade, when we were doing pre-Calc, it was unthinkable that someone in our class couldn’t do algebra.
Applying ‘Social Justice’ to math is simply the continued dumbing down of California. To what end, I can’t figure out.
To combine the two: if we can open up opportunities for all the kids aren’t we likely to end up with...
Well, maybe, but you're hiding a lot in that "if we can". You're assuming that this possibility is brought to fruition, and using the shiny abstract potential of that optimization to argue against real-world actual practices, and this is apples versus oranges.
In fact, I have approximately zero confidence that your "if we can" could ever come to pass. Consider the crazy levels of funding that's already pumped into education with no discernible benefit, and the extremely powerful lobbies that work night and day to maintain the status quo (modulo the increases in funding).
In a perfect world without competition for scarce resources we might be able to do what you envision. But starting the project from the current political realities, it's not in the realm of possibility. So let's not let the pipe dream interfere with some way to prevent the status quo from sliding down into even worse territory.
> kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner. Kids whose parents each have two jobs to get food on the table, well, they simply can’t. So the former define “higher standards” because they chose their parents well?
Yes. Kids born in rich families will do better, kids born to better parents will do better and that is a good thing. A lot of scientific research in early years did not come from government funded labs but rich people working on their passions. Note that privileged people will define "higher standards" always no matter what laws you pass and how you twist the public education system. But these sort of social justice solutions damage the very poor people who cant afford kumon.
This comment would make sense if the debate was over whether or not students should be forced to take algebra in 8th grade. But it's actually about whether students should be allowed to take algebra in 8th grade.
ad 1) that's caused simply by phonemic orthography of German. English orthography is hell compared to that, it's not surprising that they need to start to learn it earlier.
1. userbinator was discussing the impact of exceptional people on society, and you're citing average behaviors of a people in one narrow educational sphere. Nikola Tesla has zero relationship with the middle of any curve.
2. Children are quite literally extensions of their parents. Their intelligence, beliefs, genetics, et cetera are a product of their nature (100% parental) and nurture (varies, but usually significantly attributed to their parents). Giving your child tutoring is no more cheating than when you pick up a book for yourself. Your children are you.
3. userbinator was in no way criticizing the opening up of opportunities to achieve equality by elevating all people to genius status. He, and most people here, are critical of handicapping the gifted/lucky/affluent/whatever in order to achieve parity at a lower level. The fact is it doesn't matter if you learn AI programming because you're so gifted the knowledge just flows into you easily, or if your parents spent $1mm a year teaching it to you. We need AI programmers, and having none because you thought it was unfair for people to get that education when others can't is nuts.
> I happened to learn to read at age 5 (not in Germany nor USA) but that didn’t make me “better” than other kids; they did other things.
My experience is the opposite. Because I learned to read early, I was able to absorb a huge amount of information previously inaccessible to me. There was simply no comparison - I was far better in every subject that required either knowing some information or processing it. The only exceptions were the subjects where body skill was important (art, PE, etc.) - in these areas I had some competition, I others there was nobody. I believe our chances balanced more or less in the second year of high school.
>2 - kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner.
Personally I was lucky my dad was running a computer repair business from the 80's onward. Growing up with a computer and a mountain of pirated educational software prepped me more than anything else my parents could have done. They lucked out that I particularly enjoyed learning.
If there was a mixed program where you could either choose to have your children under Equitable Math or Common Core (the current standard which is adopted by the majority of US states), that would risk Equitable Math being framed as the way to fall behind. That's why the central contention is not about improving Common Core, but rather about whether all children should always be at the same level.
Sometimes children benefit from a delay, and other children benefit by moving ahead; but all children deserve the opportunity to advance according to their individual math ambition and ability. Under Equitable Math, all children must be at the same level up until the last year.
This is a huge win for private schools and after-school programs such as RSM.
That would be a political goal (not having Equitable Math get framed) that is implemented by putting a cost, or at least a reduction of service, onto every child.
Besides everyone knows what the real problem is: teachers not having decent levels at a bunch of subjects themselves, and not willing to improve. This is about saving money on the back of children, not about being equitable. Whilst there should be some allowance for high achievers and (very) low achievers that no teacher has much influence over, the average achievement of students is very much a property of the teacher, not so much of the students.
This is about cheaper and less capable (not just in subject knowledge either) teachers, at any cost to children.
Let's cut the bullshit and get straight to the heart here. Are black people, in your opinion, predisposed to be bad at math? If yes, then i guess your opinion is at least logically consistent. If no, then why are they (according to the article at least) underachieving?
If black kids aren't being served by the current curriculum, then I think it's reasonable to assume that some white kids aren't either.
I suggest that certain kids are being served poorly by the current system. If those kids were served better we could lift the floor, which would enable the high achievers to reach even further.
If you have 100 high achievers it's much more likely that one of them will produce a breakthrough than if you have 10.
Regardless of which side of the race-intelligence debate you're on, this will only widen the inequality. If you want blacks to achieve more, you should be investing more in their education. Not making things easier for everyone because then they will just continue to underachieve while those who can afford private schooling and such continue to excel.
I engaged in math competitions and such as a kid, I hope we can put this into the realm of "higher achievement".
I dont think minimum standards or curriculum moving accross grades have all that much to do with what competitive higher top does. The higher top require way more knowledge then what standards require. And more importantly, it requires more depth and speed.
High achievers are expected to know so much more then standards and to apply it in much higher variety of situations to compete.
In my experience, high achievers become interested in topics only covered in higher grades sooner or later anyways. And once they do, they pursue them only out of interest and intrinsic motivation, and that tends to boost their motivation. So I don't think this affects high achievers all that much either way.
Almost by definition, school (and everything else) is designed for the top of the bell curve.
Now, maybe school plan design can move the median ability up or down, and I don't have an opinion on if this change here does that, and if so, in what direction. I do think it doesn't affect the high end much either way.
Sure, that works for resourceful high achievers. There's probably a lot of kids who wouldn't go looking for interesting stuff simply because they don't have access to their own computer, or there's no teacher who's noticed that they are interested in stuff and has extra time to throw a few bones their way. Basically self starters who haven't been ignited yet.
The mass universal education system was designed to control and brainwash masses. The massive "free and universal" education movement launched by US was meant for this sort of end games and I am not surprised at all.
Having said that as a priviledged parent I merely chuckle at this social justice wanking as my kid goes to a private school and is tutored by me. She will be more successful than the "equity" kids from California if eveyrthing else remains the same.
