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.
Black 12 year old public school kids in San Francisco aren't given the opportunity to learn Algebra...
But Black 12 year old public school kids in Nigeria not only get to learn Algebra, but also how to do binary arithmetic. 🤷🏿♂️
Here's a full lesson of how Nigeria introduces algebra to 12 year olds:
Here's how Nigeria introduces a 12 year old to Binary, Octal, and Hexadecimal:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XTkqbQXw1rM
And you'll notice that both lessons are taught by Black men teachers.
Black 12 year old kids in San Francisco *have* Chromebooks.
But Black 12 year old kids in Nigeria learn the prerequisites to *write the code* for Chromebooks.
Later, if/when Nigerian kids outperform Black US kids in math, we will blame the Black US kids, or their parents, or "wokeness," or "no dads in the household," or "they just don't value education" or "they lack immigrant work ethics," etc.
Our ability to victim blame Black kids in the US for poor academic performance knows no bounds.
People ask me why my volunteer work is so centered on the US, and not on Nigeria. This is the mandatory Math curriculum for Nigerian 7th graders (age 12):
https://classhall.com/lesson/mathematics-scheme-of-work-for-jss1-first-term/
The path to tech is already shorter from Lagos, than from Larkin street.🤷🏿♂️
JSS1 Mathematics Scheme of Work for First Term WEEK(S) TOPIC(S) CONTENT 1 Whole Numbers (a) Development of Number System: (Roman numerals, counting boards, abacus, etc.) (b) Place Value: Whole Numbers and Decimal Fractions (c) Counting: Tens, Hundreds… Trillions (d) Translating Numbers Written in Figures to Words and Vice Versa (e) Quantitative Reasoning: Simple coding, etc. 2 Basic Operations on Whole Numbers: (Addition and Subtraction) (a) Order of Operations: (PEMDAS/BODMAS) (b) Use of Number Line (c) Addition and Subtraction with Place Value (d) Addition and Subtraction of Positive and Negative Numbers 3 Basic Operations on Whole Numbers (Multiplication and Division) (a) Multiplication of Positive and Negative Numbers (b) Division of Integers (c) Word Problems 4 LCM and HCF of Whole Numbers (a) Rules of Divisibility (b) Definitions: Even, Odd, Prime and Composite Numbers (c) Factors, Multiples and Index Form (d) LCM and HCF of Given Whole Numbers (e) Quantitative Reasoning 5 Counting in Base Two (a) Counting in Groups of Twos (b) Conversion of Base 10 Numerals to Binary Numbers 6 Fractions (a) Definition and Types of Fractions (b) Conversion of Fractions to Decimals and Vice versa (c) Conversion of Fractions to Percentages and Vice versa 7 Fractions (d) Equivalent Fractions (e) Ordering of Fractions (f) Quantitative reasoning 8 Basic Operations on Fractions (a) Addition and Subtraction of Fractions (b) Multiplication and Division of Fractions Revision Revision of work done in First Term Examination JSS1 Mathematics First Term Examination RELATED TO: Mathematics Scheme of Work for JSS1 First TermMathematics Scheme of Work for JSS1 Second TermMathematics Scheme of Work for JSS1 Third TermMathematics Scheme of Work for JSS2 First TermMathematics Scheme of Work for JSS3 First TermMarking Scheme for JSS1 Mathematics First Term CAT 2
And the part that we don't talk about: consider two lower income Asian families in SF. One is 4th generation Chinese. The other is 1st generation Vietnamese. Both families believe:
* Black lives matter
* Schools shouldn't be named after slave owners
* Alt-Right wants to stop immigration and their rhetoric drives Asian hate
* Affirmative Action is good and necessary
* Legacy admission isn't good
♥️👍🏿
But the families have to vote and choose between 2 school boards:
1) No algebra?!
2) Alt-Right!
This creates a scenario where it is very easy for bad actors on the far-right to drive an educational wedge between two communities that generally support each other. 69% of Asian voters support affirmative action. 75% of Asians support Black Lives Matter.
♥️👍🏿
But it's tough for an Asian parent to hear that if they vote for this board, the Algebra education in their kid's school will suddenly become significantly worse than in China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria.
A woman in a position of power, that in my opinion, doesn't listen enough to Black parents or Black educators, and is not in the Black community, has strong opinions, and influence over how curriculum decisions in California get made.
When a Black educator correctly points out that no Black people were involved in this very lucrative but terrible decision supposedly to help Black people, he was threatened with police action.🤡
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stanford-professor-Karen-speaks-out-17064784.php
There is nothing "woke" about her actions.
@mekkaokereke
And they call us snowflakes.
I have noticed that people who call names, often call people what they themselves are.
