Open Letter: Replace the Proposed New California Math Curriculum Framework | Hacker News Reader

Open Letter: Replace the Proposed New California Math Curriculum Framework

independent.org

48 pointsthrowkeep47 comments

There are groups of people in this country in control of our most fundamental institutions with values that are irreconcilable with mine. I don't even know how to form a sensible argument with the idea that objectivity is not a desirable goal, that for a student to excel at mathematics is socially damaging, doing net harm by psychic trauma to the other students, that right and wrong answers to equations are subjective. We're not operating from the same set of values, and I don't understand theirs well enough to steel-man them.

I can't imagine a compromise that I could reach with a teacher who believes the above that would make it less than parental malpractice to put my child in their classroom.

I have known an elementary school teacher for a few years now, and we occasionally have cause to discuss matters like this one. It has crystallized my determination that my children, should they ever exist, will be homeschooled. As much as I would like to believe that these beliefs are only held by a few "true believers" in unfortunately high positions, I fear that the reality on the ground is much worse. My acquaintance genuinely and fully believes... well, basically anything fêted in the social proof of equality and justice. Even if the actual proven results of such beliefs and policies directly harms the populations they claim to help.

It is strange; if one were to imagine a white supremacist or similar figure in charge of education, and they tried to push forward a similar proposal to ensure that the disadvantaged were never taught true mathematics, they would be tarred and feathered. But by cloaking the initiative in the language of justice, people approve.

I've accepted for a while that people are not generally rational. But it's hard to accept the further realization that - and this is shakier ground, though it tracks with what I've noticed recently - many people don't seem to actually have beliefs. They have some vague set of heuristics that they use to respond to the world. Should evidence contradict their feelings or cause them to feel bad, they will deflect, dismiss, denigrate, and deny until anyone intruding on their personal reality simply gives up. Anything to avoid updating their priors. And I mean that in the least charitable way possible; this acquaintance of mine has refused to accept that there is a difference in importance or even kind between feelings and facts.

The knowledge that someone like this is an active teacher is horrifying.

> My acquaintance genuinely and fully believes..

That's...not a firm basis for the broad general conclusions you ret upon it.

No, but like I said, those conclusions are based on other observations and information I've gathered. I merely spoke about them because they are the most relevant to this article and discussion. If they were the only example I could think of, I would dismiss my conversations with them as extraordinary. Instead, I see them as explanations for a pattern I've noticed elsewhere.

> many people don't seem to actually have beliefs. They have some vague set of heuristics that they use to respond to the world

You're right, from what I've understood. Instead, the humans are first and foremost social animals. Staying friends with the others, is what's important to them -- and one of their main heuristics, is, what do my friends (the others in the tribe) think? And to copy those opinions.

> Anything to avoid updating their priors

Changing ones believes, can abandoning one's friends? And historically (hunter gatherer tribes), that could mean isolation and extinction

I'm having a hard time parsing your argument. Could you make this concrete, what are your values and what are the values that are irreconcilable with yours?

There is also this: https://equitablemath.org/

which is on its way to be implemented in Oakland, CA schools.

PDF brochures: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...

WSJ opinion piece on it: https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-leftists-try-to-canc...

Edit: Please scroll down and look at the signatories. Dozens of professors at University of California are voicing their concerns and the people of HN have nothing better than to flag it? It takes courage to put their names/careers on the line.

Ummmm…what the hell?

“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’“

This is not a new concept, nor is it as deranged as you make it seem. There is an idea that developing an intuition for mathematics is more important than rote solving of problems. Successful approximation through intuition has been a defining measure of overall ability in mathematics since the enlightenment period and yet we still enforce a rote systems that makes mathematics incredibly difficult to teach as its completely unengaging. I remember in grade school when I was in third grade our teacher taught us the cross hatch multiplication method. I loved it and basically learned how to do it in my head. The next year I went to a different school with a different curriculum. We started doing timed tests for multiplication problems. I stopped showing my work because it was tedious to write out and I wanted to be the first to turn mine in. So instead I just wrote the answer I had come up with visualizing the problems. I scored well with the correct answers most of the time, but the teacher found it unacceptable that I didn't show my work and started giving me bad scores for not doing it "right." Doing it "right" doesn't encourage mathematical intuition, or engage young minds in thinking about problems abstractly in their heads, it forces them to be nothing more than spreadsheets accounting pointless sums, differences, products and dividends. That's not a great math education.

You're not arguing against a correct answer though, you are arguing against showing your work.

The answers are still objectively correct. Objectively right or wrong.