> All I hope is that this cancerous ideology doesn't grow any further than it already has.
Give me one reason why you think your hope is valid. Everywhere I look this attitude seems to grow stronger and even discussing it becomes socially awkward, at least in some circles.
The situation sounds very similar to what happened in Argentina.
About 30 years ago, Argentina's education level was good. In the name of social justice , high school standards were significantly lowered by the populist/socialist ruling party. Low grades started to be considered 'stigmatizing' for the students. The effect is that now there are some children that finish high school without being able to read fluently.
Don't be like Argentina.
However, regarding math, if there are cognitive research studies that justify delaying some topics, I don't consider that as negative.
because most people are morons. The same who advocate that males and females are completely 'equal'. They are not. And you can rage all you want, there are and there will always be evolutionary differences. Deal with it, idiots.
Discriminating != pretending differences don't exist.
No. "they" are going to lead fine lives, revered as warriors against social injustice, and living in the most exclusive corners of the state. As is typical, the next generation will pay the price.
For what it's worth, it drives me crazy too. The only reason we live such comfortable lives, that we can dedicate so much effort and money to such considerations, is due to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
This is the problem. It's also horrifically bad for the future economy. For comparison, the rest of the world - at least the parts that want to catch up aren't running this slowly. Also - I think the lack of basic Science + Math education is part of the reason we see things like vaccine hesitancy - but that's just a guess.
My daughter in grade 4 (Israel) is currently learning basic algebra tenets, notably associative, commutative, and distributive properties in basic equations, in addition to basic solve for variable questions. SIN, COSIGN, TANGENT and friends start in grade 6.
I’m Danish and not at all interested in the politics of it, but there can be a case for teaching algebra late. We do it in Denmark, because it’s the subject children have the hardest time learning, and having too many of them fail too early kills their interest in math. We still teach algebra in grade 7-9, but we’ve gone through the social experiments of teaching it at different ages, and have lost entire generations because it was taught too soon.
I don’t think social justice or equality should play a part of the argument, but it’s always hard to tell where the legislation ends and the propaganda begins these days, and I’m honestly no interested enough to read the 800 page document this article is about.
I will say, however, that I think we’re going to have problems teaching math until we reform the school system to be suited for the modern world instead of the early 1900’s “assembly line” society. It makes no sense to place children in classes based on their age, and certainly not for all subjects.
The result is always going to be that both slow and brilliant students get fucked over, in a myriad of ways, especially if they are a mix of good and bad at different subjects.
Why exactly is it that you aren’t taught courses like math, or history or language according to your ability instead of your age?
There was an informal study done in the early 20th century, where a superintendent decided he didn’t think math was that useful and told the 4 poorest elementary schools in his district to stop teaching it. (He chose the poorest schools because he knew the parents wouldn’t put up as much of a fuss as at the wealthier schools.) They still taught how to count, read clocks, and make change, but besides that they had no formal math instruction. They used the extra time to read as a class IIRC.
The result was that, despite lacking 6 years of formal math education, the students in that district were only one year behind the other students when they went to junior high. That is, they were able to recover all six years of missed elementary school math education in one year of junior high. And in the superintendent’s opinion, those students were better at critical thinking and were able to solve some problems their better-educated counterparts were not. I can find the link if anyone is interested.
Basically, it seems like kid’s brains are just not able to efficiently learn math. I know I could learn math concepts now that would have taken me much longer in highschool. I kind of wish we would just let kids be kids for more of their lives
> The result was that, despite lacking 6 years of formal math education, the students in that district were only one year behind the other students when they went to junior high.
If it is anything like German math education back when I was in school a lot of the early things are simplified to an insane extreme and either have to be revisited later or are completely replaced with a better approach. I think we went through half a dozen ways on how to multiply and divide numbers when only one mattered in the end. If you learned the basics from your parents you could even expect to be penalized since you had to use the useless methods described in the curriculum for the first few years and could get penalized for correctly identifying an equation with a negative result.
> Basically, it seems like kid’s brains are just not able to efficiently learn math
Or it may be related to a really bad curriculum that tries to be "age appropriate" by teaching mostly useless crap.
"formal math education"? That only starts in college/university. Everything before that has been highly informal in my experience. We didn't even learn something as fundamental as first-order logic during school!
If you spent the math classes on getting the basics right, the rest could be formalized and then deepened in college. The saved time could be used to go to college earlier.
I was one of those kids, that didn't do good at math compared to other subjects. I was still close to a top student, albeit a lazy one. maybe that affected my math ability. it was only in college, ie in the States, that my math scores average high B's and A's n those scores were in calculus etc, math required for CS.
> Why exactly is it that you aren’t taught courses like math, or history or language according to your ability instead of your age?
That's exactly the question. Under Equitable Math, all children must always be at the same level up until the senior year, and Algebra will not be offered in middle school. Some children are ready for Algebra in middle school, and some aren't.
This is the most critical point of contention, and why the debate is not over whether the Common Core, which already emphasizes "deep" comprehension over rote memorization, ought be reformed to go even "deeper".
> I’m honestly no interested enough to read the 800 page document this article is about.
It's notable that the entire Common Core specification for math can be read in a single day. It is meant to be a coordinating document for many parties, and not just metaphorical lawyers.
> Under Equitable Math, all children must always be at the same level up until the senior year
Are they really advocating putting all kids in the same math class regardless of ability? That seems completely insane to me. For some fraction of the class, literally handing them a textbook and telling them to go nuts would be better in every way. At the other end, some of those kids feel awful for holding the class back.
Could someone help me understand what the big picture is here? How does this actually help the under-privileged students in any way? Are they expecting that this will level the playing field for college admissions and the job market?
I am a big proponent of getting rid of the age-segregation as is it is now and widening the age range, but I'd like to see a citation on Denmark teaching Algebra later and the data on this. I read turn-of-the century math books that are years ahead in rigor and subject matter, and that seemed to fare well. There was a lot of stigmatizing of AP classes by the great "equalizers", but let the kids who can excel, excel. I am not at all a believer the "leave no child behind" philosophy. Even college-educated kids we hire now seem to be behind the group just 5 to 10 years younger in common sense, math, writing, history, and problem-solving skills, at least in the interviews I have given over the past 15 to 20 years. The odd superstar shows once in a while, but they will always thrive in any situation. Personally, I grew up with a lot against me, but I pushed and was pretty much self-taught, and I like to think I did good. I don't believe in trying to administer or legislate intelligence. Instant facts from Google does not equate to knowledge and wisdom.