@mekkaokereke I was so disappointed when I read about the police comment. I encountered Boaler as an undergrad studying math and genuinely think a lot of her ideas are good. Personal conduct tho 😬
Funny enough (and to the original topic), I looked through the recommendations at the end of one of her books and it includes a lot of suggested materials for teaching algebra to elementary/middle schoolers.
1) I am very good at math
2) I am very good at math education
3) I am qualified to make curriculum changes designed to address a systemic racism problem in the US.
1, 2, and 3, are very different things.
A white professor in Palo Alto that thinks it's OK to threaten a Black professor in the East Bay with the cops over this, may not be able to do 3). That person probably can't reduce a problem caused by systemic racism, because they can't see that they are a part of that racism
Awesome post!
@mekkaokereke US schools are known around the world to have low standards, but in the current UK context, Tories have ended esential financial support for post-16 education; they've been drastically underfunding schools and pupil:teacher ratios continue to worsen.
The concept of lifelong learning has also been binned so people who failed in school have no way to fix it.
Sunak would not have the balls to say what he's just said without constant police protection.
@mekkaokereke And then they complain about artistic decisions which don't hurt the story being told at all...
At least that's when I bump into them...
@mekkaokereke So much of this is coming out of Stanford and their math education people, which the Stanford math people hate. Palo Alto school district has been rejecting it for years.
Yup...
Who is more "woke?" The Black man CS/EE professor, who has experience being in, and working with, the community that needs the help? Or the woman who called the cops on him?
https://stanfordreview.org/boaler-professor/
I point this out to people that think that they are "anti-woke." I'm like "No one likes this nonsense. Don't put this mess on us!" You'd be surprised how many bridges to understanding that this opens!
For Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, criticism can be a touchy subject. In 2006, she actually left her post for multiple years after a mathematician, James Milgram, exposed the shoddy methodologies she used in her work. She returned to Stanford in 2010,
Sounds like they confused equity with equality 🤦🏼♀️
@mekkaokereke @samstokes I disagree about the black parents not asking.
I was part of the opposition to the plan and black parents and religious leaders were the ones testifying before the SFUSD in favor of it.
You're confusing "a few parents and priests showed up in support of this after it was proposed" with "Most Black parents think this is an awful idea, and didn't propose it"
This is why recruiting a few Black folk like Candice Owens or Herschel Walker is so powerful for shaping white folks' opinions of what Black people want. You do see the few Black recruits. You don't see the millions of Black bay area parents and education experts that oppose this.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfusd-algebra-math-wars-stanford-study-17851567.php
You don't see folks like Jelani Nelson (Black educator, Professor at Berkeley), pointing out that no Black folk were involved in the small group that created this bad idea to supposedly help Black folk, and him be threatened with police for pointing this out.
A woman in a position of power, that in my opinion, doesn't listen enough to Black parents or Black educators, and is not in the Black community, has strong opinions, and influence over how curriculum decisions in California get made. When a Black educator correctly points out that no Black people were involved in this very lucrative but terrible decision supposedly to help Black people, he was threatened with police action.🤡 https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stanford-professor-Karen-speaks-out-17064784.php There is nothing "woke" about her actions.
@mekkaokereke Sounds like more sabotaging public schools to me.
If you took one of the whitest nations on the planet, Finland, and put some black kids from SF in that school system (ignoring that they can’t speak Finnish nor Swedish) I bet they would do just fine.
Not speaking on behalf of Black people here, but I don’t get the feeling that the want is not “poor education please”.
Fund public schools. Educate everyone!
@shawrd773 @mekkaokereke SF 1st graders have algebraic concepts incorporated into their[1] math too. I disagree with the middle school approach, but the reasoning behind it is not as completely batshit as the OP would make it out.
Regardless of whether or not it is sound in theory, though, it is yet another reason for every parent of any means to leave the system.
[1] source: me, a parent of a first grader in one of the lowest-performing SF public elementary schools
*Elmo_shrug.gif*
Their theory was that this would lead to more Black kids taking higher level math, and being calculus ready. It was a silly theory, and hasn't turned out that way.
@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!" 😢
@mekkaokereke In undergrad I tutored math and was wildly popular among women. I learned to ask in the 1st or 2nd session "OK, who was it who made you believe you were bad at math?"
Every. Single. Student could, and did name names.
Same, except I tutored football players. They would need help with Calculus or Linear Algebra, but I would start them literally at arithmetic. Not kidding. Then I would test their knowledge and walk up until I found the exact place that their understanding went from "complete mastery" to "some gaps." This was often around algebra, pre-calc, or geometry. Then I would fill in that pothole, and everything else would snap into place!
It felt like this:
https://youtu.be/jChiI15Iwa4
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