Comment by syki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by syki | Hacker News Reader

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Definitely agree. There’s no reason for me to believe that I’m good at teaching. My students’ failings could be mostly a reflection of my own failing in teaching.

I don’t dismiss the value of anti-racist policy and attempts to rid myself of negative biases that affect my students. My compliant is when I’m told, and I have been told this by an educator, that the act of requiring knowledge of algebra is itself racist. That’s when I feel we’ve gone too far. I don’t necessarily think algebra should be required but the reasoning for getting rid of that requirement shouldn’t be because black students are not passing it at a high enough rate.

My belief is that far too many people are going to college. The degree therefore is being watered down. If we lived in a country where everyone had guaranteed access to food, shelter, and medical care then the emphasis on college wouldn’t be so pronounced and colleges could then concentrate on what’s needed.

I don’t believe your comment should have been downvoted. Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts.

I disagree that "too many" people are going to college. That's a canard which defends the artificial exclusivity of education. The vast majority of people are capable of learning algebra, and geometry, and calculus, and in a timely manner, when empowered by conscientious and effective instruction. It is also true that many students - particularly black and Latino students - are place in the contradictory situation of urgently needing a credential that they were not trained correctly to earn. This has nothing to do with their capability, and everything to do with the dysfunctional system that their intellectual growth is beholden to.

So while I appreciate the sympathetic elements of your reply, I have to point out that the root of your argument is a baseless suspicion of the cognitive capabilities of students of color. Yes, requiring knowledge that has been systematically denied, effectively on the basis of race, in order to obtain a credential that is necessary to earn a dignified living, is a form of racism. And we will need to "change things" to fix that.

I made no assumptions, statements, or implications regarding the cognitive capabilities of students of color. You are incorrectly ascribing beliefs to me. I do believe too many people are going to college. I said people and not students of color.

Do you have any evidence that the vast majority of people can learn calculus in a timely manner? I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that this is simply not true. Please note that I’m making no reference to or claims about students of color. I’m speaking about all people. In my experience a lot of people simply can’t learn calculus to any reasonable definition of what that notion entails.

The requirement of a specific set of knowledge for a degree is not what is wrong. What is wrong is living in a society in which having a degree is increasingly necessary to live at a decent standard.

https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/11396/what...

>The idea in education is that everyone is intellectually equal. Therefore the racial achievement gap in mathematics is due to racism. The solution is to change things.

I'm at a loss as to how you might construe these statements, which you presented as wrongheaded (i.e., that you believe the inverse of each), to not imply that you believe that the "cognitive capabilities of students of color" are lesser, considering the nature of the racial achievement gap (an aspect of the conversation which you broached). Either you simply do not remember what you stated earlier, or you're lying. This is clearly a reference to students of color, at the very least. I just want to establish the high probability that you are being disingenuous.

>Do you have any evidence that the vast majority of people can learn calculus in a timely manner?

Assuming that most people can learn at a 5th grade level, and that, as suggested several times in the comments, this lecture could be broken up into multiple days worth of dynamic, interactive instruction, rather than being presented as a blitzkrieg 20-minute lecture:

https://youtu.be/TzDhdvVg9_c

This is not conclusive, of course. But you asked for any evidence, and I think a reasonable person arguing in good faith would conclude that it suffices. You've shown evidence to be otherwise, so I don't expect you to agree, but I would be happy to be wrong for once in this conversation, on this matter.

I wrote:

The idea in education is that everyone is intellectually equal. Therefore the racial achievement gap in mathematics is due to racism. The solution is to change things.

This is a line of reasoning used by people to advocate for things like getting rid of remedial math. The problem with this line of reasoning to me is the premise that everyone is intellectually equal. Not all premises have to be wrong for an argument to be wrong. This comports with my later statement that too many people are going to college.

There is nothing of a racial nature in any of the statements I made in this regard. To reiterate, I believe that there is meaningful variation in the intellectual ability of humans. I believe too many people are going to college.

My problem with the California initiative is that it is based on the idea that everyone has the same intellectual ability and, furthermore, it does not meaningfully address the true cause of the problem of the racial achievement gap. It’s worthy to address biases amongst institutions and I agree with their efforts in this regard.

The racial achievement gap is a systemic wide problem caused by the structure of our society and nothing meaningful will improve until these things are addressed at a higher level. The effect of the California reforms, I fear, will cause more harm than good.

I understood what you said. This post is simply a reiteration of statements I've already addressed. If you did not mean to make racially-charged statements, you should reassess how you talk about your views in the future, because - and I am telling you this as someone who is taking your stated aim on your word, against my better judgment - what you said sounds racist. Full stop.

The problem is that our societies have made college a status symbol - everybody is supposed to strive for a degree even if what they're planning to do doesn't require it. This is particularly pronounced for white collar jobs, even though many of them are really more akin to tradecraft, and should be properly taught in trade school.

(I would argue that the majority of what we call "software engineering" is actually of this nature.)

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