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Comment by foolfoolz | Hacker News Reader

math is just the beginning of these backwards policies. public schools in california have been removing advanced classes in the name of “equity” for years. the racial enrollment in those classes did not reflect the racial enrollment of the school.

the result? parents moving kids to private school. at the school nearest me they kindergarten enrollment is dropping. they are likely going to only have a a single class in a couple years

california is making it very clear the public school system is not going to help your children succeed beyond a base level. it seems to have the completely opposite goals of when i was in public school in california

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>the result? parents moving kids to private school.

as someone who went through the public school system in California during a time where classroom sizes hovered between 35-50 students under a single teacher, I have a hard time thinking that won't bring at least some benefits to those that aren't being put into private schools.

Don't get me wrong, as a delinquent/mischievous/criminal youth I loved it; the dating pool was huge, parties everywhere, drugs abound -- but I never received any kind of decent scholastic education until college.

Probably not as much benefit as you'd think. The state funding that student would have been bringing goes with the student to the private school so the student/teacher ratio stays about the same

> The state funding that student would have been bringing goes with the student to the private school

No, it doesn’t.

There was a proposed 2022 ballot initiative that would have done that with about 2/3 of the state funding, but it got less than 1/3 of the signatures required to be placed on the ballot.

Fair enough, I'm way out of date there. I went to a charter school for part of my high school and it was free to me. Their funding came from the funding the state would have have been sending to a public school had I gone there instead.

“Charter schools” are part of the public school system, whether publicly or privately operated. They are different from private schools, which are outside of that system.

Half right. Technically part of the schools funding is tied to a per student allotment. If a student goes to a private institution the school looses money and government keeps it for redistribution elsewhere.

Honors English has been removed from many schools in the name of equity. Kids barely read novels for school anymore. Writing assignments are often limited to two page essays. Anything more significant requiring research, drafts and multiple revisions is not done.

Schools - and this is a problem in the UK as well - are incentivised to optimise for evenly distributed mediocrity, instead of allowing people to reach their potential.

Now, I'm not talking about race here - this is from my perspective in the UK.

Ultimately we need to split the education system up. Putting the next Einstein and a violent, disinterested drug dealer in the same school, let alone the same class, is a recipe for disaster. And no amount of giving the idiots targets will fix them, but it will make life hell for people who actually want to learn.

This one-size-fits-all, optimising for mediocrity attitude is evident in the move towards mixed sets. The idea is that by putting the intelligent kids and the violent, intentional failures in one class the intelligent kids encourage the others to improve. But in practice they're vastly outnumbered, so they just get relentlessly bullied and don't learn anything. I know, because it's happened to me.

And it's evident in the way schools handle behaviour. I was kicked in the head at school, twice, by a load of thugs. I'm still very slowly recovering from the post concussion syndrome. At this rate, I am likely to fail my exams and not get into what used to be my backup uni. It was an entirely preventable incident if only: - The school had entry requirements (it's meant to be a specialist technical school, but thanks to our enlightened government new grammar schools are banned.) - The school was able to expell them before it happened, what with them spending the whole time messing about and attacking my friend - The school had temporarily suspended more than the single person who punched my friend in the face when the whole group was there - The police, with it's restorative justice, letting under-18s get away with anything, policies, had actually done something the first time

But they didn't, and now my life is ruined, and they got away with it. Because of a series of brain dead policies that are disconnected from reality and pushed by people similarly disconnected from reality.

The school system should have separate schools for high achievers to allow them to succeed without violence and with the fast pace and high expectations they deserve. If people want to go to those schools they can put the work in, behave, and pay attention. It's time to stop feel-good policies about second chances and equity and optimise for success and meritocracy.

>Schools - and this is a problem in the UK as well - are incentivised to optimise for evenly distributed mediocrity, instead of allowing people to reach their potential.

and that is the crux of the problem --- the best school would be one which would help students explore what they are interested, find what best suits them, and then best prepare them to be successful at that.

I disagree w/ separation though --- this really should be achievable in a single building/system.

One of the best programs ever for fostering educational success was the one California had where land-grant colleges were required to accept the student with the highest GPA from each high school who applied and provide a full scholarship (so if the top 3 students got a better deal, then the student w/ the 4th highest GPA was guaranteed to be able to apply to a land-grant college and be accepted, and get full tuition and room and board). This was dismantled after college students began protesting the Vietnam War and draft.