Not really, I got answers wrong more often than some other students, but I had a skill none of the other students had after I switched schools. The ability to think about math. I've always had a cavalier attitude about the "correct" answer, being able to think in my head and come up with approximate answers is more important. I still think the teacher was wrong to mark my answers incorrectly when it was clear that I was turning my papers in minutes faster than the other students and only having a margin of error within 5%. That ability to think about problems in my head wouldn't have developed if I wasn't afraid to get an answer or two wrong in the pursuit of intuition. It's no different to me. Even in my work I'd rather get the approximation first, than shoot for precision later. I think that's an attitude that gets lost in the mix of precision first. It's certainly an attitude I took into adulthood that has been a boon to me professionally. When I'm writing software, the first step is do it, the second step is do it better and the third step is do it right. Imagine trying to write an entire software application and having it work perfectly the first time you build and execute it. If we can't achieve that kind of perfection in our work as professionals and adults why would we force it on our kids?

Look, I get it when it comes to showing work...but teachers get you to show work in many cases so they can see if you were on the right track and identify exactly where you went wrong.

When you show your work, they can give you partial credit instead of marking the entire thing incorrect if you are wrong. The other benefit of it is that it prevents people from trying to rely on calculators (if available) to ensure that the students knows how to work through the multiple steps of the problem.

When it comes to math applications in life, estimates are great for forecasting, quick budgeting and several other things.

Career wise though, anything to do with financials or engineering is never going to be okay with the answer in your head being in the ballpark.

It's a great skill that you have, no doubt, but in order to teach and ensure the students are learning how to work through a problem the teacher needs to see the steps that they are going through to get there.

> Career wise though, anything to do with financials or engineering is never going to be okay with the answer in your head being in the ballpark.

Calculus is the art of approximation and intuition in math. Newton couldn't have destroyed the way we used to calculate pi if he hadn't extended the binomial theorem into other sets of numbers.

It's funny but this is how I got through Physics in college. My math skills weren't up to snuff, but the professor's questions were all real world word problems. I recall very vividly the moment where I figured out how I could pass the course. It was during the first exam, and the question was about the volume of a car engine. The answers were all different in magnitude. I am no car buff, but I know what the "5.0" in a "Mustang 5.0" used to mean. So I knew which answer was ballpark the volume of a car engine, the one that was ~2 liters. The others were obviously too small, such as 0.3 liters, or obviously too large 60 liters. Everything else was similar. I only had to know roughly the magnitude of most of the problems, and actually be able to do the math on some of the rest, in order to pass.

I would not want to live or work or even pass through a community who thought this was a good way to teach children generally. Any industry of theirs beyond a wooden lean-to would be dangerous if not outright deadly.

That's statement is true of any abstract axiomatic system, and mathematics (or, rather, any mathematics) is an abstract axiomatic system, therefore it is true of any mathematics [0]. There are mathematics that are useful in empirically testable contexts, but not mathematics which are objectively true beyond that.

OTOH, other than as deep philosophical background I don't see s lot of value to this in informing K-12 mathematics curriculum, which is firmly in the domain where that statement, while true, has at best very little discernable practical impact, and at worst can contribute to unnecesssry confusion.

[0] It’s also, for the same reason, true of any deontological system of morality, which I suspect is a hidden reason people are opposed to it being recognized in any context.

> That's statement is true of any abstract axiomatic system, and mathematics (or, rather, any mathematics) is an abstract axiomatic system, therefore it is true of any mathematics

Are you referring to incompleteness theorem? If so, that’s about proof not epistemology unless I’m quite mistaken. Whether you can prove something is true is not the same as saying it’s entirely subjective. In fact as incompleteness is a proof of a universal truth then using it as proof of subjectivism is incoherent.

> Are you referring to incompleteness theorem?

No, I’m referring to the fundamental nature of a priori reasoning from axioms as distinct from empirical exploration of reality. Mathematics is itself the first, though it becomes useful in connection with the second.

WSJ archived: https://archive.is/X7Bfa

With this model we ALL get to be intellectually bankrupt. Yay social justice equity!

It's notable that proposals for racial equity listed in their Strides never mention that Asians even exist.

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...

> It's notable that proposals for racial equity listed in their Strides never mention that Asians even exist.

So? It doesn’t purport to enumerate groups that exist, it identifies groups for which it contends structural barriers in pre-existing approaches for which corrective measures are proposed. And those groups identified overlap Asians, though Asians qua Asians aren’t among them (the groups are Black, Latinx, and multilingual students.)

But since you raise that document, on the more substantive hand, it’s notable that a standard conservative complaint about common teaching methods allegedly encountered under “Common Core” standards (which is not a feature of the standards themselves) is present as one of the features of “white supremacy” in teaching against which the document is directed.