We’re not the best inspiration for how to run your school system though, we have had several huge reforms since the 1995, and the most recent major reform is failing miserably compared to what they are doing in other Scandinavian countries. Which is ironic because the reform was created to catch up, and then ended up failing more than what we had before.
Most it has to due with how our government isn’t willing to commit the necessary resources to run it. We actually have major, major, issues with that in all parts of our public sector right now. So bad with nurses that we’re cancelling operations and seeing delays on our emergency service phone lines on a national scale which are outside of what is legally required.
I think Finland has the best recipe for a modern school system for the west. They did the opposite of us, where instead of making children go to school for longer hours (thus needing more resources), they make children go to school less hours, but focus the resources better.
I would say practical reasons. How would you structure those lessons? You'd need a lot more resources to be able to tailor everyone's path like that.
It would be great though. I loved going to school for the first 4 years when we were ~30 people in the whole school (spread over 1-4th graders) - the teachers were able to address individual needs. Then I went to fifth grade where were were 35 people in the class. It just went downhill from there.
Middle and high school already have separated classes, no?
I once took a computer-repair class at a local school district adult school. It was self paced, and despite being bored as hell during high school, I crushed the repair course at like 4x the normal speed. Because I could. There was literally no one to stop me.
Knowledge/skill assessment is more complex than dictation. It's like a O(n) operation that necessarily looks at each student versus the O(log n) of dictating stuff to a class that asks some questions.
The more evaluation and feedback are in the process, the more individualized it gets, the more burdensome and expensive it gets, generally. That's not to say we can't improve our teaching methods to automate some mechanisms for feedback and pace adjustment in the future, though...
Education is due for a genuine upset. I think there are a bunch of ways technology could make general education significantly more effective, given the technology was designed for that. (Current device / OS / app design norms are mostly in service of consumerism, which assumes no one ever wants to learn anything unless someone paid for them to hear it. So, not that stuff.)
Educational technology has existed for many decades now, built by academia and industry alike. It seems to largely have played a very minor role if even that in the successful advancement of the rate of educating children. If you think you have methods that could significantly improve that, you’d have a great impact on the world. I’d love to hear these bunch of ways.
Largely because American's believe they understand the educational process (largely based on their own anecdotes) better than experts.
The particular reason people struggle with algebra is because it is one of the first fundamentally abstractionist topics taught in schools. There is a huge cognitive development and experiential component.
Delaying teaching algebra makes cognitive developmental sense, but it is also inherently intertwined with with race, class, and gender for a bunch of reasons that get a lot of people really angry.
This is one of those issues that I can't understand the opposing argument. It's just an issue I find so objectionable that I cannot understand why anyone would be imposing this. Literally holding kids back.
The only defense I hear is that kids don't really benefit from advanced classes and they'll be fine anyway. But gifted children will not necessarily be fine. Most of the smartest people I know struggled in school just, but most were fortunately saved by advanced placement classes that put them in classes where they can learn at a faster pace than the rest of the children. Were they forced to stay in what to them amounted to remedial classes, they would grow to resent education and actually underperform.
The utter disregard the people pushing these policies have for children is appalling. Hopefully this is just a weird time in our countries history where that we'll look back on and think how absurd the policies were.
In what I'm sure is a complete coincidence, the proportion of "very intelligent" or "disharmonic intelligence profile" or "savant syndrome" kids in youth services/youth care has gone up significantly. They now outnumber kids that committed crimes.
They're replacing advanced placement classes ... with straightjackets.
The argument is that African American students perform poorly in these subjects on average, and it impacts their grades and thus impacts their college admissions.
So the only way to even the playing field is to eliminate difficult subjects in high school, so that everyone gets near-perfect grades.
And that's a completely racist argument. The irony in the people pushing these ideas is astounding. They've basically taken an easy political out and instead of doing the hard work and realizing that African Americans can meet the same standards they've basically just said "nah they're too stupid so we'll lower our standards to make their grades look better."
My parents introduced it to me at home around 4th-5th grade? So I was ~9-10yo? Not sure why delaying it will help, if anything the earlier the better. Everything I hear about "equity in education" seems to be making it worse, but more equally I guess.
Like another poster already mentioned, reminds me of the Harrison Bergeron story by Vonnegut - seems like we are rapidly approaching that point.
And if we were any good at teaching math we would just naturally go with it from there, "algebra" wouldn't even be a subject, it would just be something you do by default as teachers first replaced _ with x (hopefully before you even got too used to _), and then started making the equations gradually more complex.
"Solving linear equations with multiple variables", "solving quadratic equations", "solving polynomials", etc. Those are things you really need to teach as a distinct concept. Algebra is just the language, introduced in a pedagogically sound way you wouldn't even realize you were learning it.
My parents introduced algebra to me in third grade. It took me a long time in third grade to get it, so much so that I was a little bit afraid of algebra though certainly I didn't admit it to my parents.
Fast forward a few years in school when the teacher introduced algebra in class (maybe sixth grade?), everything suddenly clicked, and I pretty much got the highest grade for several months straight because I learned this material before, albeit not well, but still way ahead of everyone else.
I think this could be a middle ground: introduce the material earlier, but with no expectation that the pupil must grasp it immediately; then review or reintroduce the material again at a later date.
That's how I learned a lot of things. My dad would mention what atoms are and that kind of thing, and I'd read about them in magazines, so them when it came to school it wasn't so big a leap to add a bit of rigour.
My takeaway from your anecdote is completely different: when exactly a school introduces concepts doesn't matter as much as the stimulation a child can receive outside school.
In my experience, kids whose parents help teach concepts and don't just leave things up to school generally end up with an advantage. Kids love learning from their parents and other loved ones, but school is generally regarded as sort of a chore even if it does bring friends and playtime. A great many parents simply don't have the time or energy left after their day job to support their children the same way others can. Kids whose parents often read to (and with) have a noticeable advantage in many school settings, and you can't substitute that for all students by just cramming in more reading time in their busy school schedules.
Kids have a finite time they spend in school. You can shuffle the time they spend around all you want, but in the end every kid requires a certain amount of time to grasp a certain context. That time may differ when kids get older or younger, but the required time spent on learning won't suddenly change.
