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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

It’s the official shift from “we can lift everyone up” to “we need to hold everyone down”.

It wasn’t that long ago the California was touting the success of Algebra for everyone in 8th grade.

This "single standard" to me is like outlawing adjustable seats in cars.

In the UK, they start separating students into separate tracks around 8th grade. Some will excel in math and science, so give them the opportunity to really go for it and take hard classes. Others will excel in other areas.

But if everyone is lumped together in the same bucket and forced into the same mold, the average student's highest level of achievement across all subjects goes significantly down.

We used to have an accelerated/gifted track in US to take more advanced courses. One got evaluated around 7th grade to make that decision. The difference in skill level was huge because the final year I took it easy and did the regular courses and it was basically a cakewalk.

There is no single US. Each state has it own program to separate students into different tracks. In mine they identified "talented kids" in 3rd grade and they have advanced math and language programs going forward. They had additional evaluations in middle and high schools. So it wasn't like all doors are closed after the 3rd grade.

Regular public schools in a pretty big district that combines both urban and suburban schools.

Get labelled incorrectly in grade 8 and get shutout of any advanced math/science classes which disqualifies you from a good university program.

And you know this because you've seen it happen? In NL, pre-selection happens at 12 years but actual specialisation doesn't happen until 15 years old. That's three years for children to switch tracks, try things and see what works best for them. And even then, students can pursue an upgrade track after graduation that would still grant them access to university at the cost of an extra year of secondary schooling (which also gives them an extra year of maturity, which often also helps).

I don't know how it is in the UK, but your comment strikes me as a typical boogieman from someone who hasn't actually seen the system in action.

Yes, this happens. My son could not take calculus in high school because he was mislabeled in 8th grade. The 8th-grade decision has had an impact on his college career.

The school system has as a track of classes leading up to calculus. A student can jump forward on the track by passing a test on the next class in the track.

Because there were other demands on my son's time, it was not practical for him to learn a year's worth of material outside of school time.

Could be worse… could be the (pre-1976) Eleven-Plus Exam…

In the South East they still do the 11+.

Agreed, that would suck. Maybe allow retesting in the following grade if the student feels they've been mislabeled?

But isn’t it unfair to saddle minorities with more generational debt by getting them to attend universities? I’m being snarky here but also legitimately asking. My student loan payments resume in a month because Biden doesn’t care about non-Boomers.

in this timeline, we are all Harrison Bergeron.

Both policies were an elaborate dance to avoid the reality that different kids have different needs and abilities.

Germany solved this by past 4 years of primary school having three different advanced schools that prepare for different types of careers and that have different durations. That's in addition to having AP classes towards the end. It has the downside that it disadvantages late developing children, but there are also ways to continue at the higher schools if you do really well. Making the jump is harder though.

I think this is a decent trade-off between going slower for some kids and holding others back who could go faster and more advanced.

Looking out from this moment in history, if I wanted to prepare someone for the future, STEM wouldn't be the main focus. I know it's anathema to say. In a world where computers fold proteins and predict programmer's intentions, the value of technical knowledge is showing decay.

In the world we're hurtling toward, we don't need people who can recite the Pythagorean theorem. We need people who can cooperate with other humans, who can leverage technology to achieve their goals and who can evaluate information critically. Throw money at THOSE problems.

Personally, I think the most devastating impact of COVID will prove to be the shift of younger people's focus from the social realm to the technical/virtual. Imagine an entire generation specialized in playing Minecraft, making YouTube videos and scripting Python Discord bots... All the while, AI embeds deeper in government, gains control of resource production and perfects the mechanisms of social control.

I could not have designed a simulation with the goal of a cyberpunk outcome, better. High tech, low life. Hey, at least I know how to do long division in my apartment, alone.

> We need people who can cooperate with other humans, who can leverage technology to achieve their goals and who can evaluate information critically. Throw money at THOSE problems.

Sounds to me like you want some science, technology, engineering, and math curriculum.

I was leaning more towards curriculum that trains being able to feel and act on empathy. You know, like art or whatever.

We never needed people who can recite the Pythagorean theorem. We need people who can prove it. When you have a population who doesn't understand how the world works and is taught to simply believe facts given from on high, it is relatively easy to change who those facts come from, and in an age of easy publication via social media, this has been weaponized.

I would say a strong counter to your argument is that Covid highlighted the need for much better STEM education, because of how painfully obvious it was that so many do not understand "the science". That's in quotes because that's the phrase that was bandied about so often.

> I would say a strong counter to your argument is that Covid highlighted the need for much better STEM education, because of how painfully obvious it was that so many do not understand "the science".

I'd argue that information literacy is more important. I know plenty of STEM-credentialed people who might have insight into their narrow STEM field, but are effectively data illiterate when it comes to evaluating data that's from outside of their field of expertise.

Even then, I don't think the majority of the people that COVID exposed as "not understanding the science" really don't understand it. It's just that they don't care. We're mistaking their lack of giving a shit about the truth for a genuine misunderstanding of the science.

Definitely agree that it's a data literacy problem. But I consider that part of STEM education. For example, people should be able to look at plots of daily infections early in the pandemic and consider that they likely are growing at an exponential rate and the implications for that, rather than dismissing the dangers because the daily case numbers are still small. And understand how false positive and false negative rates of tests implicate policy decisions.

But you are ultimately correct in that most people don't really care to understand it.

I don't think science education is going to help the particular problems we have. Understanding science doesn't change anything if you don't trust the institution running the experiments, and it's become very clear that a large percentage of the population doesn't trust the institutions we have.

This undertone exists in to pretty much all liberal polices.

For example, instead of making more energy, we have power cuts like a third world nation. We could instead build solar farms and nuclear energy, but California (and largely progressives) want shittier world for themselves. Wanna inspire people with values of perseverance and hard work? Nope, that’s not allowed. Want to eliminate homelessness? Nope, too ambitious. There isn’t a single public park in Oakland where homelessness isn’t rampant.

Basically, the entire thinking is about regression, not progression.

I only vote for Democrats because the alternative is worse. But it’s becoming harder.

> It’s the official shift from “we can lift everyone up” to “we need to hold everyone down”.

No, its based on empirical evidence that the way things were done previously holds everyone down, and they should be done differently if you want to lift everyone up.

Educational approaches are technologies, and old familiar technologies are, often, just not as good at their purpose as newer ones.

what evidence and what data? I studied math in Syria and was doing Calculus at 8th grade, came to the states and was forced to redo basic algebra. Do you know how soul crushing it is to redo those classes?

edit: I dont understand how poor war-torn countries can have a better educational system than the most developed country in the world.

I can echo your sentiment. Came from Lebanon and was surprised by how little math people knew here from high school.

Ahla fik khayye :)

How does the current system hold everyone down?

> No, its based on empirical evidence that the way things were done previously holds everyone down

Could you expand on this?

On the surface, I agree. The curriculum that is pervasive in contemporary high schools was developed at a time when few people (~5%, iirc) went to high school and most of those who did went to tertiary education or white collar support jobs.

That said, this may not be the direction you mean.

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