<story><title>Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity</title><url>https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/refusing-to-teach-kids-math-will</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>currymj</author><text>You can imagine the following perspective:&lt;p&gt;- Most people don&amp;#x27;t need to learn calculus at all, and it&amp;#x27;s fine if the few weird students who do start when they get to college (maybe the advanced students can learn single-variable calculus in high school).&lt;p&gt;- For pure signaling reasons, taking calculus in high school has become very important for college admissions.&lt;p&gt;- In order to take calculus in high school, you need to at least take algebra I (and hopefully geometry) in middle school. Wealthier parents understand they are playing the college admissions game early on, so they make sure in elementary school that their kids will be able to get on the algebra track in middle school.&lt;p&gt;- Getting on the algebra track is thus the first really consequential part of the college admissions game, it happens much earlier than the rest, and takes real scheming by parents to make sure their young kids are prepared. [actually true]&lt;p&gt;- If you could just make this impossible, it will even the playing field in a huge way and knock down one of the biggest hurdles in college admissions for people from lower-SES backgrounds. [also probably true]&lt;p&gt;- The only downside is that students will no longer have time to cover calculus in high school, which doesn&amp;#x27;t matter anyway because it&amp;#x27;s only a small number of unusual people who need to learn calculus (very advanced math!), and they can just learn it in college.&lt;p&gt;This is my best guess about the line of thinking that motivates these &amp;quot;no advanced math&amp;quot; policies. It has elements of truth to it which are worth paying attention to. The problem is just that actually, it&amp;#x27;s really useful and important to learn calculus in high school, and more people need this opportunity.&lt;p&gt;edit: I thought it was clear that I think a lot more high school students should be learning calculus as early as possible, and that &amp;quot;no advanced math&amp;quot; is a terrible policy, but I guess not...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eftychis</author><text>With that kind of thinking though we can reach logical results like:&lt;p&gt;- writing prose and composition is unnecessary, as at best one will write on slack and social media;&lt;p&gt;- doing pushups, calisthenics, or running is unnecessary: few jobs require that;&lt;p&gt;- learning about how the government works, civics or sociology or psychology should be skipped: all these are taken care by the employer that is not going to let you go vote anyways (still don&amp;#x27;t understand how&amp;#x2F;why it is not a mandatory holiday, but what do I know);&lt;p&gt;- debates should be banned: promotes arguing against cops and employers both having detrimental outcomes;&lt;p&gt;- art is for the rich and private schools: poor populous should not be dreaming;&lt;p&gt;I suggest -- my 2 humble cents -- the writers of this abomination take a class in logic. Unfortunately, that is math and requires fundamentals they don&amp;#x27;t want covered.&lt;p&gt;P.S. My grad school anecdote: our perception and experiences as &amp;quot;international&amp;quot; grad students of the math understanding of incoming undergrads was abysmal to put it lightly. I don&amp;#x27;t want to be in any future TA shoes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity</title><url>https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/refusing-to-teach-kids-math-will</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>currymj</author><text>You can imagine the following perspective:&lt;p&gt;- Most people don&amp;#x27;t need to learn calculus at all, and it&amp;#x27;s fine if the few weird students who do start when they get to college (maybe the advanced students can learn single-variable calculus in high school).&lt;p&gt;- For pure signaling reasons, taking calculus in high school has become very important for college admissions.&lt;p&gt;- In order to take calculus in high school, you need to at least take algebra I (and hopefully geometry) in middle school. Wealthier parents understand they are playing the college admissions game early on, so they make sure in elementary school that their kids will be able to get on the algebra track in middle school.&lt;p&gt;- Getting on the algebra track is thus the first really consequential part of the college admissions game, it happens much earlier than the rest, and takes real scheming by parents to make sure their young kids are prepared. [actually true]&lt;p&gt;- If you could just make this impossible, it will even the playing field in a huge way and knock down one of the biggest hurdles in college admissions for people from lower-SES backgrounds. [also probably true]&lt;p&gt;- The only downside is that students will no longer have time to cover calculus in high school, which doesn&amp;#x27;t matter anyway because it&amp;#x27;s only a small number of unusual people who need to learn calculus (very advanced math!), and they can just learn it in college.&lt;p&gt;This is my best guess about the line of thinking that motivates these &amp;quot;no advanced math&amp;quot; policies. It has elements of truth to it which are worth paying attention to. The problem is just that actually, it&amp;#x27;s really useful and important to learn calculus in high school, and more people need this opportunity.&lt;p&gt;edit: I thought it was clear that I think a lot more high school students should be learning calculus as early as possible, and that &amp;quot;no advanced math&amp;quot; is a terrible policy, but I guess not...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pwthornton</author><text>There is a way to have time to cover Calculus in high school while still taking it slower: Block scheduling.&lt;p&gt;My high school shifted to it. It&amp;#x27;s like a college day where you have four longer classes instead of eight shorter ones. Courses are semester-long, not year-long. This means you can take two math classes in one year (algebra in the fall and geometry in the spring).&lt;p&gt;This also enabled my high school to offer AP Calculus B, which is part-two of AP Calculus.&lt;p&gt;The other advantage of this type of schedule is that it is also easier to offer other kinds of math that may be more critical to most students, such as a dedicated class on statistics.</text></comment>