Not all students are like you. I went to a low-ranked university my first year before transferring out. I met freshmen who really struggled with basic concepts, like what a vector is. I'm not sure they would ever get it even with all the tutoring in the world.
They would in my opinion. I was a tutor in high school and college for algebra. I worked with people some people who struggled. They all eventually got it if they wanted to get it, which they generally did to not get held back :p. You just have to work with them and truly understand what they are not understanding. The big issue is concepts are not learnable in isolation. You said vectors are basic, but are they? They were initially just abstractions to model sets of physics problems. Without the context, its pretty difficult to understand them IMO, especially things like dot products. "oh, i multiply two vectors and I get a number? what? Oh and that number can be described as the multiplication of magnitudes of the vectors multiplied by the cosine of their angle? Oh how do I get the magnitude? What's cosine again? etc." It goes forever and generally you'll find that people will struggle with basic things because they never had an opportunity to sit down and genuinely internalize those ideas.
Everything builds on other concepts and people's misunderstandings generally came from not truly understanding the basics. Its hard to personalize education at scale though.
I tutored a 20 year old CS major who could not understand the equation to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Nice guy, talented guitar player. Was not meant to be a programmer.
From what I can see, most states don't teach algebra until 9th grade. Also most states are learning math better then California, so maybe it works? Of course, that might not be the cause, but just copying better performing states seems to be a safe way to try and fix California's problem.
Not from California, but I took algebra in 7th grade - it was the advanced math course in my public middle school. It was a much-welcomed safe haven from the other classes - the middle schoolers here were actually SMART. In that class I sat next to a guy who taught me how to program the TI-84. We would spend all class programming, making games, and just learning.
Now, over a decade later, I am a professional software engineer. Sitting next to that guy in my 7th grade algebra class set my life on a course that turned out to be great. It makes me sad to know that future students won't be able to have such opportunities to be surrounded by similarly smart people. In the rest of my middle school classes the disrespect, distracting behavior, bullying, etc. were totally out of control - now I guess students won't know anything different.
I think this is a TERRIBLE decision, pushed by radical leftists that are completely out of touch with regular people. I wonder how much farther California and its cities will fall before people wake up.
The fact that you were successful because the guy who sat next to you in class knew how to unlock the programming mode of your calculator is incidental. Why didn't your teacher do it? Congratulations on escaping the system that disadvantaged you. The best thing about programming is that it defines a notation for doing mathematics that doesn't trigger people who went to public schools. Be careful about calling yourself a professional software engineer. In many places you can be sent to jail for claiming any two out of the three words in that title.
These superficial debates are in my eyes futile since they presuppose: "We ought to have a strict curriculum for a certain narrow age group."
After what we have learned the last 30-50 years from cognitive sciences one has to wonder what schools are actually for, nowadays. There are most certainly not optimized for "learning" by any means.
Imho to put it blatantly schools are reduced to be a effective stronghold for indoctrination. They justify their power by using "science, technology, art, literature, history, social community, cultural exchange ...". Of course sheer by its power and scope we certainly "learn" something there. And you also happen to find great teachers in that system but its certainly not its main purpose.
Going back historically, schools still remain inherently (and shockingly so) medieval institutions. Interestingly "school" originally stems from the greek word of σχολή (/skʰo.lɛ̌ː/) which simply means "free time, leisure" which got hijacked by the church with "monastic schools" and today "school" means quite the opposite.
Throughout its (western) history with changing society they were succesful adaptions made (Prussian system, Humboldt's Ideal, Montessori pedagogy) skyrocketing literacy, expolding number of scientists etc.
But today the educational system is massively outpaced by the societal changes and by failing simply regresses to its medieval core of indoctrination ("preparation for the labor market").
No scientific literacy (aka critical thinking, controversial debates), no "learning" grounded on cognitive sciences, no hearing and tending to the needs of our young which they can perfectly articulate.
Hijacking is an interesting term to use. Leisure got transformed into the university system by the early Church which brought about the various technological revolutions in the West.
Resources were so scarce communities could only afford to send a select few to learn to read and write and spend time on the highest levels of human thought, i.e. questions of the meaning of existence and epistemology.
For some, paid daycare. Still, this daycare needs to meet certain expectations, that is to prepare the kids for exams. As for actual education - that is, pursuing your passion by exploring the subject in depth - I believe this is happening mostly outside of school for obvious reasons.
>After what we have learned the last 30-50 years from cognitive sciences one has to wonder what schools are actually for, nowadays. There are most certainly not optimized for "learning" by any means.
They're daycares and increasingly being used to spread propaganda.
This idea that ANYONE will be helped by giving them a free pass needs to stop. No minority will have an improved life by saying they are too mentally deficient to learn hard things. This is a political game where politicians refuse to recognize that fixing this is not an easy slap a bill in place an everything will be better. I think what they're hoping is that they can "fix" the numbers to show higher achievement by lowering standards and get voted back into office. We'll certainly be feeling the negative effects of these sorts of policies in a few decades if this bullshit continues.
I am not from US so don't interpret my comment trough US blue vs red or similar lenses. My observations is that students learn at different speed, the issue with a teacher that is forced to teach a class of 25 students is very obvious, at each step some student will fall behind, then if he is behind he will have more trouble comprehending the next topic and in the end you get a student that does not know the basic rules of signs when multiplying. I know such a person that failed his national exam, he did not know how to multiply negative integers , but this person had the ambition to get his dream job so he found a tutor and he learned and then he got a good grade. The difference was that you had a tutor with 1 or maybe 2 students at a time and that the student wanted to learn.
When I am doing homework with my son or check is lessons I always wonder what is happening with students that parents don't have the time or the skill to do math,physics,programming together with the child. Some will hire private tutors but to few.
Seems to me that either you get fewer students to a teacher, or have less dense material to work with so the teacher can have the time to check each student and figure-out what exactly is unclear. And you ofcourse you need good teachers,
> classes purely by age, and that any other method of sorting is inequitable
It's just "strange" that this is only done for academics, but never for athletics.
The fact that academic results can be thought of in "equitable" terms, but not athletic results (aka, you must be able to run 100m in X seconds), points to some systemic, cultural bias in thinking that everyone is just as smart, and that genetics don't play a role in intelligence.
