San Francisco's decision to delay Algebra for all students until the 9th grade in the name of "equity," is a really bad one. Black parents didn't ask for this, and this strategy won't achieve the equity that they're looking for.
Hard to accept: A lot of "anti-woke" people believe that being woke is all just a lot of bad decisions like this. This belief is due to framing by the far-right: any bad policy is "woke." I help them understand that Black families don't want this and didn't ask for it.
@mekkaokereke I don't understand what part of "lets get rid of advanced programs because not all students are advanced and there is inequity in that advancement.
If they had special school, maybe after school or in the summer specifically for students in key areas to GET advanced they might just have a little better luck. Algebra is a good start. They might even throw some study skills in there since it is shown that those skills are the biggest problem for kids from disadvantaged homes.
The "there's inequity in *advanced* classes" argument does have merit.
Black kids are often misidentified as "not gifted" and white kids are often misidentified as "gifted." And then gifted kids get better resources, more attention, better classes, smaller class sizes, that makes the gifted label a self fulfilling prophecy.
The solve for that may not be "No gifted programs for anyone!" It may again be "Reduce the racism."
Similar arguments are for sexism / non neurotypicals.
On gender and tracking:
A not-rich little white 1st grade girl that has undiagnosed bad eyesight, is more likely than a rich white boy, to be mislabelled as "not good at math" and put on the slower education track.
She finally gets her diagnosis and her glasses in the 5th grade, but by then it's too late. She fights to make up ground to get into her dream college, then says things like, "I majored in Chemistry at Cornell, which was hard because I have never been good at math!" đ˘
@mekkaokereke @longobord ooh, as a girl with an engineering degree the "not good at math" thing annoys me. Not that it was ever said to me, but that it was way more of an acceptable thing to say than "I'm not good at English" irrespective of gender.
It's as if not being good at something is a pass for not trying to figure out how to make it work for you.
As someone who focused on how to make math work for me (not how math worked) it seems like a lot of people missed out on that lesson.
@secularshepherdess @mekkaokereke @longobord Here (Germany) many teachers still tell pupils off if they use alternative (fast, reliable) methods or study ahead (whether because they're bored or to compensate in case they need more time later). So even if a student figures that out on their own, they're likely to be discouraged from it in school.
Our education system is generally less flexible than the US's though, I believe, with choosing courses coming up only in grade 11 for us I think? It seems to have changed a bunch since I was in it, though.
@secularshepherdess @mekkaokereke @longobord
a thing that's long bothered me about that: there isn't just one kind of math. like, I'm pretty meh at arithmetic: I learned to do vector calculus in college, but to this day if you ask me what's six times nine I have to think about it for a bit.
but arithmetic is what they're teaching when kids get the idea that they're "bad at math", and if I hadn't lucked out and gotten a really good teacher in 10th grade, I might still believe that I was.
@nuthaven @secularshepherdess @mekkaokereke @longobord
Haha relatable! I got a maths degree without ever being all that fast at arithmetic. 7x8=56 is the one I always had to stop and think for.
@nuthaven @secularshepherdess @mekkaokereke @longobord
A few years ago I worked out a mnemonic that finally got it to stick in my head: 56=7x8 is like 5, 6, 7, 8 in order :-)
@unchartedworlds @secularshepherdess @mekkaokereke @longobord
omg this is life-changing!
@obviousdwest @unchartedworlds @mekkaokereke @longobord @nuthaven I do 8x8 -8. We all get there a different way depending on where we see the path.
This is the part that makes group based instruction hard.
@MHowell @mekkaokereke @longobord thatâs true. The reason I did the work for math is that there was an objective ârightâ answer to math problems at a time in my life when I need something to feel stable. It wasnât until calculus that I realized I understood the what before the why.
I also failed my first semester of college calculus cause I slept through class and didnât understand what the âblack boxâ was for like 10 years.
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