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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

I had to look up the word mathematise / mathematize and it is not even a word in both Oxford or Cambridge Dictionary.

Collins had it and turns out it means something like "mathematically". So how can you "De-Mathematize" Maths? How can you teach maths and... not teach maths, so to speak?

So may be I have reading comprehension problem. Could someone explain to me or any non-americans here, what exactly is this nonsense?

And Please, speak as you might to a young child, or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that brought me here I can assure you of that.

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Looking into this, it seems that the phrase "de-mathematize" was invented by the critics of the reforms and in fact doesn't really mean anything. What the proposed reforms would do is

1) Eliminate "tracking" which separates high achievers into advanced classes where they can't help the poorer students. 2) Add social context to math classes, such as how biased statistics led to Blacks being denied home loans while whites of similar income received them.

I'm not saying the reforms would be a good idea, especially 1), which would be terrible for kids good at math, but they aren't as silly as an attempt to "de-mathematize" the classes.

Isn't this.... against the goal of trying to bring out the best ability of each individual?

And I assumed that was the goal in the first place.

The argument (whether or not it is convincing) is that having no tracking would pull up the lower achievers and that tracking basically is giving up on them. Both sides want the same thing, it's how they want to get there.

My daughter (10 years old) barely missed the cutoff for her advanced math classes this year. She's been helping "less gifted" students in class, and I would say is substantially better off than if she's been doing slightly more difficult math problems. This is forcing her to think about math in a different way in order to try to help other kids bridge their gaps. I wonder what schools would look like if this was the norm.

> 1) Eliminate "tracking" which separates high achievers into advanced classes where they can't help the poorer students.

I'm not familiar with US school teaching methods, but is it not normally the teachers job to help the poorer [less able] students?

It's just a fancy way of saying taking the precision and clarity out of math education. I.e., all the properties of math as a field that make it uniquely valuable among school subjects.

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