>we should sort kids into classes purely by age, and that any other method of sorting is inequitable
Can you maybe explain to a non US person why a system merit based is not used(or if it was used in the past was dropped) , I understand there are limitation with this system, I will describe next:
1 there is national/state level exam with super strong security to prevent cheating
2 highschool/universities will be placed on a list with all the classes they offer
3 candidates will fill an ordered list with their preferences. In practice this means you put on the top the "good" high schools and the classes/profiles that interest you , like if you hate Math you will avoid science/math stuff and go to art/literature/languages profiles. How I personally ordered the schools was by checking the results of their students at the national exams.
The result is that students that are very smart or that are OK smart but worked hard are concentrated on 3 hghschools in my region. This seems OK sincee the kid that is a really jerk, never liked school or failed the exam will be at a different highschool and not drag down the working hard students.
> My observations is that students learn at different speed
The pejorative used for structuring curriculum and resources based on this observation is "tracking" and aside from special needs and other narrow exceptions it is thought to be a great historical injustice that has largely been eliminated from public schooling in the US. Now we look forward to ending the injustice unequal funding due to differential tax bases among communities has created. Doubtless ending this remaining vestige of inequity will herald a new age of public education excellence in the US.
So in my country Romania, we have national exams, then the children will fill a list of high-schools+ profile pair(HighScoolA - Informatics, HighSchoolB -Informatics, HighSchyoolA -Science ....) so mostly you get in same class children that had very similar results at the national exam.
But there still is the children learn at different speed or some are left behind, at least in my son case I feel in Math they move too fast, there was the same when I was in high school too.
Well that's stupid. If anything they should introduce it sooner. There's tons of research that show the sooner it's introduced the better they are able to digest that (as in it becomes more second nature and are later able to reason with it and build off that knowledge better).
It's hard to introduce Algebra much earlier than 8th grade - the students just don't have the mathematical maturity for it. What you can do though is challenge and expose them to slightly more complex applications of ordinary math (often stated via increasingly elaborate "word problems") that make the introduction of algebra a lot more natural when the students are finally up for it. You tend to see this approach in the various "Singapore Math", "Russian Math", what have you.
> the students just don't have the mathematical maturity for it.
Doesn't this get at the root of the problem though? Some students have the mathematical maturity for it. Others don't. The arguments seem to be between "we should present these concepts early for the benefit of the students who are ready for it" vs "we should delay these concepts until all students are ready."
But different students have different levels of mathematical maturity. the problem seems to stem from working in a paradigm where everyone at a particular age has to learn the same thing. It seems we should be moving in the direction of more personalization rather than less.
Seems entirely arbitrary (if not false?). I was taught the basics of algebra and even trig (at least, how pi and radians work) in the 4th and 5th grade
Anecdote: I’ve tutored elementary school kids (in Massachusetts) who are doing basic algebra with shapes and emoji instead of letters.
> 5 + $basketEmoji = 7
> What number is hiding in the basket?
They have no idea they’re doing algebra or what algebra even is but they’re doing it. And they understand the concept on a fundamental level.
I don’t remember anyone explaining a variable to me so explicitly. I just remember showing up one day and having to deal with random letters mixed into my math homework.
I, along with 30 other kids in my grade, took our first algebra class in 7th grade (early 90s). After a few weeks of struggling, I was entirely fine with it. I really think you're underestimating what kids can do if taught properly. If students don't have the "mathematical maturity" for algebra until 8th grade, or later, then that just means instruction in prior years was lacking.
Not everyone took algebra in 7th grade; those who did not, took it in 8th grade.
We were introduced to algebra in 6th grade. Talking about Indian subcontinent in the 90s. I (and a lot other kids) did fine with it. Well there were many that didn't and they switched to humanities or business studies later. But even if lives are not good at math, they should be taught math. Doing otherwise is how they grow up to become conspiracy theorists.
My elementary school was introducing algebra in 4th and 5th grade. Questions like "7 * ? = 21" aren't explicitly teaching algebra - student's aren't being taught the multiplicative property of equality, they're just remembering their times tables - but it's laying the foundation.
I introduced my kid to Algebra in gr.2 during that first stretch of covid last year. He's not particularly adept at Math(doesn't struggle with it - it was gr.2 though so simple + and -), but it really didn't take much.
Readit News
applies social justice principles to math lessons
The inmates aren't running the asylum anymore; they're running the government. All I hope is that this cancerous ideology (I'll resist the prop65 joke...) doesn't grow any further than it already has. The decline is certainly sad to see and already rather visible.
1 - American school teach the alphabet before grade 1, and push kids to read early. German schools don’t even teach the alphabet until grade 1' yet by the end of that year the reading level of the kids is the same as US kids at the end of grade 1, or better. German Pädagogin justify this by saying there is some neural development issue — I think that is likely bull. But what I do recognize is that instead of being pushed to read before the kids are ready, the kids instead learn other valuable life skills. I happened to learn to read at age 5 (not in Germany nor USA) but that didn’t make me “better” than other kids; they did other things.
2 - kids who have parents who can afford tutors and such can push the kids through the prescribed steps sooner. Kids whose parents each have two jobs to get food on the table, well, they simply can’t. So the former define “higher standards” because they chose their parents well?
3 - To combine the two: if we can open up opportunities for all the kids aren’t we likely to end up with a larger pool of well educated people who will end up being the inventors, leaders, poets etc of the future? How many ramanujans are we leaving behind?
I’m not saying “throw out all the standards” but rather quite the opposite. I think your unidimensional absolutism is narrow and inadequate.
> Sooner doesn’t necessarily imply “higher standard”
To be clear: I don't know enough detail about the proposal in California to judge it, but the idea that most children might be better off learning certain subjects at a later age, when they are more mature, cannot be dismissed a priori, without facts, based on ideological arguments.
Your comment reminds me of this passage from an old article about Finland's educational system, widely considered to be one of the best in the world:
> Children [in Finland] spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. “We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori [a Finnish teacher]. “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?”
Text in brackets is mine. I highly recommend reading the whole article:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-s...
The thing is that you have to adjust curriculum to the developmental stage of the INDIVIDUAL child. Teaching someone too early only wastes the time, resources and money of that teaching. Too late and you lose future options.
I didn't learn to read until 1st grade but many of my peers learned in kindergarten. Individuals do NOT all reach the same learning readiness phase at the same time or same age (two different things).
BTW this "teacher's credential 101".
Systems like Montessori focus on this dynamic and thus have fairly open-ended schedules for things. Falling behind is defined by not meeting ANY learning goals but being on schedule is meeting enough learning goals.
