Comment by rafale | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rafale | Hacker News Reader

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We are witnessing, in this country, the death of meritocracy by a thousand cuts.

Ideally, every student should get a personalized education. In practice, it’s not feasible due to limited resources. So it makes sense to segment kids in 2-3 groups (regular, gifted, special needs) and teach them accordingly. Tests are not perfect but they are a decent objective and non-discriminating criteria to achieve that segmentation.

This program certainly wasn’t perfect, but that’s not the reason it was scrapped. Or else it would have been improved through an iterative process. The reason it was scrapped is leftist progressive dogma. The idea that equity is more important than equality. Jordan Peterson is certainly the best voice on why this equity or equality of outcome is an awful idea.

I am an arab that gew up in a western country and went thru a gifted program at a high school where most students were first generation immigrants. And it’s only today that, looking back, I realize we had a “lot” of Asians in our class, I never saw it like that before, they were just my schoolmates, and they were in the same gifted class as me because they were… gifted.

This country needs a lot more talented & gifted students to excel and if we are to compete with China and others. Instead, now a lot of these NYC school kids will instead be waiting while the teacher calms down the trouble-makers/unmotivated kids instead of behind challenged further academically. Like you said, it's leftist progressive dogma. To what extent can the incoming mayor reverse this?

> trouble-makers/unmotivated kids

Are we still talking about four year olds?

Not really. Average American is already wealthier than the average Chinese. We need better college policies not giving away subsidized loans to useless majors. You should allocate the grants to the fields the country needs, including trade schools.

China does other things as well, like totally ignore environmental issues. You want to go down that road?

China doesn't ignore environmental issues, it's just more willing to carefully spend its ecological health. That is not to say that their bets will pay off, but we may also find that it will be China who leads the world in ecological tech.

I had a conversation several years back in Silicon Valley with some smart people about "epistemologies" of the classroom. In general, the epistemology there is called "Just in case" where you are hammered with "facts" and tested on them just in case you might need them. I brought up "Just in time", and got a different response: "Just for me".

> "Just in case"

Nice, I had not heard this term before. It's a very apt description of the current system of un-motivated learning.

> "Just in time",

This has a lot of potential in conjunction with project-based learning (PBL). Instead of "pushing" knowledge down into student's heads, we could let them "pull" the knowledge they need, when they need it (e.g. need to learn exponential function to complete some calculations in a personal project).

> "Just for me"

Is this referring to personalized lesson plans? If every kid has a private tutor it would be nice (two-sigma effect), but if anyone is hoping for ML solutions for education, then hey will wait for a long time. Education and learning is very nuanced and complicated, so we'll need A LOT of training data to make recommender systems and automated learning pathways work anywhere close to what a trained teacher/mentor can do.

Your first paragraph is betrayed by the reality in your second of what most kids don’t have.

We’ve never had a meritocracy in the US. It is a lie that is told to enable disequitable. treatment.

This absolutism assumes free will doesn’t exist.

I grew up in poverty, spent time as a child looking for dropped coins in McDonald’s drive-troughs, eventually graduated from MIT.

You could redefine meritocracy to not include my case, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.

The anti meritocracy argument goes, as it always does: meritocracy is not perfect => meritocracy is worthless and must be discarded.

It's an absolutely pointless argument that can be applied to any system that exists in the real world, instead of that of spherical cows.

I didn't say meritocracy is not perfect, I said that claims of meritocracy have no basis in reality.

Those are different. It isn't that meritocracy does or does not function - it is that it doesn't exist

It’s the same argument Republicans use against the welfare state. Some people will abuse it so we just as well scrap the whole thing.

The argument I’ve heard against it, is not that “some” will abuse it, but eventually the majority will abuse it.

With respect, as a NYC public school parent who served on education councils, the G&T program was neither. It was a fraudulent vehicle for bringing white families into the public school system. It's good that it's over, at least nominally.

In most cases there were no differences in the curricula between G&T and non-G&T, just differences in the skin color of the students.

Over the last decade the DOE has become quite adept at delivering differential learning in classroom, dependent on only one thing- how many adults can be in the classroom at one time. G&T program operation actually detracted from that capability. Again, it is good it is gone.

In terms of the bullshit equality of outcome argument- it's a strawman. Complete garbage. The NYC wants all students to graduate, but meeting students where they are, then enabling differentiated experience and outcome is entirely what the system is designed for, and, better than any other education system in the country, delivers.

In terms of Jordan Peterson- JFC, the best thing I can say is- he is not an education advocate. In terms of philosophy he tells fanciful fictional stories that have nothing to do with reality. Best find other sources for your education about education.

Best wishes.

You certainly know the program better than I do. But my understanding is that white students are underpresented in G&T, the same as black and latino students. It's the asian students that are overrepresented. Reflecting their community culture that value academic excellence. I don't see a problem with that.

If your argument was true, that the program is a vehicule to bring white families, then why is it being dominated by asian students?

It isn't, white and Asian students are equally represented- each are about 35% of the G&T cohort (while each are about 20% of the citywide cohort).

But 60-70% of private school kids are white, compared to 5-10% per other groups.

When G&T was re-established under Bloomberg, the implicit goal was to bring as many of those families from private to public as possible. Bloomberg supported charters for the same reason. White families and white wealth bring donation dollars, volunteer energy, community connections (most community board members are white), etc, etc.

I understand the intuitive difficulty people have with the idea of differentiated classrooms. It's both deeply in the weeds from a teaching practice perspective and it also did not exist when today's parents were themselves in school, so few really understand what it looks like.

Not to generalize but many Asian families are deeply upset about the removal of these programs. It will not impact the quality of their education but it will mean more integration for a deeply insular community. As an education councilmember what I heard first hand was as much a reflection of the latter as a false perception of the former.

The question is not what percentage they were of the cohort but how does that percentage compare with the overall makeup of the district.

Another NYC public school parent here. You are exactly right—-both G&T and bilingual programs are deliberately introduced to schools in gentrifying areas as a way to lure in wealthier (white) families that would otherwise go private. After a few years, assuming the program is successful in ‘integrating’ the school by making the wealthy/white families less scared of it, then the G&T/bilingual programs are phased out and moved into a new school so the process could be repeated. We saw that play out in school tours (two side-by-side 1st grade classes in the same school that were highly segregated by race) and decided we wanted nothing to do with it.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, this seems fairly common knowledge around these parts. Maybe it’s the Jordan Peterson dig?

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