<story><title>An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California</title><url>https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6389</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kurthr</author><text>From the original letter:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college.  The CMF states that &amp;#x27;many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning in grade eight (or sooner) because of mistaken beliefs that Calculus is an important high school goal.&amp;#x27;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The updated CMF looks better, but I just don&amp;#x27;t see how an educator who knows math or how to teach math could come to such a conclusion (that Calculus should not be a goal). If it is well-intentioned, what was the intention... to dumb down math in high school? Perhaps we need to educate those who are coming up with the math frameworks in math and science, or to get people who care on the California Department of Education?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt; If it is well-intentioned, what was the intention... to dumb down math in high school?&lt;p&gt;Bingo. It&amp;#x27;s well intentioned, but the intentions aren&amp;#x27;t to ensure that America can keep up with a rising China.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s shocking to me that people in California aren&amp;#x27;t more worried about this. About 15 years ago, I was talking to an engineer at Juniper&amp;#x2F;Cisco. We were joking about how Huawei had copied one of their router designs down to the silk screened assembly instructions (in English!) on the PCBs. Fast forward to today, Huawei is making fully custom equipment down to state of the art switch and router chips, and Chinese companies are white boxing lower end products made by American brands.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a big bet out there that the U.S. can survive on software and social media alone. I would think the success of Tik Tok would have blown even that rationalization out of the water.&lt;p&gt;On the general point of U.S. math education: my cousin who lives in a nice California suburb was complaining that the math education her early high school student is receiving is several grade levels behind what she got--in Bangladesh. My mom, who also went to school in Bangladesh (in the 1960s!) was deeply unhappy about the math education in our affluent Virginia suburb, until I got into a top STEM magnet high school. My own kids go to an expensive private school, but are still getting math tutoring on the side. Math is just a shockingly low priority for Americans.</text></comment>
<story><title>An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California</title><url>https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6389</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kurthr</author><text>From the original letter:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college.  The CMF states that &amp;#x27;many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning in grade eight (or sooner) because of mistaken beliefs that Calculus is an important high school goal.&amp;#x27;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The updated CMF looks better, but I just don&amp;#x27;t see how an educator who knows math or how to teach math could come to such a conclusion (that Calculus should not be a goal). If it is well-intentioned, what was the intention... to dumb down math in high school? Perhaps we need to educate those who are coming up with the math frameworks in math and science, or to get people who care on the California Department of Education?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FFRefresh</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t doubt that the people crafting these proposals care. I think they truly believe they are doing the right thing. I personally think it&amp;#x27;s just increasingly popular, mistaken moral beliefs that inform these types of proposals. Some of the underlying beliefs:&lt;p&gt;1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability&lt;p&gt;2. Any observable differences between humans are merely the result of social factors&lt;p&gt;3. Any observable differences in outcomes between groups of humans are the result of oppression from the majority group&lt;p&gt;4. If you observe differences at your org&amp;#x2F;institution, it&amp;#x27;s your moral duty to create policies which disfavor groups of humans performing better and to favor groups of humans performing worse, as those performance differences are due to oppression.&lt;p&gt;If these beliefs undergird your worldview, and your social groups&amp;#x2F;information environment reinforce and reward these beliefs, it is of no surprise that we&amp;#x27;ll see a lot of people soberly propose the types of policies we see here. I can empathize that they really do think they are fighting the good fight, and are doing the right thing for society.</text></comment>