> I disagree w/ separation though --- this really should be achievable in a single building/system.

It should be achievable in a single building/system. And it would be great to have the funding, expertise, and coherent strategy to build a school system which helps students explore what they're interested in and find what suits them, and helps students in a personalised way.

However, to execute that you would need those three things - funding, expertise, and a coherent strategy. And I think part of the problems with schools is that they're on paper meant to do all of these amazing things - they're meant to have everyone under one roof and not have problems, they're meant to be endlessly forgiving to those with rough backgrounds and have them improve as a result, regardless of how many times they hurt those around them. Their ability to expell/suspend is heavily restricted, because schools shouldn't need to expel people. Schools are built around the assumption that they're close to this perfect utopia where everyone gets on well, and if we just make a few refinements to the implementation we'll be there. But they're nowhere near perfect, and I don't think that kind of utopia is anywhere near achievable. I don't know of anywhere where that's been achieved at scale.

What has been achieved at scale is building an education system that may not be able to provide for each student individually, but which at least has separate paths for the types of students they accommodate.

The EU publishes a document of the composition of European education systems (https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d78...). While I haven't got first-hand experience of any of them (besides the UK one), I have spoken to people about it. The German system in particular appears to be quite well designed (though I may be wrong - this is from conversations with one person.) There are multiple tracks you can go down, which cater to different students. People can transfer between the tracks, generally at age 16, if they want to go to (state-paid-for) university.

What is clear is that single-track education systems are a rarity. If anyone here has first-hand experience I'd be interested in what you think of it.

> One of the best programs ever for fostering educational success was the one California had where land-grant colleges were required to accept the student with the highest GPA from each high school who applied and provide a full scholarship (so if the top 3 students got a better deal, then the student w/ the 4th highest GPA was guaranteed to be able to apply to a land-grant college and be accepted, and get full tuition and room and board). This was dismantled after college students began protesting the Vietnam War and draft.

That sounds like a great system. Robust education systems that support success and scholarships to allow people to continue in those systems regardless of background are some of the best tools for equality of opportunity and social mobility. There should really be more of that kind of thing - and without any identity-based strings attached.

The really great aspect of the California land-grant program was that it provide de facto integration because the schools were de facto segregated.

(and I say that as an Asian-American who was bussed in to an inner-city Indianapolis school, taking a bus which went past a school I had previously walked to)

How would you recommend a soon-to-be-parent keep track of what's actually being taught in schools, before their kid is in a given year? I see a lot of headlines but have no idea how this is different or if I should be concerned.

talk to principals. i’ve talked to a few and heard pretty consistent responses. the early grades k-5 don’t really matter. middle school 6-8 you need to get into algebra so you are doing geometry in 9th grade. other honors programs for english need good grades but rarely require this kind of years in advance track / planning. but you have to make sure the high school you are targeting (when you get there) has the classes

Make friends with parents of kids who are a couple years older. We've gotten the runaround from the school and district. They are familiar with stalling tactics and they know how to deploy them effectively. They start out saying things that sound promising, then string you along for a year or two, blaming special circumstances. By the time you realize it was all a game, your kid is about to graduate from that school. If you had talked with other parents, you would know their playbook and how to politely but effectively push back.

My contrarian take is that algebra and calculus are pre requisites for for ap calc which is primarily used for elite college admission decisions.

Is the word Elite needed?

It's really about SAT test prep which is primarily used for Elite admissions decisions when all else is equal.

Algebra is basic math that every adult should know in and of itself, not something that is only needed to take AP calculus.

Nobody said otherwise.

It's still there in high school fwiw: https://www.sfusd.edu/learning/curriculum/high-school/mathem...

This is about dropping algebra I in 8th grade which is where you need to take it in order to prep for AP exams and the SAT basically. Algebra I (8th), trig/Geometry 9th, Algebra II 10th, pre-calc/ calculus 11th, AP calc 12th.

Anyway, these are all basically memorization and it is more important to teach mathematical reasoning and understanding skills vs pattern matching.

I mean ChatGPT LLMs score a 5 on AP calc now for god sakes. However, it scores a 2 on ap English language comprehension and literature. Oh the irony.

https://www.thestar.com/business/technology/2023/03/14/chatg...

