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Comment by yellowpencil | Hacker News Reader

See Cambridge, MA as an example.

https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/camb...

I am not sure why so many people are against mathematics in school. Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees. I would think they would realize the importance of math.

This trend is really upsetting. My daughter is a baby but i am already looking into math circles and alternative mathematics curriculums since us math education was bad before this trend of gutting mathematics education.

> Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees

Are their kids in public school? In some areas, the rich and educated have completed separated from public education, which leaves poor, overworked parents prey to well-meaning but clueless activists.

In public schools the only way to "vote with your wallet" is to relocate, the next best option which is less disruptive to a family is to opt out of the school system if the means are available.

What other options are there?

Nearly every big city public school system in the country has moved to a model where you can choose which school your child attends in the system. With all kinds of magnet and charter options. Those schools are judged and rewarded based on their popularity. This was done largely to address your concern.

It has all sorts of other negatives associated with it but lack of choice in curriculum and staffing isn’t one of them.

I'm in a big city and that is certainly not the case. I can submit preferred locations but ultimately there is a very opaque selection process and there is no guarantee made other than a seat somewhere in the system. I know some families who were on a waiting list for years to go to a school in their neighborhood (less than a half mile walking) and were only able to get in this year because of seats opening up due to city exodus.

EDIT - to add, what does this solve in the Cambridge, MA situation where the entire district has removed advanced Algebra?

The context this comment is missing is that the district in question is middle school.

There are plenty of countries that you get algebra in elementary school. Saying it's only middle school is overly dismisive to the massive amounts of damage to mathematical education in the country this policy is doing.

It can't be doing "massive damage" to mathematical education, because it has simply never been the case that significant numbers of students have ever taken advanced algebra in 8th grade.

I live in the inner city of a top 25 metro and my city is not like this at all.

Name names and I bet with a simple google search I can find a charter public school with an alternative curriculum available.

> well-meaning but clueless activists

Lets call a spade a shovel here - there is nothing well meaning about not teaching maths to children.

> there is nothing well meaning about not teaching maths to children

It's stupid. And there is definitely corruption [1]. (Surprise, surprise, it's another Stanford researcher.) But I don't think most activists are going in to hurt children. They mean well, but wind up causing more harm than good.

[1] https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is...

Intentions don't matter. Politics would be way less divisive if we realized this simple thing.

These are complex systems, even my best efforts at things I have specialist knowledge of can overlook something stupid, there is no intent there.

However, if when peer reviewed and faced with the obviousness of said stupidity one choses to double down that this is the one true way, and proclaim Many of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make then the intention becomes all to clear.

If everyone had good intentions, we would cherry pick the good things from all the rival plans and might just find a magical middle ground that balanced many of the issues and resulted in a better outcome for all.

The well meaning but clueless activists and the rich are often one and the same.

Its almost as if the rich want to keep those people uncompetitive so their own kids face less competition.

Dogma I'd guess.

Probably a case of sociopaths going to sociopath. They don't really care about children or the damage they are doing. They just want to make the right sounding mouth-noises to advance and playing Handicapper General in the name of equality. We saw same sort of vile behavior before with "anti-sex trafficking". We really ought to be throwing these people into woodchippers instead of into power.

my parents made sure we got good English as foreign language skills because they knew it’s crucial. I guess maths would have been more useful longterm

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