Naturally customization of education like this does not fit well into a "School as a Factory; Child as a manufactured Part" model or the efficiency metrics that factories typically have that are similarly applied to public schools in the US (standardized testing is akin to process control; you do want some type of testing but it has to be structured with more nuance because children are not factory parts with narrow distributions of variance).
At this point, home schooling probably can't be worse. But more focus on customization of education is pretty essential. US Schools are 80%-90% focused on the bottom 10%-20% of IQ based on actual school budgets and funding. And for those not in that bottom group, it's all 100% uniformity and low budgets. One size can never fit all.
Instead of opening up opportunities for all the kids, this will ensure that no poor student can compete because the courses won't even be available.
1: https://www.exeter.edu/mathematics-beyond-core-courses
To think ramanujans of this world would benefit from lower standards is also having no idea or never knowing one in real life.
Totally different. You just cant compare a phonetic language to one like English.
My daughter is now learning how to read in the best school in my city and its taking her over year compared to me. We started at roughly the same age, but she and her classmates are struggling through hours of practice.
“Thats a sharp e honey”
“That letter is silent, baby”
“You’ll never sound that out, that words just messed up”
EDIT - punctuation and mistypes
Luckily, our teachers made it clear that math was about effort, not skills, talents, or parents.
We were all expected to practice a lot of math, including algebra, until we figured it out.
And it worked - the ‘gifted’ students needed less practice, everyone else needed more practice. But by 6th grade, everybody passed algebra and figured out the basics. By 9th grade, when we were doing pre-Calc, it was unthinkable that someone in our class couldn’t do algebra.
Applying ‘Social Justice’ to math is simply the continued dumbing down of California. To what end, I can’t figure out.
Well, maybe, but you're hiding a lot in that "if we can". You're assuming that this possibility is brought to fruition, and using the shiny abstract potential of that optimization to argue against real-world actual practices, and this is apples versus oranges.
In fact, I have approximately zero confidence that your "if we can" could ever come to pass. Consider the crazy levels of funding that's already pumped into education with no discernible benefit, and the extremely powerful lobbies that work night and day to maintain the status quo (modulo the increases in funding).
In a perfect world without competition for scarce resources we might be able to do what you envision. But starting the project from the current political realities, it's not in the realm of possibility. So let's not let the pipe dream interfere with some way to prevent the status quo from sliding down into even worse territory.
Yes. Kids born in rich families will do better, kids born to better parents will do better and that is a good thing. A lot of scientific research in early years did not come from government funded labs but rich people working on their passions. Note that privileged people will define "higher standards" always no matter what laws you pass and how you twist the public education system. But these sort of social justice solutions damage the very poor people who cant afford kumon.
That is the largest problem with American schooling, is we try to keep all kids in a chronological age based system, instead of a skills based system.
Why would that be bull? Kids brains develops over time.
2. Children are quite literally extensions of their parents. Their intelligence, beliefs, genetics, et cetera are a product of their nature (100% parental) and nurture (varies, but usually significantly attributed to their parents). Giving your child tutoring is no more cheating than when you pick up a book for yourself. Your children are you.
3. userbinator was in no way criticizing the opening up of opportunities to achieve equality by elevating all people to genius status. He, and most people here, are critical of handicapping the gifted/lucky/affluent/whatever in order to achieve parity at a lower level. The fact is it doesn't matter if you learn AI programming because you're so gifted the knowledge just flows into you easily, or if your parents spent $1mm a year teaching it to you. We need AI programmers, and having none because you thought it was unfair for people to get that education when others can't is nuts.
My experience is the opposite. Because I learned to read early, I was able to absorb a huge amount of information previously inaccessible to me. There was simply no comparison - I was far better in every subject that required either knowing some information or processing it. The only exceptions were the subjects where body skill was important (art, PE, etc.) - in these areas I had some competition, I others there was nobody. I believe our chances balanced more or less in the second year of high school.
Personally I was lucky my dad was running a computer repair business from the 80's onward. Growing up with a computer and a mountain of pirated educational software prepped me more than anything else my parents could have done. They lucked out that I particularly enjoyed learning.
Sometimes children benefit from a delay, and other children benefit by moving ahead; but all children deserve the opportunity to advance according to their individual math ambition and ability. Under Equitable Math, all children must be at the same level up until the last year.
This is a huge win for private schools and after-school programs such as RSM.
Besides everyone knows what the real problem is: teachers not having decent levels at a bunch of subjects themselves, and not willing to improve. This is about saving money on the back of children, not about being equitable. Whilst there should be some allowance for high achievers and (very) low achievers that no teacher has much influence over, the average achievement of students is very much a property of the teacher, not so much of the students.
This is about cheaper and less capable (not just in subject knowledge either) teachers, at any cost to children.
If black kids aren't being served by the current curriculum, then I think it's reasonable to assume that some white kids aren't either.
I suggest that certain kids are being served poorly by the current system. If those kids were served better we could lift the floor, which would enable the high achievers to reach even further.
If you have 100 high achievers it's much more likely that one of them will produce a breakthrough than if you have 10.
I dont think minimum standards or curriculum moving accross grades have all that much to do with what competitive higher top does. The higher top require way more knowledge then what standards require. And more importantly, it requires more depth and speed.
High achievers are expected to know so much more then standards and to apply it in much higher variety of situations to compete.
Almost by definition, school (and everything else) is designed for the top of the bell curve.
Now, maybe school plan design can move the median ability up or down, and I don't have an opinion on if this change here does that, and if so, in what direction. I do think it doesn't affect the high end much either way.
Having said that as a priviledged parent I merely chuckle at this social justice wanking as my kid goes to a private school and is tutored by me. She will be more successful than the "equity" kids from California if eveyrthing else remains the same.
Give me one reason why you think your hope is valid. Everywhere I look this attitude seems to grow stronger and even discussing it becomes socially awkward, at least in some circles.
Don't be like Argentina.
However, regarding math, if there are cognitive research studies that justify delaying some topics, I don't consider that as negative.
No. "they" are going to lead fine lives, revered as warriors against social injustice, and living in the most exclusive corners of the state. As is typical, the next generation will pay the price.
For what it's worth, it drives me crazy too. The only reason we live such comfortable lives, that we can dedicate so much effort and money to such considerations, is due to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
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My daughter in grade 4 (Israel) is currently learning basic algebra tenets, notably associative, commutative, and distributive properties in basic equations, in addition to basic solve for variable questions. SIN, COSIGN, TANGENT and friends start in grade 6.
