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Comment by sgdjgkeirj | Hacker News Reader

Prof Nelson didn’t call himself “whistleblower “ but it does seem untoward that the main author of the California math framework is also making $5000/hour when the client is not a tech company but a public school district with mostly minority and economically disadvantaged students.

In any case, if there is nothing untoward, why threaten him with “police and lawyers”?

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Let's have this again, Prof Nelson is siccing his Twitter mob on a person doing her job - no matter what we think about the honorarium, Prof Boaler's job is math didactics for disadvantaged populations.

That's not "nothing untoward".

Nobody’s job is to make Californian kids stupider. She is personally profiting by her destruction of math education for untold numbers of kids.

You don't send a Twitter mob after people, full stop, even if they work at schools of education.

You don’t criticize people in a public forum for doing harmful things to society?

Could you provide some examples to back up that "destruction of math education" claim?

They are trying to “close the achievement gap” by limiting achievement. It’s a crime against humanity of a different kind.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/california-math-curric...

Thank you for the link, but to be technical I think it doesn't fully support your point -- it provides some perspective from 2 different sides of the issue.

That being said, from reading this article as well as this [1] and skimming Boaler's Twitter [2], if I had to guess... this CA initiative sounds like an honest, curious effort to make at least some progress, for which Boaler allegedly received death threats and harassment, as opposed to a "crime against humanity."

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-math-...

[2] https://nitter.net/joboaler

Yes, you can make an honest effort to close the achievement gap between Usain Bolt and me by telling him that he can’t run faster than 10 miles an hour.

I think that's a disingenuous take on probably the most controversial part of the program. The proposed guidelines said kids should stay in the same level classes until high school, which doesnt strike me as crazy. That's how it is for every other subject (or it was when I was in school).

He has 7k followers as of now, and probably gained a large # of them because of this tweet (which is his most circulated tweet). It's not "his" Twitter mob.

Your "siccing a mob" rhetoric is bald-faced anti-democratic. Prof. Nelsons actions are what the public square is all about - expressing your opinions and criticizing things you think are wrong.

You are dressing up your argument with all these "anti-woke" signifiers but your claim boils dowj to Prof. Jelani was somehow wrong to express his opinion about actions of the government in a public forum.

so is it public square or private company?

or whatever is convenient for you that day, as per the circumstances?

Regardless of which one, the cops should not be involved.

>but it does seem untoward that the main author of the California math framework is also making $5000/hour when the client is not a tech company but a public school district with mostly minority and economically disadvantaged students

It seems lazy to dismiss that person just because he charges a high rate. If his services are effective and there's no better alternatives, who cares how much it costs? People getting outraged at high public salaries is exactly the reason why we get mediocre civil servants.

Jelani Nelson himself is probably a better alternative and does much of his work for free.

Because there are people who volunteer for habitat4humanity doesn't give me a good reason to be indignant when my builder asks me to pay her for her work.

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