Even if they aren't taking AP Calc, starting algebra in 8th grade means they get an extra year of practice with it. What is the benefit of having less practice with algebra?

Memorizing things like SOHCAHTOA and FOIL may not be a vital life skill for everyone, but everyone can benefit from the base logical thinking required to identify a variable, break a problem down into steps, plan and execute a solution.

At a bare minimum, the basics of algebra (and to a lesser extent precalc, such as understanding limits and differentials) foster a type of abstract thinking and skills that pretty much anyone can benefit from.

Except that the traditional way of teaching the subject does not reason from first principles which is what you are advocating. The new math stuff does... I think parents hate it cause we don't understand it and it screws up the college pipeline.

To illustrate my point of the uselessness of our conventional mathematical training. ChatGPT gets a 700 out of 800 on the SAT Math section, but ask ChatGPT a reasoning question that requires math... it can't do it. That shows you just how useless the SAT actually is except for training kids to pattern match.

ChatGPT 4's math abilities are really hit or miss. I asked it to act as a "Socratic tutor" for the de-biasing terms in exponential moving averages. And it walked me through the problem, and it actually pointed out errors in my derivation (even though I was using a half-baked mix of Unicode and LaTeX). That was honestly pretty impressive.

On the other hand, GPT 3.5 is painfully bad at basic arithmetic. Apparently it can add long numbers, but you actually need to explain the addition algorithm and give it some examples. Then it can walk through the process step by step, just like an elementary school student.

In a lot of cases, I suspect ChatGPT 4 is pulling from a tiny corner of the training distribution. It has seen most of the web, and it doesn't need to see things often to talk about them. I've seen it successfully summarize the contents of obscure personal blogs, or of a very minor news story that was current for a week in 2009.

So it wouldn't surprise me if GPT 4 performs well on tasks that are mentioned on a half dozen obscure web pages, or something like that.

Can you define what you mean by abstract thinking skills?

Everything else you've listed can be acquired as a dishwasher or a line cook.

Anyways, the classes always seemed to me to tend more towards shut up and calculate than they did building a robust understanding and perhaps most important of it all: a mathematical intuition. I always found it profoundly stupid that there were never any essay questions in math, I expect those who elect to teach the subject are often wont to expediency (which would explain the number of coaches in the department) rather than an inclination towards the subject itself.

During graduate school I interacted with academics working in math education who felt similarly, that math should be taught through essay questions, e.g. "explain the concept of a limit", and the like. I've always felt it was a deeply misguided pedagogy and I hope it does not become popular. Solving well crafted exercises requires a deep understanding of the material, it's unnecessary to check understanding in some other way.

Well for one it's prompting you to make a meaningful linguistic exercise of the matter, which is at once a creative task and secondly it enforces a more dynamic approach to whatever problem is presented.

I wonder if you could get a professor to do anything more than plug and chug, and that's a skill we've long ago delegated to glass. Not only do I want to explain these things in my mother tongue, I expect to know why some variable is in some such place, and how a cube of some other variable is related to the problem at hand. Calculation is banal.

I grew up in the midwest US, and what we called "word problems" were a pretty common component to learning (classes), practicing (homework) and verification (testing). The one that stuck with me is the explanation of how speedometers and police radars actually calculate speed using derivatives in pre/entry calculus. We also learned to write very basic proofs. I would consider both of these to be the essay equivalent of mathematics.

Students who didn't show an interest in higher maths courses either took slower versions of the earlier courses where they could get more time with the material, or more business oriented maths such as basic statistics and accounting.

AP Calculus was the closest I experienced to "shut up and calculate", if only because our teacher somehow managed to get behind the lesson plan in our first week and we ended up doing homework for lessons the night before the class where she would actually explain it. That was the second most brutal experience of my academic career, only after the semester in college where I was taking a macro economics course taught by a Polish grad student and a micro econ course taught by a Greek grad student; neither of them pronounced things (especially, and perhaps obviously, the greek letters in equations) the same way, and it turned into a nightmare keeping things straight.

When did you receive your education? I, too, grew up in the Midwest but my experience has always been "shut up and calculate" rife with mostly process-learning and unrelatable problem sets. Certainly important, yes, but also boring. Nothing creative, nothing playful, just very mechanical, very dull. Word problems were infrequent, and anything with real world application was jammed into the margins and given only the most cursory glance. Not to mention doing the online homework was awful.

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