It's spelled "SINE, COSINE, and TANGENT".
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I don’t think social justice or equality should play a part of the argument, but it’s always hard to tell where the legislation ends and the propaganda begins these days, and I’m honestly no interested enough to read the 800 page document this article is about.
I will say, however, that I think we’re going to have problems teaching math until we reform the school system to be suited for the modern world instead of the early 1900’s “assembly line” society. It makes no sense to place children in classes based on their age, and certainly not for all subjects.
The result is always going to be that both slow and brilliant students get fucked over, in a myriad of ways, especially if they are a mix of good and bad at different subjects.
Why exactly is it that you aren’t taught courses like math, or history or language according to your ability instead of your age?
The result was that, despite lacking 6 years of formal math education, the students in that district were only one year behind the other students when they went to junior high. That is, they were able to recover all six years of missed elementary school math education in one year of junior high. And in the superintendent’s opinion, those students were better at critical thinking and were able to solve some problems their better-educated counterparts were not. I can find the link if anyone is interested.
Basically, it seems like kid’s brains are just not able to efficiently learn math. I know I could learn math concepts now that would have taken me much longer in highschool. I kind of wish we would just let kids be kids for more of their lives
If it is anything like German math education back when I was in school a lot of the early things are simplified to an insane extreme and either have to be revisited later or are completely replaced with a better approach. I think we went through half a dozen ways on how to multiply and divide numbers when only one mattered in the end. If you learned the basics from your parents you could even expect to be penalized since you had to use the useless methods described in the curriculum for the first few years and could get penalized for correctly identifying an equation with a negative result.
> Basically, it seems like kid’s brains are just not able to efficiently learn math
Or it may be related to a really bad curriculum that tries to be "age appropriate" by teaching mostly useless crap.
If you spent the math classes on getting the basics right, the rest could be formalized and then deepened in college. The saved time could be used to go to college earlier.
That's exactly the question. Under Equitable Math, all children must always be at the same level up until the senior year, and Algebra will not be offered in middle school. Some children are ready for Algebra in middle school, and some aren't.
This is the most critical point of contention, and why the debate is not over whether the Common Core, which already emphasizes "deep" comprehension over rote memorization, ought be reformed to go even "deeper".
> I’m honestly no interested enough to read the 800 page document this article is about.
It's notable that the entire Common Core specification for math can be read in a single day. It is meant to be a coordinating document for many parties, and not just metaphorical lawyers.
Are they really advocating putting all kids in the same math class regardless of ability? That seems completely insane to me. For some fraction of the class, literally handing them a textbook and telling them to go nuts would be better in every way. At the other end, some of those kids feel awful for holding the class back.
Could someone help me understand what the big picture is here? How does this actually help the under-privileged students in any way? Are they expecting that this will level the playing field for college admissions and the job market?
Or do I confuse this with something else?
https://www.webmatematik.dk/lektioner/7-9-klasse/algebra
https://matematik.gyldendal.dk/til_laeren/01-om-portalen/06-...
We’re not the best inspiration for how to run your school system though, we have had several huge reforms since the 1995, and the most recent major reform is failing miserably compared to what they are doing in other Scandinavian countries. Which is ironic because the reform was created to catch up, and then ended up failing more than what we had before.
Most it has to due with how our government isn’t willing to commit the necessary resources to run it. We actually have major, major, issues with that in all parts of our public sector right now. So bad with nurses that we’re cancelling operations and seeing delays on our emergency service phone lines on a national scale which are outside of what is legally required.
I think Finland has the best recipe for a modern school system for the west. They did the opposite of us, where instead of making children go to school for longer hours (thus needing more resources), they make children go to school less hours, but focus the resources better.
It would be great though. I loved going to school for the first 4 years when we were ~30 people in the whole school (spread over 1-4th graders) - the teachers were able to address individual needs. Then I went to fifth grade where were were 35 people in the class. It just went downhill from there.
I once took a computer-repair class at a local school district adult school. It was self paced, and despite being bored as hell during high school, I crushed the repair course at like 4x the normal speed. Because I could. There was literally no one to stop me.
The more evaluation and feedback are in the process, the more individualized it gets, the more burdensome and expensive it gets, generally. That's not to say we can't improve our teaching methods to automate some mechanisms for feedback and pace adjustment in the future, though...
Education is due for a genuine upset. I think there are a bunch of ways technology could make general education significantly more effective, given the technology was designed for that. (Current device / OS / app design norms are mostly in service of consumerism, which assumes no one ever wants to learn anything unless someone paid for them to hear it. So, not that stuff.)
The particular reason people struggle with algebra is because it is one of the first fundamentally abstractionist topics taught in schools. There is a huge cognitive development and experiential component.
Delaying teaching algebra makes cognitive developmental sense, but it is also inherently intertwined with with race, class, and gender for a bunch of reasons that get a lot of people really angry.
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The only defense I hear is that kids don't really benefit from advanced classes and they'll be fine anyway. But gifted children will not necessarily be fine. Most of the smartest people I know struggled in school just, but most were fortunately saved by advanced placement classes that put them in classes where they can learn at a faster pace than the rest of the children. Were they forced to stay in what to them amounted to remedial classes, they would grow to resent education and actually underperform.
The utter disregard the people pushing these policies have for children is appalling. Hopefully this is just a weird time in our countries history where that we'll look back on and think how absurd the policies were.
They're replacing advanced placement classes ... with straightjackets.
So the only way to even the playing field is to eliminate difficult subjects in high school, so that everyone gets near-perfect grades.
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Like another poster already mentioned, reminds me of the Harrison Bergeron story by Vonnegut - seems like we are rapidly approaching that point.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
x + 3 = 7
Instead, they will get questions such as
__ + 3 = 7
They might not formally learn it, but they'll learn the patterns that they will eventually apply in algebra.
"Solving linear equations with multiple variables", "solving quadratic equations", "solving polynomials", etc. Those are things you really need to teach as a distinct concept. Algebra is just the language, introduced in a pedagogically sound way you wouldn't even realize you were learning it.
Fast forward a few years in school when the teacher introduced algebra in class (maybe sixth grade?), everything suddenly clicked, and I pretty much got the highest grade for several months straight because I learned this material before, albeit not well, but still way ahead of everyone else.