---[quote]---

White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when...

Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways.

Math teachers ask students to show work so that teachers know what students are thinking, but that can center the teacher’s need to understand rather than student learning. Teachers should seek to understand individual student perspectives and focus on students showing their work in ways that help students learn how to process information.

[...]

The point should be to have a dialogue about their process and their learning, not require every student to follow the exact same path to the right answer.

The child of immigrants might have learned a different way to solve a problem because that’s how their parents were taught where they grew up. If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life. If we take the opportunity to explore why there are different ways to approach the same problem, it can be a learning moment for the entire class.

---[end quote]---

Curation and what you leave out speaks volumes. Apparently, in all their listed Strides, zero mention is just right. Asians are about 14.6% of California.

Leading with

> So? It doesn’t purport to enumerate groups that exist, it identifies groups for which it contends structural barriers in pre-existing approaches for which corrective measures are proposed. And those groups identified overlap Asians, though Asians qua Asians aren’t among them (the groups are Black, Latinx, and multilingual students.)

...is cold comfort.

> But since you raise that document, on the more substantive hand, it’s notable that a standard conservative complaint about common teaching methods allegedly encountered under “Common Core” standards (which is not a feature of the standards themselves) is present as one of the features of “white supremacy” in teaching against which the document is directed.

And what is this about American conservatism? I'm talking about whether Asians should go completely unmentioned in a policy document on racial equity for Californian math pedagogy. And Asians are not necessarily US conservatives, especially with respect to funding public education.

> And what is this about American conservatism?

An expressly marked tangent addressing an interesting (to me) feature of the document you introduced, after I addressed the silliness of your complaint.

> I'm talking about whether Asians should go completely unmentioned in a policy document on racial equity for Californian math pedagogy.

Its not a catalog of races (nor is it about “race” in the narrow sense.) Its about solutions to concretely observed group disadvantages produced by status quo approaches.

If you think it overlooks equally severe disadvantages faced by Asian students (or Irish, or mixed-religious-background) students as it addresses for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, then, please, present your argument.

Dumbing things down and making them easier is never a solution for progress, my opinion is that this type of thinking will doom education. Which once again reminds me that people could create their own schools, parents could form their own cohorts and hire their own teachers, which I think is coming and it’ll be a wave that will empty out the public schools of any child whose parents can afford it.

> Dumbing things down and making them easier is never a solution for progress

No one has argued that it is. What you need to do is support the argument that what you are opposed to (the framework? the proposal to replace it?) is, covertly, despite its express presentation to the contrary, about dumbing things down.

Math has only two results: right or wrong. Under the proposal, mathematics is flexible with no right or wrong answer. Ergo the two are in conflict, which means we must consider the factual record: math DOES have a right or wrong answer, therefore proposal is incorrect on its face and as we all know, mathematical inaccuracies lead to VERY bad outcomes.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Would you prefer mathematics to be right, or just good enough?

> Under the proposal, mathematics is flexible with no right or wrong answer.

Please cite the specific material in the framework that supports your characterization that it holds that “mathematics is flexible with no right or wrong answer.”

I generally don’t feed trolls, but I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.

> “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’“

You do realize that this is a quote from a document cited elsewhere in the thread which is not the curriculum framework being discussed, but a different document adopted as a guideline by a different authority?

So, about the actual framework...

This shouldn’t be flagged IMO. I read through the proposal and it’s unbelievably disconnected from reality

> I read through the proposal and it’s unbelievably disconnected from reality

The proposal to replace the proposed framework or the proposed framework it proposes replacing?

The original proposed framework that intends to make math worse for unrealistic reasons

> The original proposed framework that intends to make math worse for unrealistic reasons

The proposed framework doesn't make math any different. It proposes making the teaching of math better, based on extensive empirical research (both directly on differential methods and outcomes, and on the underlying causal processes) about how existing math teaching approaches are deficient.

Please mention an example on how the new framework would make things better.

Read the proposal before you comment on it. The authors of the letter have an agenda. The authors of the proposal may have an agenda, but they're basing their proposal on peer-reviewed research rather than "gut feeling".

Every time I see the words “peer reviewed research” lately, I realize that it’s no longer good enough.

Reviewed by who exactly?

By the same clique that are pushing this nonsense, of course.

“Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.”

Exactly. And then compare the language used in the Open Letter with the claims they are making. One easy example which seriously undermines the Letter's credibility:

Letter Claims: "Distracts from actual mathematics by having teachers develop students’ “sociopolitical consciousness.”"

