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Comment by syspec | Hacker News Reader

Ironically such a document frames Black / Latino students as 1 monolith, frames them all as too stupid to get math, frames them all as poor, frames them all as caring about their community of color (ie have no friends outside their own race), cannot be gifted or excel at math naturally.

It does all this by pretending math needs to change, when there are a million other things we could fix in bad schools to make all students perform better at math.

If you expect less from people, they will meet that mark. If you expect more from people they will rise to the challenge

150 years ago most people in America were not literate. Now it's expected so they are

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There is nothing ironic about it. This document is a fruit of an entire mental framework that divides people into monoliths according to racial characteristics and, at the same time, drips with soft bigotry of low expectations towards half of humanity.

It is a tragedy to see such fundamentally inhuman philosophy take root. This approach cannot remedy anything at all.

> Tracking is part of a larger debate about access to college. Under the current system, students who are not placed in accelerated courses by middle school may never get the opportunity to take calculus, which has long been an informal gatekeeper for acceptance to selective schools.

> According to data from the Education Department, calculus is not even offered in most schools that serve a large number of Black and Latino students. Expecting but then not providing opportunity to learn isn’t a great model.

And, this problem is not universal for all people attending those schools. The fact that Black and Latino folks are statistically more impacted is important, yet not necessary for wishing to improve.

why make it about race?

Those school also have student that are not black and latino.

There are 2 distinct problems:

1- School in poor neighborhood don’t offer calculus

2- Poor neighborhood have more Black and latino.

Changing math for everyone or reserving spot for black and latino in university is not the solution it will just make the USA less educated compared to other country.

there is only one real solution are:

1- Make sure school in poor neighborhood have enough funding to offer calculus

2- Stop telling minorities they are not smart enough and couldn’t succeed if they tried.

Asian parent know kids are smart enough to learn math and just need to work hard! that’s why they send kid to tutoring school. And that’s why asian are good at school even if they are a minority

That’s my main problem with it, it’s basically segregating these kids based solely on race. It’s literally enforcing racial stereotypes onto them “for their own good”, telling them to accept it as fact.

It’s frankly ridiculous

Why is calculus more important than statistics or data science? Frankly, I think that it’s far more valuable for people to learn stars and data science as they provide far more real world benefits over calculus.

Also, who is telling minorities that they aren’t smart enough? The argument made is that, despite their aptitude, they are not given the opportunities.

And again, this is indeed relevant regardless of race and should be a concern even if the schools disproportionately impacted weren’t minority majority.

All that said, I think your point about funding is the bigger issue. Even if this change happens, how will these schools suddenly be able to offer stats when they couldn’t offer calc?

The assumption is that math teacher at poor school are not as good because poor school can’t afford better teacher!

if student have bad teacher in algebra class they can’t reach the level needed for calculus. And if not enough student are good enough to take calculus the school simply decide to cut it.

It's well-established that radical leftists, the people who scream "Racist!" at anyone they can find, are ironically some of the most racist people in existence. Their whole ideology demands that they infantalize, disempower and rob of agency the very people they claim to fight for, so they can be more effective victims. And of course, anyone who doesn't fit their narrative (like Asians) gets kicked to the curb.

An ex of mine is as radical and as left as it’s possible to get, in that she self-identifies as a “revolutionary Marxist”. She goes on marches, she wants to defund the police, to ban the existence of billionaires, and the world to be a series of anarcho-communist collectives.

For all the flaws and wishful thinking that I can see in her politics, infantilising and disempowering those she goes on protest marches to help is not among them. She absolutely keeps quiet and listens to anyone having a bad time — proper active listening — even though when she does speak up for them her voice is exactly the stereotype of extreme volume and energy the rest of the world has for Americans in general.

The people who preach the loudest often do so to overshout their own past. It’s no coincidence that the loudest proponents of cancel culture have a history of bigotry, racism and bullying. Today, this the most effective way to bully someone.

Most recently this was seen with the organizer of the Netflix walkout, who has a history of racist tweets, primarily anti Asian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7wMZ_R_anw

So true.

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