I think this could be a middle ground: introduce the material earlier, but with no expectation that the pupil must grasp it immediately; then review or reintroduce the material again at a later date.
In my experience, kids whose parents help teach concepts and don't just leave things up to school generally end up with an advantage. Kids love learning from their parents and other loved ones, but school is generally regarded as sort of a chore even if it does bring friends and playtime. A great many parents simply don't have the time or energy left after their day job to support their children the same way others can. Kids whose parents often read to (and with) have a noticeable advantage in many school settings, and you can't substitute that for all students by just cramming in more reading time in their busy school schedules.
Kids have a finite time they spend in school. You can shuffle the time they spend around all you want, but in the end every kid requires a certain amount of time to grasp a certain context. That time may differ when kids get older or younger, but the required time spent on learning won't suddenly change.
Everything builds on other concepts and people's misunderstandings generally came from not truly understanding the basics. Its hard to personalize education at scale though.
Now, over a decade later, I am a professional software engineer. Sitting next to that guy in my 7th grade algebra class set my life on a course that turned out to be great. It makes me sad to know that future students won't be able to have such opportunities to be surrounded by similarly smart people. In the rest of my middle school classes the disrespect, distracting behavior, bullying, etc. were totally out of control - now I guess students won't know anything different.
I think this is a TERRIBLE decision, pushed by radical leftists that are completely out of touch with regular people. I wonder how much farther California and its cities will fall before people wake up.
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After what we have learned the last 30-50 years from cognitive sciences one has to wonder what schools are actually for, nowadays. There are most certainly not optimized for "learning" by any means. Imho to put it blatantly schools are reduced to be a effective stronghold for indoctrination. They justify their power by using "science, technology, art, literature, history, social community, cultural exchange ...". Of course sheer by its power and scope we certainly "learn" something there. And you also happen to find great teachers in that system but its certainly not its main purpose.
Going back historically, schools still remain inherently (and shockingly so) medieval institutions. Interestingly "school" originally stems from the greek word of σχολή (/skʰo.lɛ̌ː/) which simply means "free time, leisure" which got hijacked by the church with "monastic schools" and today "school" means quite the opposite.
Throughout its (western) history with changing society they were succesful adaptions made (Prussian system, Humboldt's Ideal, Montessori pedagogy) skyrocketing literacy, expolding number of scientists etc.
But today the educational system is massively outpaced by the societal changes and by failing simply regresses to its medieval core of indoctrination ("preparation for the labor market").
No scientific literacy (aka critical thinking, controversial debates), no "learning" grounded on cognitive sciences, no hearing and tending to the needs of our young which they can perfectly articulate.
They're daycare so their parents can be productive members of society. Learning is incidental.
Resources were so scarce communities could only afford to send a select few to learn to read and write and spend time on the highest levels of human thought, i.e. questions of the meaning of existence and epistemology.
They're daycares and increasingly being used to spread propaganda.
This idea that ANYONE will be helped by giving them a free pass needs to stop. No minority will have an improved life by saying they are too mentally deficient to learn hard things. This is a political game where politicians refuse to recognize that fixing this is not an easy slap a bill in place an everything will be better. I think what they're hoping is that they can "fix" the numbers to show higher achievement by lowering standards and get voted back into office. We'll certainly be feeling the negative effects of these sorts of policies in a few decades if this bullshit continues.
When I am doing homework with my son or check is lessons I always wonder what is happening with students that parents don't have the time or the skill to do math,physics,programming together with the child. Some will hire private tutors but to few.
Seems to me that either you get fewer students to a teacher, or have less dense material to work with so the teacher can have the time to check each student and figure-out what exactly is unclear. And you ofcourse you need good teachers,
It's not obvious to the authors of the California Math Framework, who believe that:
- we should sort kids into classes purely by age, and that any other method of sorting is inequitable
- every child should be taught grade-level material (no matter how far behind, or far ahead, they may be)
- teachers are capable of successfully teaching mixed ability classes (irrespective of how the min/max) using 'differentiated instruction'
It's just "strange" that this is only done for academics, but never for athletics.
The fact that academic results can be thought of in "equitable" terms, but not athletic results (aka, you must be able to run 100m in X seconds), points to some systemic, cultural bias in thinking that everyone is just as smart, and that genetics don't play a role in intelligence.
Can you maybe explain to a non US person why a system merit based is not used(or if it was used in the past was dropped) , I understand there are limitation with this system, I will describe next:
1 there is national/state level exam with super strong security to prevent cheating
2 highschool/universities will be placed on a list with all the classes they offer
3 candidates will fill an ordered list with their preferences. In practice this means you put on the top the "good" high schools and the classes/profiles that interest you , like if you hate Math you will avoid science/math stuff and go to art/literature/languages profiles. How I personally ordered the schools was by checking the results of their students at the national exams.
The result is that students that are very smart or that are OK smart but worked hard are concentrated on 3 hghschools in my region. This seems OK sincee the kid that is a really jerk, never liked school or failed the exam will be at a different highschool and not drag down the working hard students.
The pejorative used for structuring curriculum and resources based on this observation is "tracking" and aside from special needs and other narrow exceptions it is thought to be a great historical injustice that has largely been eliminated from public schooling in the US. Now we look forward to ending the injustice unequal funding due to differential tax bases among communities has created. Doubtless ending this remaining vestige of inequity will herald a new age of public education excellence in the US.
Or something.
But there still is the children learn at different speed or some are left behind, at least in my son case I feel in Math they move too fast, there was the same when I was in high school too.
Doesn't this get at the root of the problem though? Some students have the mathematical maturity for it. Others don't. The arguments seem to be between "we should present these concepts early for the benefit of the students who are ready for it" vs "we should delay these concepts until all students are ready."
But different students have different levels of mathematical maturity. the problem seems to stem from working in a paradigm where everyone at a particular age has to learn the same thing. It seems we should be moving in the direction of more personalization rather than less.
> 5 + $basketEmoji = 7
> What number is hiding in the basket?
They have no idea they’re doing algebra or what algebra even is but they’re doing it. And they understand the concept on a fundamental level.
I don’t remember anyone explaining a variable to me so explicitly. I just remember showing up one day and having to deal with random letters mixed into my math homework.
Not everyone took algebra in 7th grade; those who did not, took it in 8th grade.
All it takes is a little one-on-one time and some interest.
Kids are way smarter that you realize.
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