Referenced Section in Proposal: "Ms. Ross teaches fifth grade at the Jackie Robinson Academy. She has been focusing on developing her students’ sociopolitical consciousness through language arts and wants to bring mathematics into their thinking"

The letter uses an anti-pattern of redefining something and arguing against the definition, rather than doing the hard work of discussing the actual something. Bringing mathematics into a subject where it can be applied is not 'distracting from actual mathematics'. Whether or not the sociopolitcal consciousness element of the curriculum is appropriate for fifth grade is a red-herring as that's not what's being proposed.

Are you kidding me? Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

The general agenda of the proposal is quite clear. It is to advance this social Marxist agenda through the teaching of Mathematics. Why is this a good thing? Maths can be purely neutral. Why do you have to infect everything with this shit?

To quote the referenced section in full:

> Ms. Ross teaches fifth grade at the Jackie Robinson Academy. She has been focusing on developing her students’ sociopolitical consciousness through language arts and wants to bring mathematics into their thinking (SMP.1, 2). To begin the process, the class is led in an analysis of word problems from their fifth-grade mathematics textbook (NF.1, 2, 4, 5, 6). Ms. Ross selects three word problems to connect with the class’s current read-aloud of George, a novel by Alex Gino that shares the story of a 10-year-old transgender fourth grader and her struggles with acceptance among friends and family. In doing so, the teacher is reflecting the recommendations of California’s Health Framework, which suggests that sensitive discussions of gender are important for students (https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/he/cf/).

Really? We are now teaching fifth graders about about 10 year old TRANSGENDER FOURTH GRADER. I don't want my kids to learn about gender from social constructionists whose views are divorced from reality.

> peer-reviewed research

That turns out not to be the case, and egregiously so.

A review of much of the research cited, however, reveals that what the Framework describes as “clear” is often actually pretty murky, hotly disputed, or contradicted by other research, misleadingly stretched to cover situations for which it was not intended, or, in some instances, just plain wrong.

Consider how the Framework supports one of its overarching principles, namely its rejection of the “ideas of natural gifts and talents.” The text refers to a paper by a New York University psychologist Andrei Cimpian in 2015 to support that proposition, but the only work of Cimpian listed in the footnotes is a paper written with a Princeton University psychologist, Sarah-Jane Leslie.

“This isn't a question that my own research was designed to address.” Leslie said in an emailed response to questions about the Framework's citation of her work.

And so on and so forth.

Lying about having research that you do not actually have is very much worse than not having research.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/07/14/...

The cancer of Communism 2.0 (s/class/race) has been slowly taking over American institutions. It is so sad to see how people fall for the bait-and-switch keywords of "social justice", "anti-racism", and misunderstanding that equity != equality. Equity by definition leads to authoritarianism, there's just no other way around it. The BLM movement is headed by people who are openly communist and want to abolish the current democratic structures, but people are afraid to criticize it because they are automatically flagged as "racists". This is the good old motte-and-bailey fallacy [0]. They promote extremist agenda, and when pushed back against, they fall back on a milder, more defensible position - "oh, you don't think that black lives matter?".

I do hope that intelligent people will stand up against this nonsense. Western civilization depends on it.

P.S. I am not going to bother using a throwaway account and speak my mind anyway, and I hope that more people do.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

I’m too afraid to speak up under my real name and have a separate account (this one) to speak my mind freely.

It’s not just paranoia, I have a real risk of getting fired from my job for being a centrist. I live in Oakland, CA and it’s a depressing place. I’ve voted for Democratic Party my entire life and most likely continue to do so, but I cannot vote for local democratic leaders in my county.

Just shows how bad it has gotten.

> It’s not just paranoia, I have a real risk of getting fired from my job for being a centrist. I live in Oakland, CA and it’s a depressing place. I’ve voted for Democratic Party my entire life and most likely continue to do so, but I cannot vote for local democratic leaders in my county.

But why would you keep voting for the same people that are perpetuating this nonsense? Something has to be done to at least start moving the pendulum the other way.

A great disadvantage of two-party systems is that you can often get better results by a smear campaign against the other party rather than doing something useful. This kind of system favors polarization and leaves no place for the center. The extremes become more vocal leading to more fighting and name-calling. Sadly, I see no light in this tunnel.

I do vote for Republican local leaders. But, for national election, I do not support Trumpism and extreme-right wing agenda.

I'd vote for a center-right candidate that has basic qualifications and good speaking skills. That's how low the bar is. If they can talk without insulting someone, that's a start.

Your neighbors might call you "extremist" if your views were known. Perhaps your feeling on national figures is similarly affected by a Gell-Mann Amnesia effect of distance.

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